Re: gdb-ui almosts works in NT

[Nick Roberts <nick@nick.uklinux.net>]

> > I'm trying to get gdba
> > working under NT Emacs.  Almost everything works.  One minor issue is
> > that gdb-ui.el is hardcoded at one point to use "/bin/cat", so I just
> > put a copy of the msys (mingw) cat.exe there.

> It's wrong for Emacs to use such code, IMHO.  It should either invoke
> `cat' (and let it be found along PATH), 

I agree. I'll make this change.

> or, better, implement some
> code that would eliminate the need for an external program altogether,
> since `cat' is not guaranteed to be available on every platform
> supported by Emacs.

> It strikes me that it woyldn't be hard to eliminate the need for
> `cat', since Emacs already has a means to visit files.

The output from the inferior could be sent directly to the input/output buffer
but the author of this part of the code from gdba.el (Tom Lord?) used cat
because:

;; We want to use comint because it has various nifty and familiar
;; features.  We don't need a process, but comint wants one, so create
;; a dummy one.
(make-comint-in-buffer
(substring (buffer-name) 1 (- (length (buffer-name)) 1))
(current-buffer) "/bin/cat")

> > The only problem is I can't
> > get the program IO to run in the input/output window in emacs.  It
> > runs always in its own DOS window.

> What compiler did you use to compile that program?  Was that MinGW's
> GCC?

I downloaded Emacs for NT and MinGW for the first time today and this didn't
seem to be just a problem with gdb-ui.el. `M-x gdb' from gud.el also sent the
output from the inferior to its own DOS window. Even if `gdb mytest' is run in
a DOS window (no Emacs) then the inferior outputs to its own DOS window and
does not seem able to share the window with gdb like in GNU/Linux.

However, I have no real experience with Emacs for NT, so if you can see changes
that will make it work for this platform too, please install them.

Nick