Re: various gdba bugs and requests

[Tom Tromey <tromey@redhat.com>]

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

Nick> Thanks for a comprehensive review.  I am aware of most of these
Nick> problems - I'm just not sure what to do about them so my replies
Nick> mght be a bit disappointing.

No problem.

FWIW I'm not replying to everything right now...

>> 1. I made a new frame for gdba and maximized it.  Then I moved it to
>> another virtual desktop.  gdb ran for a long time so I switched back
>> to my primary desktop and worked on other things.  When gdb finally
>> hit a breakpoint, the gud buffer appeared on one of my existing
>> frames.

Nick> I'm not sure if is a virtual desktop or a frame problem.  I don't know
Nick> why the gud buffer appeared.  GUD should just pop up a source buffer,
Nick> generally in the window where the source was previously or the frame of
Nick> the GUD buffer.

Oops, I wrote "gud buffer" but I meant "source buffer".  Sorry about
that.

I think what I want here is a mode where gdba understands that there
is a "gdb frame", and won't try to show the source buffer anywhere
except the designated source window in that frame.

Nick> [ ways to reproduce are needed ]

I'll try to get this.  It may take a while.

>> 4. I'd like a way to arrange the windows differently.  The standard
>> setup isn't to my taste.

Nick> Eclipse is superior in this respect.  I sometimes use
Nick> gdb-many-windows but generally I just pop up extra buffers in
Nick> their own frames as I need them, from the menu-bar.

I've got an initial draft of some window-rearrangement code... I'll
send it when it works a bit better.  Basically the idea is that the
user can rearrange the windows and then M-x gdb-save-windows.

>> 6. I often find that gdb acts strangely or sometimes crashes; one
>> thing that is nice about the Emacs approach to a gdb UI is that a lot
>> of state is kept in the gud buffer, so I can kill gdb, restart, search
>> backward and not lose too much.  Still, it would be nice if gud
>> offered a way to save the state of a debug session -- say, the cwd,
>> the command line, and the breakpoints (plus their conditions,
>> commands, etc).

Nick> If GDB crashes then that's a bug which should be reported to the
Nick> GDB mailing list.

Yeah, I agree.  But as a practical matter, gdb has crashed or wedged
or otherwise gotten confused on a semi-regular basis ever since I
first started using it.  Working around this is a survival strategy.

Nick> Emacs could keep session information but how would this be more
Nick> convenient than using the GDB command "set logging on"?

I think logging is not really what I want.  It saves the output of gdb
commands.  But, I already have that in the gud buffer.

Instead what I want is to save some state: cwd, breakpoint info,
command line arguments, etc.  I often want to be able to re-create a
gdb session; I think it would be nice if Emacs provided a way to do
that.

>> In GNU Emacs 22.0.990.1 (i386-koji-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.10.11)

Nick> I believe Fedora 7 has a backport for Emacs 22.1.

Yeah, I'm running a rawhide version, I'll fix that eventually.

Tom