Showing posts with label debugger. Show all posts
Showing posts with label debugger. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

ProjectCenter debugger changes (now even on windows!)

Behold ProjectCenter running on Windows with the debugger module open and GDB running in it.
 

GNUstep's ProjectCenter debugger module - something which was initiated by Greg and has always been quite experimental and unfinished - was based on running GDB via a virtual terminal by using openpty(). Sadly openpty() is not very portable and also.
I restructuured the debugger module to have a separation between the view handling the visualization and a delegate which handles the actual execution of the debugger and sending commands and receiving output.
Instead of using a terminal I implemented a std-in and std-out mechanism.
While some interactive editing properties get lost when using GDB this way (e.g. ability to answer y/n questions) it is the right way to the a machine interface. For example a stacktrace doesn't get paged but printed out fully. Different data sources now get nicely colored too!

And last but not least, it runs on Windows.