Re: Using the SDS SingleStep Debugging Suite for Ada???

[dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

Escheria asks

<<I'd like to be able to use the SDS SingleStep debugging suite for code compiled
with the Rational Ada compiler. The SingleStep debugger is intended only for C,
C++, and Assembly code, however I'm presently able to get it to work for Ada
with limited capabilities. Specifically, I can step, set breakpoints, step
into/over, but I cannot perform data operations (Read, Evaluate/Modify, etc.).
It doesn't seem to have the data necessary to see global and local variables.

Has anyone else tried this? Any ideas on what specific data (and the required
format) I might be able to provide to SingleStep?
>>

I don't know this particular tool, but if it works for C, then presumably
it uses the standard system debugging formats.

An advantage of the GNAT debugging approach is that it is easy to interface with

such tools. GNAT generates output in standard system debugging format, together
with encodings that fully describe Ada structures not directly descriabable in C.
These encodings can be used in two ways

a) an Ada aware debugger like GNAT or SGI Workshop can use these debuggers to
provide full access to all Ada data structures in a transparent manner.

b) a standard C debugger can be used for displaying data that corresponds
to C formats (e.g. simple data, simple records, simple arrays etc). 
Furthermore, since the encodings use standard C interfaces (e.g. they are
encoded type names). Using the full documentation of the encoding (it is in
the file exp_dbug.ads) a user can use these encodings to extract more detailed
informatoin manually.