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From: jxf@castor.cis.ksu.edu (Jerry Frain)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: A use for protected mode after all
Message-ID: <1990Nov28.031713.14035@maverick.ksu.ksu.edu>
Date: 28 Nov 90 03:17:13 GMT
References: <2371.27539d74@waikato.ac.nz> <1990Nov28.000542.21632@verity.com>
Sender: news@maverick.ksu.ksu.edu (The News Guru)
Organization: Kansas State University
Lines: 26

anders@verity.com (Anders Wallgren) writes:

>In article <2371.27539d74@waikato.ac.nz>, ldo@waikato (Lawrence D'Oliveiro, Waikato University) writes:
>>I know I'm on record as saying that memory protection isn't a very important
>>thing to add to the Macintosh system. But, thinking about it, I've come
>>across an exception I'd like to make to this statement: MacsBug.
>>
>>It would be very useful if a resident debugger could protect itself
>>against other software running amuck (whether this be rogue applications,
>>or the system itself). It would also greatly improve the debugger's
>>ability to diagnose problems. And I think it can be done with minimal
>>impact on the rest of the system.

>I fail to see how this is different from protecting all applications
>from each other, both in scope and effect.

Agreed.  A debugger is just an application, after all, whose data
space is no more important (even less important, in most cases)
than the space claimed by other applications.

It seems rather hypocritical to claim that applications, and more
importantly, the operating system, do not require protection from
other applications, but the debugger does.

  --Jerry Frain, jxf@cis.ksu.edu