Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!snorkelwacker!paperboy!meissner From: meissner@osf.org (Michael Meissner) Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions Subject: Re: Who uses 'adb' debugger? (Supplementary to my own question.) Message-ID: Date: 11 Jan 90 16:45:50 GMT References: <107@melpar.UUCP> <1990Jan7.020128.9362@aob.aob.mn.org> <1990Jan7.195850.26785@eddie.mit.edu> <50200@bu.edu.bu.edu> <8868.25ab14cb@ecs.umass.edu> <50349@bu.edu.bu.edu> Sender: news@OSF.ORG Organization: Open Software Foundation Lines: 27 In-reply-to: clement@buengf.bu.edu's message of 11 Jan 90 06:07:08 GMT In article <50349@bu.edu.bu.edu> clement@buengf.bu.edu (Clement Lee) writes: | My friend in CS told me that gdb (GNU) and cdb are better than sdb or | adb, and gdb is the best, but to run gdb, the C program has to be | compiled by gcc. But I still have no idea of what is better. Gdb blows the socks off sdb and dbx. You should be able to use the standard C compiler on your system, since gdb will grok either the .stab information (what dbx usually uses) or the COFF debug information (what sdb usually uses) depending on what the system supports. Note, you should get the latest version of GDB (3.4) rather than old musty, broken gdb that is currently on the emacs tape (2.x). You can get GDB from the Free Software Foundation (it's on their compiler tape), or via anonymous ftp from prep.ai.mit.edu, or uunet.uu.net, or via anonymous uucp from ohio state. A popular way of using GDB is to use it through GNU emacs (M-x gdb). You get put into two window mode on breakpoints, one window being the current gdb interaction layer, and the other being the source file, with the line the breakpoint is on indicated. I discovered that this does have it's drawbacks if you are debugging large programs, since emacs, gdb, and the program must be running simulataneously. -- Michael Meissner email: meissner@osf.org phone: 617-621-8861 Open Software Foundation, 11 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA Catproof is an oxymoron, Childproof is nearly so