[OT] Grumble...

[jacob navia]

Balog Pal a écrit :

Please, PLEASE point me to a well working GUI debugger for ubuntu lucid.

TotalView.

http://www.totalviewtech.com

Very expensive but it is worth the money.

Obviously it is not an open source, free (no money) tool.
You have to buy it but you get what you pay for,
as with gdb.

 

[Alf P. Steinbach /Usenet]

* Alf P. Steinbach /Usenet, on 06.08.2010 16:40:

Cheers, & thanks for double-checking (don't know what's different),

I found out.

Ok, IT'S NOT MICROSOFTS FAULT, this time.

Somehow a zero byte file called 'echo' had sneaked into the current directory, I
think from effect of right-clicking which pastes text that's interpreted as
commands, if one is not careful! This then made made the documented 'echo.'
fail, while all other (undocumented) variations of 'echo' still worked.

Hm, it looked like a duck, quacked like a duck, waddled like a duck, even tasted
like duck ... but it was not a duck after all.

To reproduce,

type nul >echo


Cheers,

- Alf

 

[Balog Pal]

TotalView.

http://www.totalviewtech.com

Very expensive but it is worth the money.

Their web does not show even a clue of price, and I must submit personal
info to just download just a trial ver... Not the way to win my trust and
money...

 

[Balog Pal]

And it's worse:


<example>
C:\Documents and Settings\Alf> echo,


C:\Documents and Settings\Alf> echo,Comma
Comma

....

I'd first look around for virus checkers on your machine that possibly
intercept and reprocess the command. If not that, would look for malware.

Here the behavior is exactly the same except for the last line.

 

[Balog Pal]

I found out.

Ok, IT'S NOT MICROSOFTS FAULT, this time.

Somehow a zero byte file called 'echo' had sneaked into the current
directory, ...

Ah well, appears cmd first looks for a file from the input you type in, and
tries to execute that. ( and echo. match the filename echo ).
If the file is there it us "run" like via ShellExecute, using extension and
stuff.

i.e if you have echo.doc and enter that, it will open word/wordpad...

Internals appear checked only after that.

(I recall DOS command.com used a different logic, command 'goto' did not
execute goto.com ...

 

[James Kanze]

"Öö Tiib" <[email protected]>

I still didn't get the point from the last round: what is
supposed to be so compelling about the unix toolbox on
windoze?

So what do you use? There isn't a reasonable toolbox bundled
with Windows, nor delivered with VS, so you've got to use
something. (A lot of the Windows people here use perl.
Personally, I find that even worse than the Unix toolbox. And
it doesn't work well interactively.)

But if a particular environment has *better* stuff?

The problem isn't better or worse. The problem is that Windows
doesn't have anything, period. Better or worse. So you have to
install something.

 

[Gennaro Prota]

On 06/08/2010 18.06, James Kanze wrote:
[...]

So what do you use? There isn't a reasonable toolbox bundled
with Windows, nor delivered with VS, so you've got to use
something. (A lot of the Windows people here use perl.
Personally, I find that even worse than the Unix toolbox. And
it doesn't work well interactively.)


The problem isn't better or worse. The problem is that Windows
doesn't have anything, period. Better or worse. So you have to
install something.

I think it has Windows Scripting Host (or whatever it's called),
with VBScript, etc. In my case, I just found that if I had to
learn something I'd better learn some standard stuff. (And thus
I really don't know how what it offers might be effective in
real usage.)

 

[Dilip]

BAH, actually it spoils even the fun to be "that horrible": you open the
command window, and can type ? foo_variable along with many other commands,
and even define your own aliases so ? is porbably replaceable to print...
;-)

I will try one last time -- have people ever heard of WinDbg or CDB or
NTSD? Those are powerhouse debuggers on Windows. The integrated
debugger that comes with Visual Studio provides only a subset of
functionality provided by those 3 debuggers (and the latter two are
command line for the truly sadistic souls)

 

[ralph]

On 06/08/2010 18.06, James Kanze wrote:
[...]

So what do you use? There isn't a reasonable toolbox bundled
with Windows, nor delivered with VS, so you've got to use
something. (A lot of the Windows people here use perl.
Personally, I find that even worse than the Unix toolbox. And
it doesn't work well interactively.)


The problem isn't better or worse. The problem is that Windows
doesn't have anything, period. Better or worse. So you have to
install something.

I think it has Windows Scripting Host (or whatever it's called),
with VBScript, etc. In my case, I just found that if I had to
learn something I'd better learn some standard stuff. (And thus
I really don't know how what it offers might be effective in
real usage.)

You might take a look at Windows PowerShell.
Comes with Windows 7/Server 2008, and can be downloaded for Windows
XP, Server 2003, and Vista.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/management/powershell/default.mspx

Not presented as an alternative to obtaining and learning a suite of
"UNIX tools" but is a major improvement over the Scripting Host or
batch files.

-ralph

 

[Dilip]

So what do you use?  There isn't a reasonable toolbox bundled
with Windows, nor delivered with VS, so you've got to use
something.  (A lot of the Windows people here use perl.
Personally, I find that even worse than the Unix toolbox.  And
it doesn't work well interactively.)


The problem isn't better or worse.  The problem is that Windows
doesn't have anything, period.  Better or worse.  So you have to
install something.

James

Did you look? Powershell (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/
technologies/management/powershell/default.mspx) can accomplish quite
a bit of what you are looking for. Its bundled with Windows 7 but can
be downloaded for other OS's (XP SP2, Windows Server 200x etc.)

 

[Sousuke]

So what do you use?  There isn't a reasonable toolbox bundled
with Windows, nor delivered with VS, so you've got to use
something.  (A lot of the Windows people here use perl.
Personally, I find that even worse than the Unix toolbox.  And
it doesn't work well interactively.)

And why would you need such things?

Maybe the reason is that you're unaware of the alternative, better
ways to do things. For example, I've recently seen talks in this group
about makefiles. How about just letting the IDE's project system do
all the build tasks automatically for you?

Alf mentions that some libraries require such tools. Well, I would
simply doubt the quality of such a library.

Etc.

VS is the only development tool I have installed, and Windows's
"Command Prompt" doesn't even appear in the commonly-used apps section
of my Start menu.

 

[Ian Collins]

And why would you need such things?

The most common "things" L use (looking back through my session history)
are searches and filters. I see a lot of loops where I've performed a
search, filtered the result and used the results to perform an
operation. I'm not aware of a windows tool that can do that, is there one?

 

[Ian Collins]

Please, PLEASE point me to a well working GUI debugger for ubuntu lucid.

Sun's dbxtool?

 

[Öö Tiib]

And why would you need such things?

For doing *ALL* the work that is needed to be done automatically. No
manual copying/pasteing, no manual rerunning third party tools, no
manual editing generated files or xml-s. Everything that can be
automated should be automated. You are software developer. So you
never have to do same thing over 100 times.

Maybe the reason is that you're unaware of the alternative, better
ways to do things. For example, I've recently seen talks in this group
about makefiles. How about just letting the IDE's project system do
all the build tasks automatically for you?

Maybe you are unaware of *ALL* the build tasks that need to be done.
Perl is one way how to make it possible.

Lets for example say that you have third party code generator that
generates 5% of the C++ code in project using .foo files and .h files.
Do you know how to add such .foo files to VS 2010 build system in a
way that each time .foo file (or dependant .h file) is changed it does
rerun that code generator for incremental build?

Ok, lets say that above-described code generator generates code mostly
OK, but does not take some peculiarity of microsoft into account (some
posix function was prefixed with underline by MS). Now you obviously
write a little script that both calls that code-generator and
afterprocesses the produced code so underlines are added where
needed.

Can you write such program as batch file? No? So what you do?

Alf mentions that some libraries require such tools. Well, I would
simply doubt the quality of such a library.

Who cares what you doubt? If the institution that ordered the work did
demand that security schemes are handled by using exactly that library
and pays bigger bucks than you have ever held in hand, then we use
that library no doubt.

 

[Balog Pal]

Ok, lets say that above-described code generator generates code mostly
OK, but does not take some peculiarity of microsoft into account (some
posix function was prefixed with underline by MS). Now you obviously
write a little script that both calls that code-generator and
afterprocesses the produced code so underlines are added where
needed.

TRWTF is obviously the usage of a third party generator with not enough
control... For some reason all the generators I ever used for production
did either a good job out of the box (being well-specified translators) or I
wrote them.

Can you write such program as batch file? No? So what you do?

This is a joke question for sure. As a brute force you can even use VS
itself for the job. It certainly has 'replace in files' as a single
invocation.

For the simpler case, a trivial google for
"replace in files" windows download
brings a ton of results.

Whenever I needed something it wasn't a problem to find a solution if it
wasn't present.

Btw what you do on unix? Suppose your postprocess needs to change
foo( <expression> ) ;
to
foo(<expression>, true );

where expression can span several lines?

 

[Balog Pal]

Sun's dbxtool?

Thanx for the tip, didn't check this one yet. Description looks promising.

 

[Öö Tiib]

TRWTF is obviously the usage of a third party generator with not enough
control...  For some reason all the generators I ever used for production
did either a good job out of the box (being well-specified translators) or I
wrote them.

It was just example of everyday, normal, developers work problem to
solve that are usually solved with Perl script in Windows world
(Sousuke missed such example) and none "what the fruit" situations
were present there.

To write a new multi-thousand lines code synthesizer because existing
one generates problems at places is also an option. Lets imagine
meeting with your boss ... nope, we stay firmly in strategy that we
write 20 lines of script that fixes the output of existing
synthesizer.

This is a joke question for sure.  As a brute force you can even use VS
itself for the job.  It certainly has 'replace in files' as a single
invocation.

Really? How you integrate it into build process of VS 2010?

For the simpler case, a trivial google for
"replace in files" windows download
brings a ton of results.

google for some freeware root-kit when there are fitting tools been
around for decades?

Whenever I needed something it wasn't a problem to find a solution if it
wasn't present.

There are always thousands of solutions. The difference is price of
solution. That often makes the up to 30 times performance difference
between developer and developer.

Btw what you do on unix? Suppose your postprocess needs to change
foo( <expression> ) ;
to
foo(<expression>, true );

where expression can span several lines?

How many lines does not really matter. If <expression> contains ");"
then some additional heuristics may be are needed.

 

[James Kanze]

And why would you need such things?

Do be able to do any reasonable development work. To let the
machine do all of the repetitious, boring tasks.

Maybe the reason is that you're unaware of the alternative,
better ways to do things. For example, I've recently seen
talks in this group about makefiles. How about just letting
the IDE's project system do all the build tasks automatically
for you?

Because it doesn't work. (At least the one in Visual Studios is
completely broken with regards to dependency analysis; it does
the dependency analysis *before* the pre-build steps---which of
course modify files which should trigger additional
recompilations.)

Alf mentions that some libraries require such tools. Well, I
would simply doubt the quality of such a library.

How many portable libraries have you written? How do you solve
portability issues otherwise? automake and company are far from
perfect, but they do work, which is more than I can say for most
of the other tools I've seen.

VS is the only development tool I have installed, and
Windows's "Command Prompt" doesn't even appear in the
commonly-used apps section of my Start menu.

And? If you don't have access to any of the tools necessary to
do the job, you don't develop serious software.

Let's be honest about this. If you're doing all the work,
rather than writing simple scripts to do much of it, then you're
wasting a lot of your time. For simple, repetitive tasks, the
machine is a lot better than you are.

 

[James Kanze]

The most common "things" L use (looking back through my
session history) are searches and filters. I see a lot of
loops where I've performed a search, filtered the result and
used the results to perform an operation. I'm not aware of a
windows tool that can do that, is there one?

If you've installed boost, your C++ has regular expressions, so
you can always create a new C++ project, compile it, and run it.
IMHO, not quite as convenient as just typing the command in at
the shell prompt, but, hey, it's cool, you need to use the mouse
to do it, and open some other windows, and who knows what all
else that's "modern".

More generally: I'm currently working in a Windows shop, with a
lot of Windows and Visual Studios experts around me, so I have
the occasion to see how things are done. For somethings, I was
surprised: I've watched one or two of the people editing with
VS, for example, and the cursor and text were flying around just
as they do when I'm editing with vim, without any time being
lost having to reach for the mouse. I don't know how to do this
with the Visual Studios editor---I've got vi in my fingers---but
apparently, it's possible. On the other hand, I'm constantly
getting questions about repeating tasks (like running an in
house pre-processor over a set of files) for which the only
answer I can give is: "if you have CygWin installed...". And
I'm getting the questions because the Windows experts don't know
how to do this with standard Windows tools. (In many cases, the
CygWin solution involves reading and parsing the solution and
project files. It sort of surprises Windows people that you can
actually extract filenames from a project file, and use them as
arguments to a command, at the command line.)

 

[James Kanze]

On Aug 6, 12:53 pm, "Balog Pal" <[email protected]> wrote:

[...]
Maybe the reason is that you're unaware of the alternative,
better ways to do things. For example, I've recently seen
talks in this group about makefiles. How about just letting
the IDE's project system do all the build tasks
automatically for you?

Just for the record, Visual Studios 2005 (the version we use
officially) does NOT handle all of the dependencies correctly.
We've had to impose a rule that in certain cases, you must click
on build twice, because the first build will ignore the
dependencies generated by the pre-build step.

Maybe you are unaware of *ALL* the build tasks that need to be
done. Perl is one way how to make it possible.

Or Python (I suspect). In my case, I learned all this before
there was perl or python, so I use the Bourne shell and the Unix
tool kit. We have imposed perl on all of our development
machines, however, and scripts I export, I have to rewrite in
perl.

Lets for example say that you have third party code generator
that generates 5% of the C++ code in project using .foo files
and .h files. Do you know how to add such .foo files to VS
2010 build system in a way that each time .foo file (or
dependant .h file) is changed it does rerun that code
generator for incremental build?

Ok, lets say that above-described code generator generates
code mostly OK, but does not take some peculiarity of
microsoft into account (some posix function was prefixed with
underline by MS). Now you obviously write a little script that
both calls that code-generator and afterprocesses the produced
code so underlines are added where needed.

Can you write such program as batch file? No? So what you do?

I think that you can use Visual Basic. And there is a command
line interpretor under Windows which you can (and we do) use,
including in actions in the pre-build and post-build steps. The
command line interpretor is pretty weak, but it is sufficient
for invoking an external tool, and passing its output through
sed. (Of course, you don't have sed, or anything like it.)