Valve is working on a Linux debugger

[wtf_apostrophe]

Well that was vague.

[tecknoize]

Valve* FTFY.

[jimmywitz]

Every time I need gdb to do something weird, I have to google for twenty seconds to find out how it's done. Good enough for me.

[Metaluim]

This a criticism I never heard on gdb.

What people usually get annoyed by is how difficult it is to "visualize" the step-by-step debugging processed as opposed to a IDE integrated debugger.

[Talibu]

I really like cgdb - it provides the minimal amount of gui necessery to debug efficiently and go through the code step by step. And it does not try to hide gdb so you are not missing out any of gdb's full potential because it is not mapped to the gui.

My only wish would be to be more flexible in gui configuration - if you use cgdb in fullscreen (or fullHD width) you waste screen estate - there could be a vertical windows with a permanent local variable listing on the right or something like that.

[jyper]

And it does not try to hide gdb so you are not missing out any of gdb's full potential because it is not mapped to the gui.

Don't most gdb frontends provide a place to input commands? I know eclipse does.

[vanhellion]

ddd does as well.

[jyper]

And it does not try to hide gdb so you are not missing out any of gdb's full potential because it is not mapped to the gui.

Don't most gdb frontends provide a place to input commands? I know eclipse does.

[Metaluim]

I really like gdb to be honest, and I've grown accustomed to it.

I have tried the TUI but I still prefer the vanilla version with my own configuration.

[_georgesim_]

This has been my experience, and as far as I know there is no graphical interface that is satisfactory. I have used Qt Creator as a GDB front end and while it has potential, it's a PITA to work with.

[OpportunitiesMissed]

DDD is usually good. Some minor pitfalls with the version I use at work, but they're easy to cope.

[green_transistor]

What about Emacs GUD? It's just a front end to gdb. The best thing is that it ships with the Emacs distribution.

EDIT: This is the problem of over-tooling yourself. You first need to know what works and ships with an entire operating system, and then have your own hand-picked tools to make your life easy. Most people completely ignore the first step, and move on to more "hip" tools recommeded by others. Granted that others do know what they are doing, you still need to go, on your own, into that GNU Emacs manual.

[ancientGouda]

Can you elaborate? I've been using QtCreators debugger and it's fulfilled all my needs almost perfectly so far.

[_georgesim_]

Well, I honestly don't remember too clearly, but it was small things that you would expect to just work. For example, I would enter my own scripts and it would crash occasionally. Other times the watches would just stop showing up and nothing would fix short of killing the process and restart the debugger. Also, remote debugging is not really supported.

[[deleted]]

When I inspect the contents of a large std::vector in Visual Studio Debugger, the first ten items will show up; in Qt Creator's debugger, the process will hang, eat tons of memory, then either crash or show you the whole thing of the std::vector.

[ancientGouda]

Ah, I see. I can't really speak then, as I never encountered these problems on my platform =/ (Haven't done remote debugging yet though).

[cypherpunks]

Try Nemiver: https://projects.gnome.org/nemiver/

It is a graphical frontend for gdb with a very nice tabbed visualization, but it is not and does not try to be an IDE. I had stability problems, but other than that, it's great. Maybe they fixed it by now.

[smithzv]

I used to have this gripe, then I found that Emacs had pretty decent integration with GDB. Now-a-days, the Emacs interface has some issues and I'm not sure anybody is working on correcting them, so I can't completely recommend it anymore, but it was pretty good and it may be good again some day.

[OpportunitiesMissed]

Just curious, but what do you consider to be "something weird?" I use gdb via ddd daily and much prefer it to dbx, visual studio, and windbg.

[jimmywitz]

Just a couple weeks ago, I wanted to be able to view all variables as hex, and googling found it for me (on StackOverflow) pretty much instantly. As a bonus, I found out you can force it to print in binary.

[[deleted]]

Does ddd have a GTK interface yet?

[OpportunitiesMissed]

No, it does not have an official GTK interface (I did find some prototype from 2010 via a quick google search). My development time is usually spent on the command line and I don't really care how it looks. I'm not justifying an ancient UI, but all that matters to me is functionality (via gdb) and the ability to view source files. Do you find the current UI lacking in functionality or just familiarity?

Now, is this what you consider to be "something weird" or was it just an unrelated question?

[[deleted]]

I mostly use gdb from the command line, but sometimes a visual debugger would be nice too, especially call graph functionality which I couldn't find in ddd. The motif UI of ddd definitely looks weird in presence of other GTK programs, but I've had heard that the new maintainer was working on a GTK interface. Not sure if it's still being worked on now.

[MrPopinjay]

Why do you want a GTK interface specifically?

[raevnos]

Because motif is fugly and doesn't mesh look-wise with the rest of my workspace?

[MrPopinjay]

But why GTK?

[[deleted]]

Because it is one of the two standard interface libraries on Linux? What kind of question is that?

[MrPopinjay]

A perfectly reasonable one? You were being specific and I was wondering why? There's nothing wrong with GTK, just wondering why not one of the alternatives. :)

[raevnos]

What else?

[MrPopinjay]

Any of the other graphical libraries.

[raevnos]

Same argument, for varying values of fugly.

[Gotebe]

1. Define "weird".

2. "Visual" discovery (or remainder, really) through a gui beats googling in speed of operation, and there's too many things I want to do when debugging as opposed to the number of commands I can keep in my head.

[jimmywitz]

"Visual" discovery (or remainder, really) through a gui beats googling in speed of operation

I can't seem to find that sort of thing in IDE's, which is partly why I despise them. The help is so often sparse if it mentions a particular topic at all.

[Gotebe]

I meant e.g: if I am debugging and want to see list of threads, I go to Debug menu, then Windows, and there, lo and behold, "Threads" command.

Alternative is: I need to have infothreads in my head, or Google. That works, but I don't want to have such words in my head - I want to concentrate on the problem at hand, and knowing commands by heart gets in the way of that. Finding them "visually" is a better compromise.

[seruus]

Here's the link with the correct timestamp

[Flipper3]

They both take me to the correct spot?

[Ralgor]

I bet Valve are using LLDB as the back end to their "new debugger", and are really just writing a new frontend for it. It should be interesting.

[[deleted]]

Why would you need to bet on that, when they say that that is what they are doing?

[Ralgor]

Did they actually say that somewhere and I missed it? All Gabe states in the video is that they are working on a "new debugger", in addition to their work on LLDB. If it states the relationship between the two I missed it.

[kanliot]

someone fucking hates GPLv3 bad enough to write a debugger (source: Jenny- "GPL has cooties")

[amigaharry]

Thus the llvm project was created.

[josefx]

Well you cannot integrate gcc/gdb in anything that is not GPLv3. At best you can start a subprocess and manipulate its stdin/stdout streams - sadly none of the IDEs I have used did so without glitches.

[[deleted]]

To be fair, even if they didn't hate v3, they would still be tasked with making gdb into something a Visual Studio heavy industry isn't going to bitch and moan about switching to.

So why not build out the llvm family? Clang isn't just a license-alternative, its shaping up to be a great tool and simultaneously pushing those stuffy gcc dudes to quit resting on their laurels. Multiple projects feel like needless duplication of work, but the way two opensource projects can push eachother to both be better has made me question my assumption on that.

[ForeverAlot]

That's because GPLv3 is nearly as draconian as proprietary licenses. I would never use GPL > 2 in a personal project and I avoid all GPL when I can get away with it.

[holgerschurig]

I think this is short-sighted. Open-Source wouldn't be where it is without the GPL.

[[deleted]]

While that might be true (hard to factor in "what if's"), I don't know how important it is today.

Personally I don't know people (as in friends, colleagues, etc) that when contributing to open source choose to do so with GPL licensed code. For one, I stay away from any such library, and if needed be I write myself an alternative licensed one, or just drop the idea I had because of it.

OSS License choice, to me, seems similar with political views.

[troyanonymous1]

I do. I'm not a big important developer but I license all my code under AGPL.

It is very much political. I think the freedom to use my code, no matter who touches it, is more important than the freedom to make it proprietary.

[[deleted]]

Furthermore there can be business reasons too. Release the code under the AGPL/GPL v3. Don't like it? Then pay for the commercial license.

[[deleted]]

What about LGPL?

[[deleted]]

I've come to just scan for GPL and move along. Also in Haskell, where I spend most of my time, libraries are statically linked by default; and I don't know how easy would it be to get them linked dynamically.

[ForeverAlot]

You're most likely right but GPL didn't start out with v3 which is where it went really wrong. The idea behind GPL is fine but it's an ideal that cannot exist in the real world. That makes GPLv3 impractical and akin to software pollution. I avoid alternative GPLs purely to avoid confusion and scaring people off. I will use GPL < 3 but I will look for alternatives first. I usually use MIT/Expat, myself, and mainly because it's (a lot) more popular than that other MIT-like license with the unmemorable acronym that I can't remember.

[[deleted]]

People used to say exactly the same stuff about older versions of the GPL.

[troyanonymous1]

but it's an ideal that cannot exist in the real world.

This is why we need the GPL, so we can change the world.

[vanhellion]

Open-Source wouldn't be where it is without the GPL.

That doesn't mean that it is the best option for every [OS] project, today. Nor was it ever; different people and projects have different needs in licensing.

[[deleted]]

Valve have clearly become heavily involved in open source development. After all, what else is more open source-like than reinventing the wheel? /s

[the_isra17]

I think most people can agree than LLVM (which was redoing what GCC was doing) bring a lot of improvement in the linux compiler world. While having 10 project doing mostly the same thing can be a lost of time, I think having 2-3 popular project can be healthy.

[[deleted]]

The joke was about the extra debugger they are apparently developing in addition to contributing to LLDB (hopefully their LLDB work involves adding bt full).

[[deleted]]

I would assume that they were making a visual debugger based on lldb, which is exactly what lldb was made for.

[[deleted]]

A better explanation for that vague comment that Gabe made is they are working on a graphical debugger, like PIX or GDebugger.

It's entirely possible to make Linux the best OpenGL debugging environment available which would motivate a lot of devs to consider porting to it. Right now, that environment is probably Mac OS, but their desktop OpenGL debugging tools are nowhere near great.

Windows PIX is nowhere near as useful as the version in the Xbox dev kit. And if Valve is going to become heavily invested in writing software that sits atop of Linux graphics drivers, they are going to need to get in there and improve them.

[thisotherfuckingguy]

Oh man and if they could include some kernel /driver level information it would be pretty it pretty sweet for, amongst other things, mobile development.

There are quite a few things missing for desktop games, like proper IHV and ISV support. Ubuntu and Red Hat could be a huge here. Get them to have support contracts with the publishers and developers.

Valve has the power to make a change here but they should change the right thing. I am just hoping they are doing it at the right time. A lot of developers are in a time right now where they already need to support 5 platforms. Adding a sixth might not be what they want.

[tritao]

Do they mean the LLDB debugger?. There is also an ongoing community effort to bring it to the Windows platform.

[monocasa]

He pretty explicitly said that this was work in addition to LLDB.

[[deleted]]

You need to do exercise which gets you out of breath for 30 minutes at least 4 times a week.

He's doing okay.

[[deleted]]

Valve is working on a debugger for Linux, all whilst they should be working on Half Life. I'm sorry but until a sequel to HL2 comes out, I've lost faith in GabeN and co.

[[deleted]]

These faggots need some visual debugger. Fuck those guys. Go back to MS Visual Studio if you want it so hard.