GDB Variables/Watches

[Andre Poenitz]

On Sat, Jun 13, 2009 at 09:41:26AM +0200, Niko Sams wrote:
> Hi,

Hi Niko.
 
> The main missing part of our current gdb debugger is a properly
> working variable view.
> 
> I took the qt-creators implementation of Watches (how they call them)
> and started porting it to kdevelop.
> Including splitting up debugger independent stuff into the platform.
> It compiles and locals are shown correctly during debugging. But still
> a long way to go.
> 
> Before I put more time into this I want to ask what you think about it.

You are certainly well within your rights that the LGPL gives you here
and I probably should feel honoured to a certain degree - even if I have
rather opposite feelings right now. Should not matter for you, though...

Anyway, a word of caution: The variable view and especially the update
mechanism is one of the most unreliable and also slowest parts of
Qt Creator's gdb frontend.

If you are really interested in... erm... "using" that code it would
in my opinion make much more sense to join forces and make it work
properly together and use the result in both KDevelop and Qt Creator.

I could imagine that e.g. Volodya could help us to get a in a few tweaks
to gdb's MI output to reduce the number of roundtrips needed through
gdb, which is currently the main source of slowness. And, of course,
a properly implemented lazy population of the view would help, too...

Andre'