Debugging with KDevelop

[Jakob Petsovits]

On Sunday 23 October 2005 10:50, Francesco Montorsi wrote:
> However I have a big problem with KDevelop (3.2.0): the debugger.
> I tried to use it, I read the manual, I googled but I cannot find any
> workaround to make the debugger easier to use: the main function of a
> debugger is to inspect code and let the developer find the bugs.
> Unfortunately the most powerful tool to inspect code, the variable tree
> window, is much more difficult/annoying to use than, for example, MSVC6's
> one.

May I join in with debugger wishes?

1) Appearance: Hide the "watched variables" entry if no variables are watched. 
I have the variable view on the bottom edge of the KDevelop window, and it 
takes ridiculous much space (two parent items, "Expression to watch" needing 
two lines while being wide as can be - obviously this was only designed as 
left-edge view) so there is maybe space for 3 variables where 5 or 6 should 
fit in. Also, could you please auto-expand the local variables item or maybe 
remember its "expanded" state?

2) Behaviour: When stepping and returning from a function, KDevelop 
respectively gdb immediately advance to the next executed statement.
VC++ on the other hand inserts one do-nothing step where it just gets the 
highlight back to the originally called function. This is great, as you can 
for example have a function call like
do( bee(), dooah() );
and you want to step down into dooah(). With the current approach, you have to 
get to the last line of bee() and press the step down key there, otherwise 
you step on to the line after do(). With the VC++ approach, you'd get the 
do() line highlighted again and can select there if you want to step down 
again or step over this line.

Don't know if it's possible to do that with gdb, though.
Also, I currently can't test the debugger because there's a mysterious Qt 
statement saying
"Qt: gdb: -nograb added to command-line options.
 Use the -dograb option to enforce grabbing."
but that still doesn't enable the variable view or such.
I don't know where it's coming from, because it worked before.
Ah well, there's a lot of things that can still be improved in Linux.

...and yeah, I'll file bug reports about that, maybe in a few hours or so.
Gotta go, regards,
  Jakob