Date: Mon, 28 Mar 94 19:45:47 PST
From: stevev AT miser DOT uoregon DOT edu (Steve VanDevender)
To: babcock AT cfa DOT harvard DOT edu
Cc: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
Subject: Re: I did it! gdb for djgpp!

Bob Babcock writes:
 > > I finally got gdb working with 1.11's new external debugger API.
 > 
 > Could someone explain why I might want to use gdb rather than the Sally
 > full-screen debugger?  My rather limited experience with unix debuggers has
 > not been pleasant.

You must have used the wrong UNIX debuggers.  gdb is the best
debugger of any that I have used.  Not only does it provide the
usual facilities for tracing code and inspecting variables, but
has programmable macro facilities and command completion (don't
remember exactly how you spelled that function name?  Just hit
TAB and if there's a unique completion you've got it).

All I usually need in a debugger is the ability to do stack
tracebacks to find out what function and code line the program
died in and get the execution history up to the point of failure.
I've been trying to program under DOS with protected-mode DOS
extenders and all of the compilers and debuggers we've had to use
so far don't even provide that feature.  The only MS-DOS debugger
I've used that comes close to providing the features of gdb is
the Turbo Debugger.