[ODE] Re: debugging

[Brian Chapman]

I think the problem is one of logistics. GDB has been ported to a huge 
number of platforms. What GUI library are you going to use that can 
span all of these in the same ease that GDB now currently exhibits? 
GTK? Qt? Ugly Bare X11?

However, I think the design of GDB is quite clear. "There shall be no 
design of a GUI and it will run on a dumb terminal and the GUI shall be 
left to other projects." And other projects there have been. DDD and 
Insight are quite popular GUI solutions that fulfill nearly, if not 
all, of the rant's requirements. Let us not also forget that GDB is the 
debugging core of Xcode, Apple's premier integrated development 
environment for Mac OS X. Xcode certainly works just as smoothly on the 
Mac as MSVC's debugging process works on Windows. I can say that 
because I have used both personally.

I'm afraid the argument to accuse GDB as being obsolete or unusable for 
serious development simply because it does not "ship" with a GUI is 
simply not sound. A GUI is simply not in GDB's job description and 
never will be. It has always been the development model of open source 
software to develop one tool for one job and do it well and leave the 
other tools to other people. The GUI was left to other people and I 
think they have done well.

If that were not the case then I think the rant would otherwise be 
quite valid.

Thanks,
Brian



On Tuesday, November 1, 2005, at 03:13  PM, Jon Watte (ODE) wrote:

>
> Thanks for the feedback.
>
> Having worked with GDB for a long time, including on the inside of it, 
> I am convinced that nothing + GDB will come close to the usability of 
> MSVC. We need a fresh start -- that's what the rant is about.
>
> Cheers,
>
> 			/ h+