RE: [VB4Linux-Dev] Debugging

[Scott B. <js...@go...>]

On Mon, 20 Nov 2000, Abhijit Paithankar wrote:

> > > There should be two states a program can be in, Debug and Release (just
> > > like VC++). While the program is in Debug, it would compile to bytecode
> > > and an interpreter runs this code. This should make debugging facilities
> > > a bit easier to program. When the programmer wants to Release his/her
> > > program to the public, he/she selects 'Make <program name>' from a menu
> > > (as in VB) and the program is natively compiled and debug info in the
> > > source code is ignored (VB ignores Debug.Print statements when it is
> > > Make-ing the program). There is also another Basic project (KBasic)
> > > being developed at the moment, perhaps the bytecode should be compatible
> > > with that?
> 
> there is definitely a point in this...
> if we could have the program to run in debug environment(pre-vb2c) before it
> is released (VB2C), it would help faster development and lighter code at
> design-time....also the parsing VB2C and compiling with gcc would take a lot
> of time everytime at design-time.
> 
> > I was thinking to make a shell, that interprets the code for the
> > debugging... it is the worst idea?
> 
> this is same as a reverse interpreter...
> 
> > Tcl is not Tk in this case (Tcl is the scripting language and Tk is the
> > windowing Tool Kit)  Tcl, Tk and Python are quite portable though, as
> > portable as perl even.
> 
> could we leverage the Tcl/Tk debug environment for our debugging program if
> we code vb2c in Tcl/Tk? any idea how? In that case it could be of help...

Well coding it in a higher level language like Tcl would give you a
speeder turn around in development time as you know (and more people
could support it).  We could write hooks in C (in the support libs we will
need anyway) to help with debugging and could generate the calls for them
on the fly in Tcl from the debugger (It would be easier for "code
injection" with it), so yes it could help.  

There are a couple of other options for debugging.  We could generate a.out
or elf stubs section with the debugging symbols and write and extension for
gdb.  This would take more time tho.  We could also write a VM and have
hooks into it for debugging.

scott