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From: nickerson@mirage.boeing.com ()
Subject: Re: Gnat on OpenVMS
Date: 1999/05/24
Message-ID: <FC9A9F.A48@news.boeing.com>#1/1
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References: <7hshfq$5tc$1@front1.grolier.fr> <7ht4m2$4k7$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
 <FC3vx8.5qG@news.boeing.com> <7i6a5g$hjq$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Organization: Boeing Defense & Space Group / Software Systems
Reply-To: nickerson@mirage.boeing.com ()
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1999-05-24T00:00:00+00:00
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In article <7i6a5g$hjq$1@nnrp1.deja.com>, 
Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-dejanews.com> writes:

|>Well sure, if DEC had been willing to invest the resources to
|>update the VMS debugger, not only with respect to Ada 95, but
|>also with respect to other shortcomings (e.g. lack of
|>scalability to the multi-processing environment), then that
|>would have been fine. But given that this was not going to
|>happen (not just for $$$ reason but for many other reasons),
|>it was not a viable route.

am not familiar with limitations or the internals involved; my
understanding would be that there is a basic debug engine and it
is coupled with each specific, supported language's "module" for
expression evalutation & whatnot; could you give a critique of
the shortcomings as you see them;

..snip 

|>Well it would be a little more useful if you would be more
|>specific about what you like or don't like about debuggers,
|>so we can see if there are useful technical points. My
|>experience is that people have highly subjective views on
|>the subject, as with editors. And as for the "it will never
|>get close", you do not begin to have the information to make
|>that claim. You have not even seen the most up to date version,
|>let alone what is in the wings!

I agree that I need to be more constructive and detailed but the
barrier to entry is high and I don't know when I'll be able to do
that; naturally if 3.11p is not up to snuff then the target is moving;

|>Right now, there are perhaps 20 or so full time people working
|>on GDB, perhaps more. 90% of this work is target independent,
|>and will benefit all users of GDB.
|>
|>VMS is in a way quite analogous to Ada. A technology with
|>significantly superior capability in many respects, but one
|>which is just a niche. With VMS, as with Ada 95, this means
|>that you need to piggy-back on top of work done for other
|>platforms as much as possible if you want to keep the
|>technology alive.

ok we are a niche; but I disagree with your piggyback conclusion; 
one can just as well argue that one needn't have any GDB on VMS - 
you should use the documented interfaces and the already existing
VMSdebugger; putting a bit of effort into an Ada95 language 
module for VMSdebug would have been sufficient and that would 
have been that;

--bn (Bart Nickerson)
nickerson@pundit.ds.boeing.com
(206) 662-0183