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To: User & <hasty@star-gate.com>
cc: hackers@FreeBSD.org
Subject: Re: Debugging 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Tue, 21 Mar 95 13:22:56 GMT."
             <199503211323.NAA02764@star-gate.com> 
Date: Tue, 21 Mar 95 14:19:06 -0800
From: Bakul Shah <bakul@netcom.com>
Sender: hackers-owner@FreeBSD.org
Precedence: bulk

> I found tgdb at:
> wcarchive.cdrom.com:/.4/linux/sunsite/devel/debuggers/tgdb-1.1.src.tgz

> >From the INSTALL notes:
>   To build tgdb_wish, the Tcl/Tk interpreter for tgdb's code, the following
> packages are needed:

>    tcl7.3
>    tk3.6 (or tk3.6pl1)
>    tclX7.3a (or tclX7.3b)
>    BLT1.3 (or newer)
>    TkSteal3.6c (or newer)
>    expect5.3 (or newer)

Not to mention gdb, whose latest source tar weighs in at
over 4MB gzipped.

Boy!  This is way too rich a diet for me.  Make me yearn for
the good ole' days when `ddt' was the king!  And `adb' was a
worthy successor.  Instead, now I need a machine with 16Meg
of RAM and 200Meg+ of disk just so that I can debug a 5000
line program (which can be debugged with a few printfs most
of the time anyway).  Gag me with a spoon!

For a refreshingly different take on such things read `ACID:
A Debugger based on a Language' by Phil WinterBottom (you
can ftp from plan9.att.com).  While there also pick up the
paper on `Acme:  A user Interface for Programmers' by Rob
Pike.  Also, `The Oberon System', Software Practice and
Experience, Sep 1989, Vol 19 #9, pp 857-894.

I am sure tgdb is a great program but I just fail to
understand why it is so damn hard to write a lean and mean
decent debugger.

We now return you to your regular program.  [Flames to me;
I probably deserve them].  Excuse me for gagging in public.

Bakul Shah