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From: jinx@zurich.ai.mit.edu (Guillermo J. Rozas)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp
Subject: Re: GNU Support (was: GNU Make 3.58 on HP-UX 7.0 ?)
Message-ID: <JINX.90Oct2233806@chamarti.ai.mit.edu>
Date: 3 Oct 90 03:38:06 GMT
References: <1990Sep17.201337.15659@bpdsun1.uucp> <1340145@hpclscu.HP.COM>
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Organization: M.I.T. Artificial Intelligence Lab.
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In-reply-to: shankar@hpclscu.HP.COM's message of 2 Oct 90 04:18:39 GMT


    Also, to re-iterate a point made about gdb and C++: the HP C++ product
    comes with an enhanced xdb (xdb++, soon to be folded back into the regular
    xdb), that understands C++ *very well*. It's probably the most
    sophisticated C++ debugger around on Unix, even if I say it myself.

You (and apparently the rest of HP) don't get the point.  It is not a
matter of which debugger is better, but which debugger individual
users prefer.  I may agree with you that xdb is better than gdb (I do
not), but I have to develop and occasionally support code on HPs,
Suns, Vaxen, etc., and I don't want to have to learn 3 or more
different debuggers.  I want to use gdb because it runs on all of
them, and because it allows me to debug the code that I will actually
be running (compiled with -O).  I don't want to force this choice on
other users, but telling me that the HP-supplied utilities are better
or work well doesn't help me in the least.

I just wish that HP would support stab directives so that HP's as and
ld (rather than gas and gld with Berkely executable format) could be
used instead.  A somewhat less desirable alternative would be to
document the debugging directives that cdb/xdb uses so that a more
natural port of gcc/gdb could be done.