[cdt-dev] About default debuggers, etc

[Marc-Andre Laperle <malaperle@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm not sure which thread to reply to :p

I strongly feel that the base CDT needs to be easy to use and have 
defaults. The user shouldn't need to read the wiki or the mailing list 
to choose a launcher and start debugging.

About Mac, it's great that CDI is getting patched for 6.0.2 but DSF-GDB 
in 7.0 is one patch away (bug 301720) from being slightly better IMO 
since threading will work better if I can't find a way to patch bug 269838.

Reasons to choose CDI over DSF-GDB on Mac
- CDI works with paths containing spaces (DSF bug 263689)
- Insert breakpoint while running (DSF bug 242943)

Reasons to choose DSF-GDB over CDI on Mac
- Threading works better *now* (301720 has a patch for DSF, 269838 has a 
patch for CDI which breaks 250037)

I think we should wait a bit (a couple of weeks?) before choosing the 
default for 7.0 and see how the two evolve. I'm all for DSF-GDB if it 
will be better maintained but I like how in CDI I can override a single 
command using the factory with the extension 
(org.eclipse.cdt.debug.mi.core.commandFactories). In this sense, I feel 
like DSF-GDB is less extensible.

About EDC, the fact that I can't use it on my PC worries me a bit (bug 
301659). I like the fact that you don't need to install a seperate 
debugger, though. I will continue to test EDC (in a VM, sigh...) and 
report bugs and enhancements. I feel that if EDC becomes the default 
launcher for Windows, this will put CDT in a corner and be harder to 
maintain. By using using MinGW's debugger, CDT benefits from the work of 
existing communities (FSF, MinGW and others using  MinGW's GDB like 
Code::Blocks). I want to improve debugging on Windows but it would be 
great to know which one to contribute to (CDI, DSF-GDB or EDC).

Marc-Andre