From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 13724 invoked by alias); 7 Nov 2005 22:07:08 -0000 Mailing-List: contact gdb-patches-help@sourceware.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: gdb-patches-owner@sourceware.org Received: (qmail 13350 invoked by uid 22791); 7 Nov 2005 22:07:05 -0000 Received: from romy.inter.net.il (HELO romy.inter.net.il) (192.114.186.66) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.30-dev) with ESMTP; Mon, 07 Nov 2005 22:07:05 +0000 Received: from HOME-C4E4A596F7 (IGLD-84-228-136-132.inter.net.il [84.228.136.132]) by romy.inter.net.il (MOS 3.5.8-GR) with ESMTP id CXP46681 (AUTH halo1); Tue, 8 Nov 2005 00:06:59 +0200 (IST) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 01:05:00 -0000 Message-Id: From: Eli Zaretskii To: Wu Zhou CC: gdb-patches@sources.redhat.com In-reply-to: (message from Wu Zhou on Mon, 7 Nov 2005 11:26:02 +0800 (CST)) Subject: Re: [RFC/Doc]: Some words about Fortran debugging Reply-to: Eli Zaretskii References: X-SW-Source: 2005-11/txt/msg00091.txt.bz2 > Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 11:26:02 +0800 (CST) > From: Wu Zhou > > I added some words in chapter 12 to describe some Fortran specific support. > Appended is the patch. Thanks! > Do I need to do anything other to verify that? It's preferable to also "make dvi". > What things I need to keep in mind if I want to add something into > the document? See my comments below. > + @value{GDBN} can be used to debug programs written in Fortran, but it > + mainly support the old Fortran 77 language features. For most of these > + new language feature introduced after Fortran 77 standard, such as > + derived type, modular, pointer and so on, @value{GDBN} doesn't support > + yet. But there are some effort trying to add support for them. I'd remove most of this text, leaving just this: @value{GDBN} can be used to debug programs written in Fortran, but it currently supports only the features of the Fortran 77 language. (The manual is not the place to tell users we are improving GDB. Reading that doesn't help them if they need those unimplemented features now.) > + @cindex Add a trailing underscore or not This is too cumbersome for an index entry, and uses up valuable space for uninformative words such as "a", "add", and "or". I suggest this instead: @cindex trailing underscore, in Fortran symbols > + To debug some Fortran compilers generated code, you may need to refer to > + some variables or functions with a trailing underscore. GNU Fortran 77 > + and Fortran 95 compiler are among this kind of compilers. As far as I > + know, you don't need to do that for IBM's XL Fortran compiler and Intel's > + Fortran compiler. If you are not sure, you can use the command completion > + feature of @value{GDBN} to see whether there is a trailing underscore or > + not. I'd simplify this as follows: Some Fortran compilers (@sc{gnu} Fortran 77 and Fortran 95 compilers among them) append an underscore to the names of variables and functions. When you debug programs compiled by those compilers, you will need to refer to variables and functions with a trailing underscore. > + * Special commands:: Special @value{GDBN} commands for Fortran Suggest to rename this node to "Special Fortran Commands", so it is more specific. > + @node Special commands and here as well. > ! @node Known Problems > ! @subsubsection Known Problems > ! > ! @cindex Known Problems > ! > ! There are a few known problems while using @value{GDBN} to debug Fortran > ! code. Some of them might even crash GDB or the debugged program. So > ! you need to pay attention to them when using @value{GDBN} to debug Fortran > ! program. This is not useful at all: you are telling the user that GDB might crash unless they pay attention to something, but don't say what that something is! Unless we can give specific advice what they shouldn't do, I'd prefer to remove this subsubsection. Thanks again for working on this.