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From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Who uses 'adb' debugger? (Supplementary to my own question.)
Keywords: cdb gdb dbx
Message-ID: <11944@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 12 Jan 90 21:40:26 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>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 15

In article <50349@bu.edu.bu.edu> clement%buengf.bu.edu@bu-cs.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.

You don't normally have much choice on a given system.
Anyway, this tends to be a "religious" issue like the one about
which text editor is best.
"pi" is better than all the ones you mention, but you're unlikely
to have it available.  (There is a version available for use with
downloaded DMD or MTG processes.)
SGI provides "edge" on the 4D Irix systems.  It's comparable to
the source-level debuggers you find in PC environments.
I often resort to "adb" when it's available, primarily in order to
avoid complications when getting at the real machine code.