Upvote!!

http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2afm4x/dconf_2014_day_2_talk_6_debugging_in_d_by_iain/

https://www.facebook.com/dlang.org/posts/882826745064341

https://twitter.com/D_Programming/status/487623887187083264


Andrei

On 07/11/2014 05:48 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Upvote!!
> 
> http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2afm4x/dconf_2014_day_2_talk_6_debugging_in_d_by_iain/
> 
> 
> https://www.facebook.com/dlang.org/posts/882826745064341
> 
> https://twitter.com/D_Programming/status/487623887187083264
> 
> 
> Andrei

Not on HN?

On Friday, 11 July 2014 at 15:48:13 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Upvote!!
>
> http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2afm4x/dconf_2014_day_2_talk_6_debugging_in_d_by_iain/
>
> https://www.facebook.com/dlang.org/posts/882826745064341
>
> https://twitter.com/D_Programming/status/487623887187083264
>
>
> Andrei

Words are not even enough to express how grateful I am to Iain for doing this. Most stuff works with D1 builds too and I have completely switched to git build of gdb at work after trying it for a moment - huge productivity gain!

On 11 July 2014 16:48, Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d-announce <digitalmars-d-announce@puremagic.com> wrote:
> Upvote!!
>
> http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2afm4x/dconf_2014_day_2_talk_6_debugging_in_d_by_iain/
>
> https://www.facebook.com/dlang.org/posts/882826745064341
>
> https://twitter.com/D_Programming/status/487623887187083264
>
>
> Andrei


Thanks for spelling my name right this year. :)

On 7/11/2014 11:15 AM, Iain Buclaw via Digitalmars-d-announce wrote:
> Thanks for spelling my name right this year. :)

Please make an AMA post!

http://youtu.be/n9RNxUQ0Cyk

I finally watched it (I failed to survive the long over-nighters until 10am to watch this one live >_<).

I want to offer congratulation and thanks to Iain for this work!
For me, this is perhaps the single most important work in the D ecosystem
yet this year, and for me, I think the debugging environment remains the
single most significant hurdle to confident and practical adoption of D in
industry.

It brings me to the interesting realisation (which I already knew, I have
just been denying), that for D to proceed on Windows, MSVC will have to
go... and I don't know how to go about this :/
MS's debugger will presumably never support these features, but the de
facto Windows toolchain emit's PDB for use with the MS tools. I wonder if
there are competing debuggers that support PDB which could support
unofficial extensions to PDB which may express D better?

On 12 July 2014 04:15, Iain Buclaw via Digitalmars-d-announce < digitalmars-d-announce@puremagic.com> wrote:

> On 11 July 2014 16:48, Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d-announce <digitalmars-d-announce@puremagic.com> wrote:
> > Upvote!!
> >
> >
> http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2afm4x/dconf_2014_day_2_talk_6_debugging_in_d_by_iain/
> >
> > https://www.facebook.com/dlang.org/posts/882826745064341
> >
> > https://twitter.com/D_Programming/status/487623887187083264
> >
> >
> > Andrei
>
>
> Thanks for spelling my name right this year. :)
>

On 14 July 2014 06:19, Manu via Digitalmars-d-announce <digitalmars-d-announce@puremagic.com> wrote:
> I finally watched it (I failed to survive the long over-nighters until 10am to watch this one live >_<).
>
> I want to offer congratulation and thanks to Iain for this work!
> For me, this is perhaps the single most important work in the D ecosystem
> yet this year, and for me, I think the debugging environment remains the
> single most significant hurdle to confident and practical adoption of D in
> industry.
>

Thanks Manu.  I guess I'll be having trouble finding the next most important work in the D ecosystem next year. ;)


> It brings me to the interesting realisation (which I already knew, I have
> just been denying), that for D to proceed on Windows, MSVC will have to
> go... and I don't know how to go about this :/
> MS's debugger will presumably never support these features, but the de facto
> Windows toolchain emit's PDB for use with the MS tools. I wonder if there
> are competing debuggers that support PDB which could support unofficial
> extensions to PDB which may express D better?
>

Zerobugs was aimed at D users back when it was a commercial product. It has since been released under a boost licensed for a couple years now, but has into gone into obscurity (I think?).

Link: http://zerobugs.codeplex.com
Couple of clones on github too: https://github.com/search?q=zerobugs

Being written against GTK, it's UI should be cross-platform to Windows, so it *could* be a good base project to start from, then build Windows debugging support into it.  Someone else will need to do initial reviewing and triaging of this stuff (we need a new Lieutenant!)

Regards
Iain.

On 14 July 2014 15:58, Iain Buclaw via Digitalmars-d-announce < digitalmars-d-announce@puremagic.com> wrote:

> On 14 July 2014 06:19, Manu via Digitalmars-d-announce <digitalmars-d-announce@puremagic.com> wrote:
> > I finally watched it (I failed to survive the long over-nighters until
> 10am
> > to watch this one live >_<).
> >
> > I want to offer congratulation and thanks to Iain for this work!
> > For me, this is perhaps the single most important work in the D ecosystem
> > yet this year, and for me, I think the debugging environment remains the
> > single most significant hurdle to confident and practical adoption of D
> in
> > industry.
> >
>
> Thanks Manu.  I guess I'll be having trouble finding the next most important work in the D ecosystem next year. ;)
>

I think you've probably earned a break ;)


> It brings me to the interesting realisation (which I already knew, I have
> > just been denying), that for D to proceed on Windows, MSVC will have to
> > go... and I don't know how to go about this :/
> > MS's debugger will presumably never support these features, but the de
> facto
> > Windows toolchain emit's PDB for use with the MS tools. I wonder if there are competing debuggers that support PDB which could support unofficial extensions to PDB which may express D better?
> >
>
> Zerobugs was aimed at D users back when it was a commercial product. It has since been released under a boost licensed for a couple years now, but has into gone into obscurity (I think?).
>
> Link: http://zerobugs.codeplex.com
> Couple of clones on github too: https://github.com/search?q=zerobugs
>
> Being written against GTK, it's UI should be cross-platform to Windows, so it *could* be a good base project to start from, then build Windows debugging support into it.  Someone else will need to do initial reviewing and triaging of this stuff (we need a new Lieutenant!)
>

On the back of your work, what advantage would that debugger have over
established and more refined tools?
What would a 'D debugger' have to offer when the debug backend understands
D internally, and can even handle D expression evaluation?

There are alternative tools available for windows too, but I think the key
for Windows developers remains proper integration into Visual Studio, and
PDB support.
I guess the biggest hurdle there is integrating D concepts info into MS's
proprietary PDB format. Expressing debug info like C really won't get us
the full mile.
Rainer bundles Mago with VisualD. I wonder what that's doing lately...

On 14 July 2014 07:22, Manu via Digitalmars-d-announce <digitalmars-d-announce@puremagic.com> wrote:
> On 14 July 2014 15:58, Iain Buclaw via Digitalmars-d-announce <digitalmars-d-announce@puremagic.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 14 July 2014 06:19, Manu via Digitalmars-d-announce <digitalmars-d-announce@puremagic.com> wrote:
>> > I finally watched it (I failed to survive the long over-nighters until
>> > 10am
>> > to watch this one live >_<).
>> >
>> > I want to offer congratulation and thanks to Iain for this work!
>> > For me, this is perhaps the single most important work in the D
>> > ecosystem
>> > yet this year, and for me, I think the debugging environment remains the
>> > single most significant hurdle to confident and practical adoption of D
>> > in
>> > industry.
>> >
>>
>> Thanks Manu.  I guess I'll be having trouble finding the next most important work in the D ecosystem next year. ;)
>
>
> I think you've probably earned a break ;)
>
>
>> > It brings me to the interesting realisation (which I already knew, I
>> > have
>> > just been denying), that for D to proceed on Windows, MSVC will have to
>> > go... and I don't know how to go about this :/
>> > MS's debugger will presumably never support these features, but the de
>> > facto
>> > Windows toolchain emit's PDB for use with the MS tools. I wonder if
>> > there
>> > are competing debuggers that support PDB which could support unofficial
>> > extensions to PDB which may express D better?
>> >
>>
>> Zerobugs was aimed at D users back when it was a commercial product. It has since been released under a boost licensed for a couple years now, but has into gone into obscurity (I think?).
>>
>> Link: http://zerobugs.codeplex.com
>> Couple of clones on github too: https://github.com/search?q=zerobugs
>>
>> Being written against GTK, it's UI should be cross-platform to Windows, so it *could* be a good base project to start from, then build Windows debugging support into it.  Someone else will need to do initial reviewing and triaging of this stuff (we need a new Lieutenant!)
>
>
> On the back of your work, what advantage would that debugger have over established and more refined tools?

I've never used zerobugs, but it looked interesting a few years back, but didn't think it worth the money (actually, I seldom purchase software) in comparison to FOSS.


> What would a 'D debugger' have to offer when the debug backend understands D internally, and can even handle D expression evaluation?
>

I think the experience is simply more natural to the end user.  You code in D, you debug in D.  I do it all the time for C++ when I'm probing for a problem in gdc.  Copying a line of code and pasting it into the command prompt, checking the result.  It's one of these features that I never noticed until I started doing this work in gdb. *Then* I realised that I would have to implement a ground-up interpreter for D.

Luckily GDB has awesome support for many language concepts, both in functional and procedural languages.  So most of the work was just extending existing opcodes to behave in a D-like manor. ;-)

Iain.