Re: Debugging SourceNavigator

[Syd Polk <jazzman@bayarea.net>]

Mike Fahlbusch wrote:
> 
> At 01:19 AM 12/13/01 +0000, you wrote:
> 
> Here is my wish list:
> 
> - HTML help files included with binary

They should be there, actually. They should end up in share/doc/html or
some such place.

> - list of array variables in menu Symbols-View-Variables
> - goto line doesn't seem to work (if patch isn't currently included with d/l)
> - iconise all windows command in Window menu
> - Goto sel in top level Search menu instead of its own Search-Goto-Goto
> menu.  This to make the goto command easier to get to.
> - multiple bookmarks (at least 10), with its own bookmarks menu, instead of
> just the one bookamark in the Search-Goto menu.
> - a version of SN with compiled executable tcl/tk files instead of the
> interpreted format for improved execution speed (if not already done).

Unlikely. Tcl/Tk is much faster now than it used to be. Most of the
slowdowns are in questionable coding practices in the tcl code or the
extensions that were written for SN. We did not have time to fix them
all.

> - and last but not least, reduced memory usage if possible

Difficult at best. SN has a lot of info sitting around.
 
> >I'd like to improve on Source Navigator. I've read up on tcl/tk and [incr
> >tcl/tk], but now I'm at a loss on how you debug the running application.

There is no good way to step SN through a debugger. I would investigate
setting the SN_DEBUG variable and using the logging. I have also spent
time actually in gdb with the C code for the Tcl interpreter figuring
out problems.

> >I'm having trouble following the state variables of the megawidgets, and
> >I'd really like to be able to set break points in the tcl/tk code and
> >examine objects.

One thing you can do is launch the console, load the SN part, and then
selectively replace the pieces you need. tk is a dynamic coding
environment, and you should be able to take advantage of that.

> >Any help would be appreciated. My goal is to provide fixes to the source,
> >and add an optional new editor keybindings configuration file (wordstar to
> >start with).

Good luck to you.