Hi! I've been using the SC7.5 debugger for many years and its been good to me. After switching to DM a short while back (8.38, also tried 8.39) I've had crashses in the debugger. I thought my findings might be of interest and could provide clues to other problems people are having with the debugger.

While tracing down a pointer bug in some Win32 code, I consistently was getting IDDE crashes; upon an exception in my code, the debugger opens the source code window and the function call stack appears OK but when I try click down the stack, instead of opening the relevant module, the IDDE crashes with an exception.

I tried exactly the same configuration under SC 7.5 and discovered the following pattern (by alternating between the 2 environments, they are installed in separate directories):

Build EXE under DM then use DM IDDE to debug - IDDE crash
Build under SC then use SC IDDE to debug - debugger works fine
Build under DM then use SC IDDE to debug - IDDE crash
Build under SC then use DM IDDE debug    - debugger works fine

So it seems something in the code the DM compiler/linker generates doesn't agree with the IDDE debugger. Is there some extra option I need to enable to make the DM compiler generate debug code the IDDE will be happy with?

I suspect some change in the debugging structures causes the debugger to corrupt itself. Its happening with a multi-megabyte project (7MB debug EXE) so its not possible to post any small sample code.

It happens both under XP and Win2K.

I'll provide more details if it will be useful to anyone in fixing this.

regards,
Riccardo

Riccardo Macri
Developer of Planimate(TM)

Walter is pretty responsive to bug reports, esp. critical ones like this. But he needs a working code snippet, as small as possible, that demonstrates the bug.

What you need to do is provide a small (yes, SMALL!) program... :-)


-scooter

Riccardo Macri wrote:

> Hi! I've been using the SC7.5 debugger for many years and its been good to me. After switching to DM a short while back (8.38, also tried 8.39) I've had crashses in the debugger. I thought my findings might be of interest and could provide clues to other problems people are having with the debugger.
> 
> While tracing down a pointer bug in some Win32 code, I consistently was getting IDDE crashes; upon an exception in my code, the debugger opens the source code window and the function call stack appears OK but when I try click down the stack, instead of opening the relevant module, the IDDE crashes with an exception.
> 
> I tried exactly the same configuration under SC 7.5 and discovered the following pattern (by alternating between the 2 environments, they are installed in separate directories):
> 
> Build EXE under DM then use DM IDDE to debug - IDDE crash
> Build under SC then use SC IDDE to debug - debugger works fine
> Build under DM then use SC IDDE to debug - IDDE crash
> Build under SC then use DM IDDE debug    - debugger works fine
> 
> So it seems something in the code the DM compiler/linker generates doesn't agree with the IDDE debugger. Is there some extra option I need to enable to make the DM compiler generate debug code the IDDE will be happy with?
> 
> I suspect some change in the debugging structures causes the debugger to corrupt itself. Its happening with a multi-megabyte project (7MB debug EXE) so its not possible to post any small sample code.
> 
> It happens both under XP and Win2K.
> 
> I'll provide more details if it will be useful to anyone in fixing this.
> 
> regards,
> Riccardo
> 
> Riccardo Macri
> Developer of Planimate(TM)

One thing you can do is try to mix and match .obj files from the sc build vs the dmc build. This can quickly reduce down to which .obj file is the culprit.

"Riccardo Macri" <Riccardo_member@pathlink.com> wrote in message news:c0thsv$14et$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> Hi! I've been using the SC7.5 debugger for many years and its been good to
me.
> After switching to DM a short while back (8.38, also tried 8.39) I've had crashses in the debugger. I thought my findings might be of interest and
could
> provide clues to other problems people are having with the debugger.
>
> While tracing down a pointer bug in some Win32 code, I consistently was
getting
> IDDE crashes; upon an exception in my code, the debugger opens the source
code
> window and the function call stack appears OK but when I try click down
the
> stack, instead of opening the relevant module, the IDDE crashes with an exception.
>
> I tried exactly the same configuration under SC 7.5 and discovered the
following
> pattern (by alternating between the 2 environments, they are installed in
> separate directories):
>
> Build EXE under DM then use DM IDDE to debug - IDDE crash
> Build under SC then use SC IDDE to debug - debugger works fine
> Build under DM then use SC IDDE to debug - IDDE crash
> Build under SC then use DM IDDE debug    - debugger works fine
>
> So it seems something in the code the DM compiler/linker generates doesn't
agree
> with the IDDE debugger. Is there some extra option I need to enable to
make the
> DM compiler generate debug code the IDDE will be happy with?
>
> I suspect some change in the debugging structures causes the debugger to
corrupt
> itself. Its happening with a multi-megabyte project (7MB debug EXE) so its
not
> possible to post any small sample code.
>
> It happens both under XP and Win2K.
>
> I'll provide more details if it will be useful to anyone in fixing this.
>
> regards,
> Riccardo
>
> Riccardo Macri
> Developer of Planimate(TM)