Re: Multiple debugging sessions

[Nick Roberts <nickrob@snap.net.nz>]

Miles Bader writes:
 > 2005/11/10, Nick Roberts <nickrob@snap.net.nz>:
 > > I can understand that it's not as ideal as working with one instance.
 > > Could you please explain, in practical terms, what makes it "very
 > > inconvenient".
 >
 > Because having multiple emacs instances is almost always a horrible
 > nuisance -- you get multiple instances of open files etc (even worse
 > is multiple gnus sessions -- I've done this a few times!).  One of the
 > biggest benefits of Emacs is having a shared global workspace.
 > 
 > [Do I really need to say this?!?]

I'm impressed that you can debug multiple programs and read gnus all at the
same time.  You could open the files and read gnus in just one instance,
changing the background colour, for example, so that you can distinguish
between the two.

By practical, I really meant something more concrete and unavoidable.

 > > I'm
 > > afraid that managing multiple debugging sessions is low down on my list
 > > of things to do...
 > 
 > Retrofitting such a feature is probably a lot harder than simply being
 > a bit careful to keep things well-parameterized from the beginning
 > (well i guess it's too late now, but ...).

I've already said that I'm not planning to retrofit such a feature but
keep the code simple by not having it.  Of course, if many users share
your view after the release, I will reconsider.

 > If you plan to make large scale change anyway, simply being aware of
 > the issue may go a long way towards avoiding such problems in the
 > rewritten code.

I was aware of the issue. The file gdba.el, which I used as my starting point,
used many buffer local variables, presumably to allow multiple sessions.  It
didn't work, so I made them global.

Nick