Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 10:58:37 +0300 (IDT)
From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
To: George Foot <george DOT foot AT merton DOT oxford DOT ac DOT uk>
cc: djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: Auto-symified traceback
In-Reply-To: <199803302228.XAA11820@sable.ox.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.980331105809.23311B-100000@is>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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On Mon, 30 Mar 1998, George Foot wrote:

> > even if it crashed on someone else's machine.  For example, imagine the
> > situation where a program I wrote crashed at some other machine, while the
> > sources I maintain have already changed.  A symified traceback will help a
> > whole lot more in this situation. 
> 
> But this would require you to distribute the program with debugging 
> information; is this a common thing to do with a distribution?

Not a common thing AFAIK, but it still happens.  For example, someone
might have built that program on their machine from sources.

> Perhaps it would be sufficient to simply copy the traceback 
> information to a disk file; this would be a trivial change wouldn't 
> it?  It would ensure that the traceback would be available later.  
> The screen message could either remain, and be a duplicate, or could 
> just tell the user where to find the debugging information.

You mean, create a `core' file?  I don't know.  Opinions, anyone?

> If developers read the 
> documentation they'll find out what to do to the tracebacks; if they 
> include suitable documentation with their product then their users 
> will know to send the traceback back to the author.

Try counting the number of messages on c.o.m.d where some of us
explain how to get a symified traceback.  That alone could be a good
reason to include such functionality, don't you think?