Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!well!manx
From: manx@well.UUCP (Jim Goodnow II)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: MANX C & SDB
Message-ID: <5372@well.UUCP>
Date: 5 Mar 88 03:43:11 GMT
References: <6823@oberon.USC.EDU> <649@applix.UUCP> <4036@husc6.harvard.edu> <283@brambo.UUCP> <7109@oberon.USC.EDU> <2601@tekigm2.TEK.COM>
Reply-To: manx@well.UUCP (Jim Goodnow II)
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, Sausalito, CA
Lines: 55
Summary: Mousing your bugs away ...

In article <2601@tekigm2.TEK.COM> phils@tekigm2.UUCP (Philip E Staub) writes:
> .... I haven't had much time to play with it yet, but so far
>I'm fairly impressed, with one exception and one minor nit to pick.
>
>Exception:
>I haven't figured out how (or if its possible) to continuously monitor 
>register and/or variable contents while stepping thorough a program short of
>issuing a command following each step.
>
>Nit:
>There should be a way to single step with a single keystroke instead of 
>s <return> or t <return>. A macro, maybe? Haven't played with macros yet so
>I don't know.
>
>Anyway, just thought you should know to hang in there.
>
>-Phil

Just thought people might like to know the history and plans for SDB. It
was originally written for our IBM-PC 8086 compiler and designed to run
strictly with a glass teletype user interface. After the initial version
was released, it was deemed too big and buggy and was mostly rewritten.
It was this newer version which I ported to the 68000, in particular the
Amiga.

In order to make the product available ASAP, I restricted myself to only
modifying the interface by adding source and data windows. In all other
respects it is still the same program which runs on the PC. To see what
that is like, just try invoking it with "-w".

From a user interface standpoint, I tend not to use the mouse very much
in my normal development. However, I've decided that being able to debug
using only the mouse is extremely powerful and future versions of SDB
will not support the "-w" option and will have a lot more features. 

I suspect that the reason I haven't been deluged with enhancement requests
is that even as is, SDB is very powerful and that we STILL haven't got
caught up with shipping the back orders. As it is, MY enhancement list
is very long but any requests sent to "well!manx" will certainly be
considered.

 jim goodnow II
 Manx Software Systems

 USENET: well!manx
 BIX: jgoodnow
 

PS:
  The only serious problems that have been reported thus far are:

  1) .mac files aren't being saved though they will be read if present.
  2) All floating point numbers are assumed to be IEEE not FFP.
  3) 68881 registers are not displayed.
  4) Register variables in previous stack frames are not handled
      correctly if there are non-register local variables in the frame.