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From: stew@endor.harvard.edu (Stew Rubenstein)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: MacNosy and "The Debugger"
Message-ID: <2815@husc6.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 9-Sep-87 19:48:05 EDT
Article-I.D.: husc6.2815
Posted: Wed Sep  9 19:48:05 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 11-Sep-87 06:45:46 EDT
References: <7019@dartvax.UUCP>
Sender: news@husc6.UUCP
Reply-To: stew@endor.UUCP (Stew Rubenstein)
Organization: Aiken Computation Lab Harvard, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 46

In article <7019@dartvax.UUCP> su@dartvax.UUCP (Peter Su) writes:
>Hi, in recent months I've lots of ads and hype about this product from
>Steve Jasik.  After reading the article in Mactutor, I'm wondering if anyone
>out there has acutally used this thing, and if so, is it really that good?
>
>I generally develop in LightSpeed C, and I'm trying to see whether I
>should wait for THINK to come up with a debugger, or go out and get
>"The Debugger" instead.

Summary: I love and hate it; it has a lot of great features, but it is
neither finished nor debugged, and the documentation is quite terse
and, in many cases, incomplete.  Personally, I use The Debugger when
can, I leave TMON installed to catch the unexpected bus error, and
keep MacsBug handy for when, for one reason or another (and the times
do come up) the other two don't work.

I've been using this for about two months now, and am of mixed
feelings.  On the one hand, it has a lot of great features, and the
multiple window operation is a lot easier and more flexible to use
than the rigid TMON windows (let alone windowless MacsBug).  On the
other hand, it is a royal pain to use because it doesn't stick around;
you have to start it up every time you want to debug an application,
and then reboot when you want to go back to something else.  It is not
quick starting up, either.

Furthermore, the program (in its July incarnation) was full of bugs
and documentation was about 20K of online notes in Jasik's inimitable
terse style.  The August version arrived last week and came with a
(still incomplete but much better) printed manual.  I have not had a
chance to use it much, yet; some bugs remain, but I would rate this
version as useable.

The Debugger reads LSC project files (I program mostly with MPW).
If you want to debug programs now, Apple's or Think's future plans
don't matter much.  You can't use The Debugger for anything but
applications, at the moment.  If you are working on INITs, DAs,
or anything else, use TMON or MacsBug.  Jasik says he's working
on supporting DAs.  Also, you can't use The Debugger while
any AppleTalk activity is going on: no spoolers, AppleShare,
LaserWriter printing, etc.  The Debugger does support the full
68020 and 68881 instruction set, which TMON doesn't.

Stew Rubenstein
Cambridge Scientific Computing, Inc.
UUCPnet:    seismo!harvard!rubenstein            CompuServe: 76525,421
Internet:   rubenstein@harvard.harvard.edu       MCIMail:    CSC