Re: [RFA] bug in symtab.c:lookup_block_symbol()'s search method

Daniel Jacobowitz
2001-09-14T10:59:00Z

On Fri, Sep 14, 2001 at 08:49:28PM +0300, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 09:12:41 -0700
> > From: Jason Molenda <jason-swarelist@molenda.com>
> >
> > > I agree with Dan here: I don't think this specific issue can be a
> > > valid reason for saying that GDB is ``broken'' and that ``gdb 5.1 can
> > > not be released'' in its current shape.
> >
> > Unfortunately, this performance issue becomes "breakage" on some
> > platforms.
>
> Even if the performance hit is significant, I fail to understand how
> can someone say the entire program is broken, or that it cannot be
> released. Can we please get things back into their proportion?

This much I can mostly agree with, but...

> Anyway, I don't consider 5-10 seconds such a long time. We still have
> in GDB operations that take much more, and we don't consider it
> ``broken'' because of that.

Maybe you don't. I'm sure I'm not the only one who would like to start
eliminating them. I'm guessing that Jason is another. A lot of
operations take frustratingly long that shouldn't.

For instance, Jason is probably testing on a machine capable of
displaying a GUI IDE and running MacOS X. That means a PowerPC,
presumably, and at least in the 300MHz-500MHz range. I do much of my
native GDB testing on a 50MHz MIPS R5432 board, which is probably on
the order of thirty or forty times slower. His ten second delays
become my five minute coffee breaks. I'm not exagerating; hitting tab
accidentally while typing locks gdb solid for five minutes. I intend
to do some work on fixing that. If he has a patch which can remove one
such delay, I'm vastly in favor of it.

> > If you're using GDB in under an IDE and you have a Locals window
> > open, and one of those locals is an opaque structure, whenever you
> > step into our out of that frame, you'll have this 5-10 second delay.
>
> So display the hourglass for 10 seconds and be done with that. No one
> will really notice, except you and me. The world is full with good
> software that sometimes has 10-sec delays, to say nothing of bad
> software.

Not if every Step instruction takes ten seconds! That makes debugging
practically infeasible.

--
Daniel Jacobowitz Carnegie Mellon University
MontaVista Software Debian GNU/Linux Developer