[Bashdb-devel] bashdb.el and bashdb script

[R. B. <ro...@pa...>]

Mel HE recently mentioned having a problem in not being able to run
the debugger from inside GNU Emacs.

In all bashdb all releases, GNU Emacs bashdb.el runs "bash --debugger"
which requires the debugger to be installed in a way that bash can
find it. No matter how I've tried to improve installation, getting
"bash --debugger" to work has always been problematic.

In looking at ways to make things more reliable I've made the a change
to bashdb.el so that it will allow one to run the bashdb script as
well as "bash --debugger". It now adds "--debugger" unless the program
to be run matches "bashdb" at the beginning of the command line (with
a possible pathname before "bashdb").

Also in going over bashdb.el I see that current practices allow
numeric paramenters on "step" and "next" commands and that filenames
on tbreak and break are always filled in. There are probably other
small changes to bashdb.el that should be made to make more full use
of what GNU Emacs gud has to offer.

In thinking about how to get GNU Emacs to work with bashdb, I also
realized that there is GNU long getopt routine called "getopt";
"getopts", which is built in to Bash, handles only short options.
That is used as a fallback when the long-option routine ("getopt") is
not available.

After making the to bashdb to support long options, I now allow
--debugger as a bashdb option which is just ignored. The idea here is
that one should be able to run bashdb --debugger just as one can run
bash --debugger and that may make things more transparent to
front-ends like GNU Emacs which previously always forced the
--debugger option.

I don't have a feel for whether any of these changes warrants a new
release, probably not. But I as always I accept guidance from others
and or comments on the above.