Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!csri.toronto.edu!dudek
From: dudek@csri.toronto.edu (Gregory Dudek)
Subject: Re: Picking a Debugger
Message-ID: <8804132207.AA09795@darcy.csri.toronto.edu>
Organization: University of Toronto, CSRI
References: <2613@cognos.UUCP> <7900@apple.Apple.Com> <3821@dasys1.UUCP>
Date:	Wed, 13 Apr 88 16:07:42 EDT

MacsBug seems to take a lot of flak in this group and it's my
impression that it's rather unjustified.  There's no doubt that
symbolic debuggers such as UNIX's dbx are nice to have, but for
that large number of cases where the compiler doesn't provide enough
assist. MacsBug seems to do a very commendable job.  It may not
provide fancy windows & such, but for a dirty job like assembly-level
debugging and tracing who really needs 'em.  Since I recently upgraded
from MacsBug 1.? to 5.5, I can't see any justification for shelling
out for TMON or The Debugger.  

    It is true, hwoever, that MacsBug doesn't seem to do a lot of
handholding -- you better know what you're doing.  Are TMON or
TheDebugger really that different that way?

    Among MacsBug's nice features are that it's small enough that you can keep
it resident *all the time* and that it's compatible with just
about everything.  The one thing I'd really like to have is automatic
"decompilation" of trap parameters but it just ain't worth $150 or the memory
burden imposed by the other offerings.

    Greg Dudek
-- 
Dept. of Computer Science (vision group)    University of Toronto
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