[Haifux] lecture suggestion: gdb in greater depth

[Shlomi Fish]

On Tuesday 13 January 2009 14:15:33 Eli Billauer wrote:
> Orr, please book him! I don't care if it will be him and me only.
>
>
> By the way, isn't gdb still the backend for *all* debugging tools under
> Linux?

Not really. First of all, high-level languages like Perl, Python, Ruby, etc. 
have their own debuggers, which don't require gdb (or any kind of low-level 
debugging). From my experience, it is sometimes to useful run the perl (in my 
case) executable under gdb while using it with the -d flag to debug the perl 
code step by step, so one can debug binary extensions (XS).

Secondly, there are several specialised debuggers such as strace, ltrace, 
valgrind, etc. which don't share any code with gdb.

Lastly, there are http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ups_(debugger) , which is open-
source and possibly some commercial debuggers that fill the same niche 
(source-level debugging) as gdb, and are not dependent on it.

I should note that about a month ago, I considered to finally contribute to 
gdb by fixing bugs, but then saw that they are still using CVS. I asked on IRC 
why that was still the case after all they years when much better version 
control alternatives have been available, and was answered that it was mostly 
due to inertia. gdb has its share of bugs, and I'd like to improve it, so it's 
a shame that I still have to face this obstacle.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

>
>
>    Eli
>
> guy keren wrote:
> > Since i've moved back to using gdb alot, and since i got tired of the
> > limitations from the past, i started digging deeper into the
> > documentation, and found a wealth of features that were added to gdb
> > over the years (some available only on current linux systems), and i
> > could come up with a lecture the title "gdb - customizing it the way
> > _you_ want", in which i'll talk about gdb features related to
> > multi-threaded programs debugging, how to make it easier to view your
> > data and how to automate gdb to make your lives easier (or at least -
> > mine ;)
> >
> > if there's interest, i'll build the lecture in the following weeks, as i
> >   delve deeper into the user manual, and i'll be ready with it in 1-2
> > month (granted, if the queue is longer, i'll wait in line).
> >
> > --guy
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>
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Shlomi Fish       http://www.shlomifish.org/
"Humanity" - Parody of Modern Life - http://xrl.us/bkeut

<mauke>    I'm not interested in what you're doing; what are you trying to 
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<PerlJam>  mauke: I'm trying to achieve world peace and this regex is
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