Re: Crashes on w32 and debugging

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

>>> I looked in the documentation for how to start Emacs under gdb, but
>>> I can't find anything about it in nt/INSTALL.
>> 
>> 1. Rebuild emacs after configure --no-opt (with optimisations on, stepping
>> through the code doesn't always act as you expect it, and some variables
>> cannot be inspected).

> Thanks Jason, but I need a little clarification. After configure I suppose
> I should do only "make bootstrap", but not "make install", or?

>> 2. cd ${emacs}/src          (where ${emacs} is your checkout
>> directory). This serves two purposes - it makes it easy for gdb to find
>> the emacs sources, and it also loads the .gdbinit in that directory, which
>> defines some useful functions for looking at Lisp variables
>> and backtraces.
>> 
>> 3. gdb oo/i386/emacs.exe
>> 
>> 4. Set any breakpoints using "break function_name" or "break
>> file.c:linenumber"
>> 
>> 5. run -Q

> I just started testing this, but with just "run". The crashes are
> intermittent so I have to just use it for a while.

>> 6. After the breakpoint is hit, step over functions with "next"/"n", or
>> step in with "step"/"s". Inspect C variables with "print VARIABLE", if it
>> is a lisp variable, "pr" immediately after the print will print its lisp
>> value. "bt" will get a backtrace, including the Lisp backtrace as well
>> as C.

> Should not these instructions go into nt/INSTALL or somewhere else?

Maybe not in INSTALL, but adding such information to etc/DEBUG would
probably be helpful,


        Stefan