RE: [cdt-debug-dev] CDT should allow launching only GDB and not t he app

[Thomas Fletcher <ThomasF@xxxxxxx>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Øyvind Harboe [mailto:oyvind.harboe@xxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2003 12:49 PM
> To: cdt-debug-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [cdt-debug-dev] CDT should allow launching only GDB 
> and not the
> application
> 
> 
> There are certain things that Insight(part of the establishment) does
> better than CDT(the newcomer). Competition is good.
> 
> > Perhaps I'm mis-understanding what you want to do.  It almost
> > sounds like you want to start up _just_ the debugger ... which
> > is all Insigh(t) is compared the the IDE which is what Eclipse=20
> > is.
> 
> What Insight gets right is that it does not try to control 
> the launching
> of the app. It lets the programmer be in control of this procedure.

I guess that this is really the thing I wonder about.  Launching 
and the debugger are already seperate ... but tied ... components
within the Eclipse infrastructure.  
 
> It should be possible to launch *GDB only* from within CDT, where CDT
> makes no assumptions about the state of GDB, and lets me 
> connect to the target, load symbols, etc. via the command line console. 

What would this mean within the context of Eclipse as an IDE?  The
debug framework is just a set of views driven by the state changes
of a particular process which was launched.
 
> I need to use a messy&buggy&timing sensitive procedure which involves
> "monitor xxx" commands that GDB does not and should not understand.
> 
> This is for embedded work.

It seems to me that really what you want/need is a custom launcher
which will allow you to do the things you need (sure, via gdb) and 
then once you say "go" it goes off and is a process that the 
debugger components then know how to deal with.  

The way this is handled for QNX type of debug sessions (which need
to do custom target set up etc) is that there is a specific launcher
configuration that allows the user to do whatever set-up they need
(within the realm of QNX specific components) and then it finishes
up the work of telling gdb to attach to the final process.  

I don't see why you wouldn't be able to do the same thing.  I'm 
not trying to be obtuse here, but you can't compare Insight to 
Eclipse (newcomer or not) directly since they have different 
ways of doing things about them.  In Eclipse the kind of early
initialization work you are talking about would be something done
as part of a custom launching activity ... regardless of if it
uses gdb to initiate the launch or not.

I'll see if I can dig up some code to help.

Thomas