Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!cornell!batcomputer!garry
From: garry@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Garry Wiegand)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: Vax C Sucks Wind
Message-ID: <3825@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>
Date: 23 Feb 88 00:32:51 GMT
Reply-To: garry@oak.cadif.cornell.edu
Organization: Cornell Engineering && Ithaca Software, Inc.
Lines: 33

The /DEBUG executable can indeed be huge on a big program. The common
cause is lots of little files each including some big .H files - the
debugging symbol information ends up being replicated a bunch of times,
and the effective number of lines of code is in the zillions. 

For example, for about 400 small modules, each of which includes about 1500
lines of .H stuff, I get a fully-debuggable .EXE of about 11,000 blocks. The
same thing with no debugging at all is about 600 blocks. 

What I do is to compile most of the files /NODEBUG and then just a few
in the current work vicinity with /DEBUG. (Then you link the whole thing
/DEBUG, of course.) If the "work vicinity" is logically distinct from
the rest of the system, I also sometimes build fully-debuggable shareable
library images that hold the non-changing part of the system, and then
just link to them repeatedly. See the SET IMAGE command in the debugger.

(Um, we ARE talking about /DEBUG images, aren't we?  I got that implication
from the end, where you ask about "other debuggers". And the original
Pascal wasn't built /DEBUG, or was all in one file, am I right?)

Dunno about your problems with DEC/Europe. Sounds like they're not used
to talking about C yet. (Odd, though - the VMS C compiler and support
library are six or eight years old now! DEC/Europe really should know their
stuff better.) 

garry wiegand   (garry@oak.cadif.cornell.edu - ARPA)
		(garry@crnlthry - BITNET)

PS - The VMS debugger is the best I've ever encountered - my experience with
Unix dbx and sdb, for example, is that they roll over and croak with anything
remotely large. Bugs up the wazoo! The VMS debugger, on the other hand, has
saved man-years of work here, and it's probably the last, best, reason we're
still a VMS shop!