various gdba bugs and requests

[Tom Tromey]

Please write in English if possible, because the Emacs maintainers
usually do not have translators to read other languages for them.

Your bug report will be posted to the address@hidden mailing list.

Please describe exactly what actions triggered the bug
and the precise symptoms of the bug:

I finally started using gdba with gdb-many-windows set to 't'.  Nice
stuff!  If I maximize the frame and enable the toolbar, it is as nice
as any GUI debugger I've used.

I have run across a few minor problems though.

I'm using x86 Fedora Core 6 plus the system gdb, which says:

    opsy. gdb --version
    GNU gdb Red Hat Linux (6.5-15.fc6rh)

1. I made a new frame for gdba and maximized it.  Then I moved it to
another virtual desktop.  gdb ran for a long time so I switched back
to my primary desktop and worked on other things.  When gdb finally
hit a breakpoint, the gud buffer appeared on one of my existing
frames.

In this situation I'd prefer that this not happen -- I want gud to
remain confined to the frame on the other desktop.  Perhaps there
could be a variable of some kind to control the pop-up behavior, plus
maybe a hook that is run when gdb changes state (I didn't look to see
if there is one yet, so I'm sorry if this already happens).


2. If I type too quickly I often see "Unexpected `starting' annotation".
This happens most often when I type "n" and then hit enter a number of
times to next through a function.


3. At one point I restarted the inferior process using "run".  gud
seemed to lose track of the inferior completely -- the stack window no
longer showed the stack; the breakpoints and locals windows did not
update.

Exiting gud and restarting the debug session fixed this.  But, that is
pretty drastic.


4. I'd like a way to arrange the windows differently.  The standard
setup isn't to my taste.


5. I found the green stop-sign icon somewhat confusing.


6. I often find that gdb acts strangely or sometimes crashes; one
thing that is nice about the Emacs approach to a gdb UI is that a lot
of state is kept in the gud buffer, so I can kill gdb, restart, search
backward and not lose too much.  Still, it would be nice if gud
offered a way to save the state of a debug session -- say, the cwd,
the command line, and the breakpoints (plus their conditions,
commands, etc).


7. Right now if I set a breakpoint (using C-x SPC), then edit text
earlier in that file, recompile, and re-run the inferior, the
breakpoint will be in the "wrong" location.  This happens because the
breakpoint is set by file/line.

It would be cool if gud put a marker on a breakpoint's location and
then used the marker location to move the breakpoint.  Perhaps this
could be done by moving it when gdb notices that the inferior
executable has changed.


8. I notice strange frame-raising behavior sometimes.  If I set a
command on a breakpoint that ends with "cont" and then the inferior
runs for a long time, the emacs frame showing the gud buffer will
constantly raise itself.  Also the gdb status on the mode line will
flicker rapidly between running and stopped.


Sorry for the length of this.  I've been debugging rather heavily this
week and batched all the oddities into one big note :-)



If Emacs crashed, and you have the Emacs process in the gdb debugger,
please include the output from the following gdb commands:
    `bt full' and `xbacktrace'.
If you would like to further debug the crash, please read the file
/usr/share/emacs/22.0.990/etc/DEBUG for instructions.


In GNU Emacs 22.0.990.1 (i386-koji-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.10.11)
 of 2007-05-23 on xenbuilder3.fedora.phx.redhat.com
Windowing system distributor `The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.70101000
configured using `configure  '--build=i386-koji-linux-gnu' 
'--host=i386-koji-linux-gnu' '--target=i386-redhat-linux-gnu' 
'--program-prefix=' '--prefix=/usr' '--exec-prefix=/usr' '--bindir=/usr/bin' 
'--sbindir=/usr/sbin' '--sysconfdir=/etc' '--datadir=/usr/share' 
'--includedir=/usr/include' '--libdir=/usr/lib' '--libexecdir=/usr/libexec' 
'--localstatedir=/var' '--sharedstatedir=/usr/com' '--mandir=/usr/share/man' 
'--infodir=/usr/share/info' '--with-pop' '--with-sound' '--with-gtk' 
'build_alias=i386-koji-linux-gnu' 'host_alias=i386-koji-linux-gnu' 
'target_alias=i386-redhat-linux-gnu' 'CFLAGS=-DMAIL_USE_LOCKF 
-DSYSTEM_PURESIZE_EXTRA=16777216 -O2 -g -pipe -Wall -Wp,-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 
-fexceptions --param=ssp-buffer-size=4 -m32 -march=i386 -mtune=generic 
-fasynchronous-unwind-tables''

Important settings:
  value of $LC_ALL: nil
  value of $LC_COLLATE: nil
  value of $LC_CTYPE: nil
  value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil
  value of $LC_MONETARY: nil
  value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil
  value of $LC_TIME: nil
  value of $LANG: en_US.UTF-8
  locale-coding-system: utf-8
  default-enable-multibyte-characters: t

Major mode: Group

Minor modes in effect:
  gnus-agent-mode: t
  compilation-in-progress: (gid gid gid grep gid gid grep gid grep gid grep gid 
grep grep grep grep gid gid gid gid gid grep gid gid gid gid gid compilation 
compilation compilation grep grep grep grep gid grep compilation compilation 
compilation compilation compilation compilation compilation compilation gid 
grep grep grep grep grep grep gid gid grep compilation grep compilation 
compilation grep compilation grep gid grep gid gid grep grep gid)
  erc-menu-mode: t
  erc-autojoin-mode: t
  erc-ring-mode: t
  erc-pcomplete-mode: t
  erc-track-mode: t
  erc-track-minor-mode: t
  erc-match-mode: t
  erc-button-mode: t
  erc-fill-mode: t
  erc-stamp-mode: t
  erc-netsplit-mode: t
  erc-spelling-mode: t
  erc-truncate-mode: t
  gnus-undo-mode: t
  erc-status-mode: t
  erc-services-mode: t
  erc-irccontrols-mode: t
  erc-noncommands-mode: t
  erc-readonly-mode: t
  tooltip-mode: t
  mouse-wheel-mode: t
  file-name-shadow-mode: t
  global-font-lock-mode: t
  font-lock-mode: t
  unify-8859-on-encoding-mode: t
  utf-translate-cjk-mode: t
  auto-compression-mode: t
  line-number-mode: t
  transient-mark-mode: t

Recent input:
e e " SPC s t r u c t u r e e <backspace> ; SPC i n 
SPC t a h t c <backspace> <M-backspace> t h a t SPC 
c a e , SPC n o C-u C-b C-b s C-e p e , SPC t h a t 
' s SPC w h a t SPC w e ' v e SPC g o t . M-q C-f C-f 
C-n C-f M-v C-l C-n M-e M-k M-q SPC SPC F o r SPC C 
+ + SPC t h e SPC s i a t u <M-backspace> s i t u a 
t i o n n SPC i s SPC C-u C-b C-b C-d C-e g o n <backspace> 
i n g SPC t o SPC b e SPC e v e n SPC m o r e SPC c 
o p m l l i c a C-u C-g <M-backspace> c m o p l i c 
<backspace> <M-backspace> c o m p l i c a t e d . C-x 
b <return> <backspace> C-x 4 b <return> C-x 1 C-a M-q 
M-} M-} M-v C-c C-c q SPC q p M-g p SPC M-> C-p C-p 
SPC SPC SPC n q C-l M-g M-g p p SPC C-u C-n n n n n 
n = M-v c SPC p n C-p C-u = 1 <backspace> 3 0 0 <return> 
C-s n i c k C-s C-a q C-p C-u = 1 0 0 0 <return> M-< 
C-s n i c k C-a SPC = C-s C-s C-s C-s C-s C-a q l SPC 
d SPC SPC q l s SPC SPC M-> C-p C-p d d q s M-x r e 
p o r t - e m <tab> b <tab> <return>

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Tom