Why is debugging under Linux such a pain

[Otto Wyss <otto.wyss@orpatec.ch>]

Sorry if this is off topic here but IMO this _has_ to be discussed in a
broader audience since it probably has a rather large impact about the
acceptance of Linux even if it isn't the kernel's fault.

I just build the minimal sample of the wxWidgets framework and it
crashed when playing around with the menu. Well crashing might happen so
I took out GDB and tried to discover the reason. But when the sample
crashed I couldn't switch to the terminal where GDB was running. No
mouse or keyboard input was possible. I was completely stuck, IMO
something _never_ should happen. Who's to blame for this situation:
wxWidgets, GDB, GCC/G++, X or the Linux kernel? Or any combination?

Luckally I wasn't completely stuck since I started X with 'startx' and
could kill X with ctrl-alt-backspace. Also ctrl-alt-f1 worked so I could
switch to the console. At least I could shutdown my computer. Anyway the
above situation should not happen.

Back to debugging with GDB, I knew it's possible to to debug from the
console (which worked normal) but I wasn't sure how the assign could be
done. Of course 'man gdb' didn't show how, worse it didn't give any
hints where to look further. At this point I got upset and lost interest
and instead trying to produce a fix I simply made a bug report.

There are more issues with GDB which don't belong here but make
debugging under Linux just painful. I'm willing to spend a lot of my
spare time for a free system usable by anyone but when I have to do
debugging the fun is over and fast loose interests.

Does anyone has an idea how debugging under Linux can be improved to an
acceptable state?

O. Wyss

-- 
Development of frame buffer drivers: http://linux-fbdev.sf.net
Sample code snippets for wxWidgets: http://wxcode.sf.net
How to build well-designed applications: http://wxguide.sf.net
Desktop with a consistent look and feel: http://wyodesktop.sf.net