Re: Gdb

[Russell Shaw <rjshaw@netspace.net.au>]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>>Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2006 12:28:40 +1000
>>From: Russell Shaw <rjshaw@netspace.net.au>
>>CC:  gdb@sourceware.org
>>
>>>That is not necessarily a sign of bad design.  For example, when Emacs
>>>does garbage collection, the stack depth sometimes exceeds 10,000
>>>levels when recursive data structures are marked.  That is normal and
>>>by design.
>>
>>The slowness and size of emacs put me off it. I use (g)vim because
>>editing using ex regex commands is a more direct way at doing things imho.
> 
> What does this have to do with the issue at hand?

Mainly that i detest deep indirect stacks to reach some final target code
because it makes things slow and hard to maintain. The speed and compactness
of vi is what i'd like in gdb, without sacrificing completeness and usability.

I don't like waiting for a text editor to start (emacs), and wouldn't want to
wait for a bloated debugger to start (gdb is currently ok imo).

 > I used Emacs as an
> example of a very deep stack being a normal situation in a working
> program whose design is generally considered well-thought.
>  
>>>Perhaps you lack good tools for learning programs, or don't use them
>>>to their full power.
>>
>>I just use ctags to navigate in gvim.
> 
> I recommend to add at least ID-Utils to your toolchest.  I don't know
> if someone wrote a gvim plug-in for it (the Emacs interface is
> included in the package), but even if you invoke it from the shell,
> it's an invaluable tool for finding your way around an unfamiliar
> program.

I'll read-up on id-utils.

> Also, some parts of GDB internals are documented in gdbint.texinfo.
> Sadly, many important aspects are not covered at all there, but if you
> are lucky to be working on something that is described, reading that
> manual can help.