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Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2005 11:53:25 -0500 (EST)
From: Igor Pechtchanski <pechtcha AT cs DOT nyu DOT edu>
Reply-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: cygwin bughunt (FAQ alert?)
In-Reply-To: <20050121163843.GE20002@trixie.casa.cgf.cx>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.61.0501211146420.18105@slinky.cs.nyu.edu>
References: <D9B1ABFA3404D611AC7B00508B63B512024F106E AT nnhml1 DOT cox DOT co DOT uk> <20050121121553 DOT GQ3113 AT cygbert DOT vinschen DOT de> <20050121163843 DOT GE20002 AT trixie DOT casa DOT cgf DOT cx>
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On Fri, 21 Jan 2005, Christopher Faylor wrote:

> On Fri, Jan 21, 2005 at 01:15:53PM +0100, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
> >On Jan 21 11:18, Hughes, Bill wrote:
> >>I don't think I'm putting this very well, but it may make the FAQ
> >>easier if the standard advice is to load the snaphot and use that for
> >>debugging, it removes a separate layer of potential problems in
> >>building the dll.  I suspect the people who would want a stripped
> >>snapshot to be more capable of producing it than those would may need
> >>to build one with debug info.
> >
> >IMHO you're looking from the wrong direction.  People capable of
> >debugging the Cygwin DLL are usually also capable of building it.  I'm
> >wondering how somebody should be able to debug an application at all,
> >if this person stumbles over using the compiler tools.
>
> cgf, waves and points.
> See, Corinna is being mean here!  It's not just me!
> (although I've made similar observations in the past)

She learned from the best... :-D

> Maybe someone will prove me wrong but it seems likely that this is a
> basically an entry examination.  If you can't figure out how to build
> cygwin, then you probably aren't going to provide much in the way of
> useful feedback if you had a debuggable version.

Pierre already submitted an argument against this (the likelihood of the
bug may be reduced in CVS).  Here's another argument: it is sometimes
impractical to either replace the existing DLL or replicate the same exact
environment for a debug version.  Why not debug exactly what fails?

Besides, since the releases aren't tagged in CVS (yes, that old quibble
again), it's a gamble on whether you're even building the right version...

> I would also submit that, IMO, helping people run a debugger and figure
> things out in the debugger is an order of magnitude more difficult than
> providing basic tech support

Agreed.  So we don't teach them to debug, we simply provide them with
debugging symbols.

> The debugger is only marginally more useful when the debugging symbols
> are available anyway.  You still need the source code to do anything
> really worthwhile.

Also agreed.  But the source provided in the cygwin source package is
worthless for debugging, since one can't build Cygwin from that source.
If debugger symbols were available, that source would actually be useful.
:-)
	Igor
-- 
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     |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'		Igor Pechtchanski, Ph.D.
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