development tools

[Nathan Hawkins]

On Wed, 24 Apr 1996, Francois-Rene Rideau wrote:

> > Of these, the DJGPP environment is the only one which has a functioning
> > assembly level 32-bit debugger, so I'm going to be switching to that. (I
> > just got it.)
> I'm eager to see that running...

Well, I found it in a package called gnudebug.zip in the DJGPP 2.0 
archive. It looks like a freeware clone of Turbo Debug, which I've always 
really liked, due to its friendly and helpful "code pane." I once used an 
ancient debugger (on Z80) that only had hex displays, so I _really_ like 
having a good disassembly...  Not to mention full-screen, and constantly 
updated register displays. The FSDB.EXE program has all of these, and 
it's free. Unfortunately, I don't feel like porting it to Linux.

> > I'm currently trying to figure out how the port as86/ld86 over to DJGPP. 
> > Problem is, DJGPP uses COFF, which I know nothing about, while as86 uses
> > a.out and something unknown. So I'm going to have recompile binutils, so
> > I can use objcopy to convert Linux a.out into COFF.
> DJGPP comes with binutils. Is that version too old ?

No, I just have to recompile as86/ld86 for DJGPP, and then probably 
recompile the binutils package for it, because of the COFF thingy. Unless 
as86 supports COFF? AFAIK, DJGPP doesn't do a.out anymore, only COFF, and 
as86 doesn't do it. So I'll need to recompile the binutils package that 
comes with DJGPP to support both Linux a.out and COFF, to allow me to 
like .o's written by as86 with gcc output...

> > This probably won't
> > get done for a while... :-(  But once done, I'll move the work over to
> > as86, instead of gas.
> Once it's done, you should send the patches to the regular binutils
> maintainers, and warn the new Assembly HOWTO maintainer (me).

I _should_ just have to hack the target description and recompile. All 
that's really needed is to make sure there's a Linux a.out vector in the 
go32 target description. 

> > I'm still looking for a 32-bit debugger for Linux capable of doing 
> > assembly level without extreme brain-damage, like gdb. (Preferably a 
> > full-screen debugger, like Turbo Debug.) If anyone has any suggestions, 
> > or knows of a package that I haven't found, please let me know.
> I've been disappointed by all debugger packages I've found,
> and whenever I can, I arrange so I don't need a debugger,
> or I embed debugging code into the program to be debugged
> (which sadly means recompilation at each test).

Not very pretty for getting started on a project. :-( I get very tired of 
the cycle of recompile, execute and reboot.

As for debuggers, I like Turbo Debug, but my version doesn't do 32-bit 
code, and neither does A86. And I really don't want to be using one of 
those nasty assemblers by Micro$oft or Borland. :( Not to mention a 
brain-damaged binary format.

If/when I get time to actually use this stuff again and get it all 
working right, I'll put together a list of packages I'm using, along with 
URLs. I'll also include any patches I make, so the rest of you can 
duplicate the setup if you wish.

*utsl*