4 ms·
Of the tangible features that they list as motivation: - Build libraries for inclusion in IDEs, command line tools, and other analysis tools - gdb seems
by grogers 16y ago
Of the tangible features that they list as motivation:
- Build libraries for inclusion in IDEs, command line tools, and other analysis tools
- gdb seems to have it http://sourceware.org/gdb/papers/libgdb2/libgdb_toc.html http://sourceware.org/gdb/papers/libgdb2/libgdb_toc.html
- High performance and efficient memory use
- I cant comment on how much of gdb's sluggishness in running programs is inherent in the problem, and how much is gdb being slow.
- Extensible: Python scriptable and use a plug-in architecture
- gdb has it http://sourceware.org/gdb/current/onlinedocs/gdb/Extending-GDB.html#Extending-GDB http://sourceware.org/gdb/current/onlinedocs/gdb/Extending-G...
- Excellent multi-threaded debugging support
- GDB could be better - I wish it could stop threads individually, instead of all-stop then all-resume even on a single step. But IIRC there is a project to be able to do something like this eventually.
- Great support for C, Objective-C and C++
- Can't comment on objective-c, but the C++ support has gotten significantly better since GCC 4.5/GDB 7.0 with pretty printing of C++ data structures, and has been steadily improving over time handling C++ mangling.
- Retargetable to support multiple platforms
- gdb naturally is widely ported
- A remote protocol server, debugserver, implements Mac OS X debugging on i386 and x86_64.
- gdb has it
I haven't seen anything that really improves on gdb yet. Maybe (hopefully) I'm wrong...
- wazoox 16y agoIt comes from Apple and is bsd-licensed. In this community, this passes for "enhancements" over gdb. Yes, this is a bitter comment about the HN community state of mind.
- pohl 16y agoYeah, pesky entrepreneurs and their eye for opportunity.
- wazoox 16y agoWell, my company only works on gpl stuff and doesn't suffer any inconvenience from that. So I call bluff.
- pohl 16y agoYou're saying that being able to statically link a library into a commercial app has no business value to anybody because you are fortunate enough to have found a niche where you didn't need to. Your personal experience is enviable, but I don't see how it speaks to the general case.
- wazoox 16y agoI actually think that proprietary software is morally wrong anyway. Blasphemy! :)
- neilc 16y agoI think that's far too cynical. gdb is fine, but there is tons of room for improvement, and more competition in this area can only be a good thing. It is early days yet for LLDB, but it is a promising start. I've yet to see any IDE/debugger setup on a Unixen that comes close to competiting with Visual Studio's debugging interface, as unfortunate as that is.
- wazoox 16y agoYou're absolutely right. However lldb hasn't gone that far so we can't know for sure if it will ever be any better than gdb. I'll admit easily that gcc messages/gdb debugging actually suck wind :)
- alec 16y agoFor "high performance GDB", see tracepoints, which act somewhat like DTrace probes.