[lug] At last! A graphical debugger.

[Tom Tromey]

>>>>> "Scott" == Scott A Herod <herod at interact-tv.com> writes:

Scott> [herod at torries bin]$ ./gdb --version
Scott> GNU gdb 5.0

Thanks.  That's actually fairly old in Insight terms.

Scott> The reasons that I now prefer DDD include; motif ( makes it
Scott> peppier ), mouse-over a variable can show its value

Insight can do this these days.

Scott> it has a graphical method of displaying watch variables,
Scott> displaying classes in tables with arrows linking to other
Scott> structures, and graphical display of arrays.

Yeah, those are definite advantages.

I tend not to use variable watches at all any more.  gdb has a
tendency to crash when I use them, and that negative reinforcement has
made me stop using them.  The problem is most acute when you're doing
a lot of debugging in a shared library, so I suspect it isn't a
failure mode most people see.  (Too bad, if it were it would get
fixed.)

Scott> On a related note, I wonder how hard it would be to make some
Scott> of the display tools work with jdb.  I know you work on gcj,
Scott> Tom, have you done anything with Insight in that direction?

Nope.  A long time ago Per modified gdb to work with gcj-compiled
code.  This support has bit-rotted a little but is still functional
enough for simple debugging.  libgcj doesn't implement JVMDI (or
whatever it is these days -- the interpreter debugging interface), so
jdb doesn't work with it (and so I've never used jdb).  Also, Insight
is linked to gdb, it isn't like DDD or Emacs or any other program that
interprets gdb's output.

My favorite Insight feature is that it lets you save your debugging
state.  So my complicated breakpoint commands and conditions are
saved, and I can easily start debugging on an old session again.  I
use this feature heavily.


There's another gdb wrapper written in Ada that uses Gtk+.  I think it
can also wrap jdb and some other debuggers.  I haven't tried it
though.  Have you?

Tom