Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!rutgers!mit-eddie!bbn!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!speech1.cs.cmu.edu!phd
From: phd@speech1.cs.cmu.edu (Paul Dietz)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Aztec source level debugger
Keywords: Manx, sdb, debugger
Message-ID: <2669@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: 11 Aug 88 16:06:28 GMT
References: <15112@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>
Sender: netnews@pt.cs.cmu.edu
Distribution: na
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
Lines: 39

In article <15112@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> dieter@cs.ucla.edu (Dieter Rothmeier) writes:
>
>Has anybody bought Aztec's source debugger, and what do they have to say about it?
>
After waiting many (>5) weeks for my LSC upgrade to arrive, I decided to
get the upgrade for my old Aztec package. In great contrast to LSC, it
arrived a mere three days later!

So here's the good news and the bad news: sdb runs well on limited memory
machines, WHEN IT RUNS. It appears to have a much better understanding
of variable types than LSC's debugger, automatically printing out detailed
structures when asked. The user interface isn't as slick as LSC's, but it's
quite reasonable (especially for those used to dbx.)

Unfortunately, sdb is amazingly buggy. In my first hour with it, I must
have crashed my machine at least 10 times! I have even generated
files which crash sdb when it just tries to open it! (This took
all of another hour before I hit it.)

Maybe I'm doing something wrong. But I never have these sorts of problems
with LSC. (Though, trying to run LSC's debugger in less than 2 Meg has
proved challenging at times...)

One other thing that pissed me off: Manx sends out its upgrades on used
floppies which you are supposed to copy and return! One of the disks
I got gave me errors the second time I tried to read it! Pretty shoddy
in my book! Especially considering how much they charge for their
update service!

Is there anyone from Manx who reads this bboard? I'd love to send in
bug reports, but I'm not going to make a long distance phone call at
1200 baud to do it!

Paul H. Dietz                                        ____          ____
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering        / oo \        <_<\\\
Carnegie Mellon University                        /|  \/  |\        \\ \\
--------------------------------------------     | | (  ) | |       | ||\\
"If God had meant for penguins to fly,             -->--<--        / / |\\\  /
he would have given them wings."            _________^__^_________/ / / \\\\-