Re: Quick Question about GPS IDE

["Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>]

On Mon, 29 Dec 2014 08:48:15 +0100, J-P. Rosen wrote:

> Le 28/12/2014 23:45, Dmitry A. Kazakov a écrit :
>> As I said, in a real size project you either will not be able to set the
>> breakpoint after you initialize or else it will not stop at the breakpoint.
>> Actually it will not stop anywhere. I don't know if that depends on the
>> size or on libraries used, maybe on both. Even when you could set a
>> breakpoint you not guaranteed to be able to debug the program. It can go
>> mad at any time, while stepping through etc. The fact is, it is totally
>> unusable in practice.
> 
> I think AdaControl qualifies as a "real size project", and I never
> experienced what you describe.

I said that I don't know why this happens. It is possible that in a plain
program of any size that uses nothing but Ada.Text_IO, it would not happen.
Maybe libraries is the reason, maybe the number of subcomponents and
sub-projects, I have no idea.

> So please tell that YOU experienced
> problems, 

It would be strange to suggest otherwise.

> but don't make general statements that gdb is unusable.

Since in *none* of the projects I maintain gdb does not work, I feel
obliged to warn others.

> Moreover, GPS is just a front-end to gdb, and gdb is presumably the most
> used debugger in the world (at least in the world of free software). If
> it were that bad, it would have been fixed...

Just like C, just like C...

gdb never ever worked in GPS. Even if it did, it is poorly integrated into
GPS. Breakpoints are not saved, "Initialize" should never existed. The
session shall never stop at the first program "instruction". The GPS
windows layout *shall not* change when a session starts or ends. There no
re-run button, no decent values watch tabs persistent between sessions, no
usable conditional breakpoints. It shall understand pdb files, without that
it is pretty much useless, again in real projects.

I don't blame AdaCore for this and never reported gdb issues to them,
because, clearly to me, it would be wasting scarce resources AdaCore has on
a thing which I don't believe were fixable.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de