Re: GUD/GDB in emacs

[Richard G Riley <rileyrgdev@gmail.com>]

Nick Roberts <nickrob@snap.net.nz> writes:

>  > When using GUD, can one embed a dereference into one of the panes?
>
> I'm not sure what you mean exactly.  Maybe expand a node in situ in the
> locals buffer, for example.  

That would seem the obvious solution and is the case in other IDEs. e.g
you see "p" in the locals (where p is a pointer to a struct for example)
and then can see the struct by double clicking it for example. Pretty
much what the speedbar does but without the speed bar. (As an aside, if
I mouseclick 2 on a local in the locals buffer then its added to the
speedbar as a watch - it would be more consistent I think if "watch p"
from the gdb command line also did the same if the speedbar is in use,
what do you think?).

>
>  > Currently I can only see *p, for example, if I make it a watch point and
>  > enable the speedbar which is a horrendous waste of screen real
>  > estate. 
>
> If ECB gets integrated into Emacs, I plan to use tree-buffer.el for watch
> expressions instead of the speedbar but I think that they will always need
> their own buffer.

A tree view would be nice in the locals pane or a special watch pane.

>
>  >         Sure I can "display *p" in the *gud* buffer but thats pretty
>  > horrible since it all scrolls past. Any hints or tips and/or references
>  > to good GUD tutorials appreciated.
>
> I think some debuggers use tooltips to expand expressions but I'm not sure
> how that works.

Some do, but they are not convenient or "static" enough. If I have a
pointer in a loop and step around the loop I would like, reasonably
enough I think, to see the pointed to structure change as "p" changes or
its dereferenced contents change. Certainly a tooltip is not the best
for a struct of more than one or two elements.