Program errors during initialization

Program errors during initialization

[Dave Ptacek]

Hi,

Config:  gnat 3.12.p, gdb 4.17, host and target Windows NT 4.0.

After successfully building my program, I tried running it and it
terminates immediately, so I fired up gdb to debug the problem.  I
placed breakpoints on the main procedure line "procedure main", on the
first line after the begin statement, and used the "break exception"
command.  I then pressed Start, none of the breakpoints tripped and I
get the following error message in the Command Buffer:  Error creating
process ...{program name}, (error 193).

I'm guessing there's an elaboration problem, but how do I go about
finding it?  I'm pretty new to both gnat and gdb, what debugging
techniques can I use in gdb to isolate the problem?  I have built
example programs and run gdb on them just to get familiar with gdb and
it appears to work fine so I'm pretty sure it's not a toolset problem.

Any ideas?

thanks,

Dave

Re: Program errors during initialization

[Dave Ptacek]

After further inspection, I find error 193 is likely to be an error passed
back by NT.  If I try to run the app by itself (without using AdaGIDE or
gnat / gdb tool to launch it), I get a dialog box with "....exe is not a
valid Windows NT application" error message.  So after some trial and
error sessions, I find this error surfaces whenever I have code calling
services in a .DLL for a particular piece of hardware in the PC.

What would make gnat generate an invalid NT application based on whether
an external .DLL file is being used?  I'm assuming stuff like this works
with gnat, I just don't have something configured correctly.  This is
really a simple console mode type of program.

thanks,

Dave

Dave Ptacek wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Config:  gnat 3.12.p, gdb 4.17, host and target Windows NT 4.0.
>
> After successfully building my program, I tried running it and it
> terminates immediately, so I fired up gdb to debug the problem.  I
> placed breakpoints on the main procedure line "procedure main", on the
> first line after the begin statement, and used the "break exception"
> command.  I then pressed Start, none of the breakpoints tripped and I
> get the following error message in the Command Buffer:  Error creating
> process ...{program name}, (error 193).
>
> I'm guessing there's an elaboration problem, but how do I go about
> finding it?  I'm pretty new to both gnat and gdb, what debugging
> techniques can I use in gdb to isolate the problem?  I have built
> example programs and run gdb on them just to get familiar with gdb and
> it appears to work fine so I'm pretty sure it's not a toolset problem.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> thanks,
>
> Dave