Re: Bison and C++

[Hans Aberg]

At 21:57 -0700 0-12-27, Richard Stallman wrote:
>    When a regular C/C++ source is compiled, the CW, apart from the object .o
>    file, also writes a special .sym file with information for the debugger
>    about which names should be debugged, their format, and so on, sufficient
>    for debugging.
>
>I am not sure what "which names should be debugged" means.
>
>GCC also outputs information about all the variable names and their
>data types, and this too should be "sufficient for debugging".
>This is what -g does.  However, it could be that the other compiler
>includes a particular kind of information which GCC does not generate.
>If so, we might be able to think about adding something additional
>*if you could give a more specific suggestion*.
>
>    First, you must understand that I have not used GDB for a few years.
>When I
>    used it, I recall one had to use special command to write in the source
>    file; there were separate debugging source files one had to write .
>
>I am not sure what you mean, but I don't believe this is true with GDB.

I go this information from Andrew Cunningham <address@hidden>:
>Typically the vendors (e.g Apple with Project Builder and HP-UX with WDB)
>wrap a proprietary GUI around GDB, which after all is just a command line
>tool.
>
>Those GUI is the only thing you can really compare to the CW IDE debugger.
>Given that PB is in early stages of development, I can only compare WDB to
>CW IDE and I would say that both have all the functionality I would ever
>need. I think the CW IDE has been constrained by having to run on MacOS so
>some of the more powerful ( = obscure) features of GDB are missing, just
>because the OS never supported it.

So what I speak about is really this graphics IDE (integrated development
environment), a GUI put on top of the compiler (as GCC) and the debugger
(as GDB). The only think needed is that the compiler and debugger are able
to provide the information needed to create that GUI. So what I am asking
for is something like that HP WDB, which Andrew says has the functionality
he ever would need. Wasn't there an xdb for X-windows?

I made such a compiler plugin for Bison with the CW IDE, and it wasn't very
difficult to get it to display compiler information. But it is limited in
that much of the information I would want it to display evidently depends
on an inhouse formats (sources are not public). So therefore I think it
would important to have a GNU IDE for X-windows where all formats are
public.

  Hans Aberg