From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S273173AbVBEQBS (ORCPT ); Sat, 5 Feb 2005 11:01:18 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S273172AbVBEQBR (ORCPT ); Sat, 5 Feb 2005 11:01:17 -0500 Received: from mail2.xor.ch ([212.55.210.166]:43269 "EHLO mail2.xor.ch") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S273143AbVBEQBD (ORCPT ); Sat, 5 Feb 2005 11:01:03 -0500 Message-ID: <4204EDB9.E80BB61C@orpatec.ch> Date: Sat, 05 Feb 2005 17:00:56 +0100 From: Otto Wyss X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.78 (Macintosh; U; PPC) X-Accept-Language: de,en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "'linux-kernel'" Subject: Why is debugging under Linux such a pain Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-OriginalArrivalTime: 05 Feb 2005 15:57:53.0452 (UTC) FILETIME=[73708EC0:01C50B9B] Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org 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