Re: Using gdb with Borland's free compiler?

[Joel Brobecker <brobecker at gnat dot com>]

> So far the basic problem with just using cygwin's gdb seems to be lack
> of understanding of MS-DOS paths.  It should be doable to fix up gdb to
> understand those better in the cygwin port, if that was the only
> problem.

This part is actually (almost) easy. By simply defining a few macros
that do the conversion between DOS and cygwin formats, we managed to
get a cygwin GDB that talks DOS paths. We never submitted these patches
for approval because we felt they would never be accepted. After all,
when you use a cygwin debugger, chances are you prefer to see cygwin
paths. Maybe we could compromise by using a two-state variable or
a boolean variable. We would have cygwin paths by default, but changing
the setting of this variable would allow you to get DOS paths instead?

I say it's almost easy because we tested these changes against GNAT,
which is a migw compiler. We never stress-tested it against a cygwin
compiler for instance.

The real annoying problem that we have been facing with a cygwin GDB
is its dependence on the cygwin dll. That makes distribution of GDB
binaries more challenging, because now we need to distribute this DLL
too. All is fine when the customer host doesn't use cygwin, but it
becomes potentially problematic when he does and the DLL versions
don't match...

ACT's two cents...
-- 
Joel