Improving GDB register model compatibility in LLDB

https://www.moritz.systems/blog/improving-gdb-register-model-compatibility-in-lldb/

by fcambus • 5 years ago

49 10 5 years ago

jes• 5 years ago

How well supported is lldb (1) from within GNU Emacs on macOS?

As someone who started in the DOS/Windows world, both GDB and (especially) LLDB feel very awkward to use and those screenshots show a few good examples of why: in DEBUG/WinDbg/cdb the command to show the registers is simply 'r', and more than one register is shown on a line so you don't have to scroll up and down to read them all. No "0x" prefixes adding noise everywhere since the default is hex, nor extraneous '*' needed when setting breakpoints. A disassemble ('u') command that does what you expect instead of complaining (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39016138/how-to-force-gd...). LLDB is even more verbose and perplexing. I could go on and on, but all these little things add up to make debugging with them extremely irritating. There's a classic quote about GDB being written to make you think twice about introducing bugs in your code, and I think whoever said that has a point...

lanza• 5 years ago

Being unfamiliar with a tool doesn't make it awkward.

saurik• 5 years ago

Maybe the better word to have used there is "cumbersome"? The thought process seems to be "I am used to something that was designed for short commands and high information density at a terminal; having this perspective of knowing what is possible, gdb and lldb are both cumbersome... maybe people who haven't really experienced something better wouldn't realize that", which I think is totally fair.

DSMan195276• 5 years ago

Personally, having started with gdb and recently having to use WinDbg a few times, I've had the opposite experience :P I think in the end some of the complaints you've mentioned may be valid, but most of it is overshadowed by simply getting used to using the tool, since they're all reasonably complicated to get a handle on.

userbinator2• 5 years ago

I think WinDbg has a steeper learning curve; but needing to repeatedly and quickly type in the same (long) commands is not something that "getting used to" will ever overcome. All that happens is you get increasingly irritated and ask yourself "why couldn't they make it shorter" every time. Another example is showing the state of all threads:

    GDB: i th
    LLDB: th i
    WinDbg: ~

k4st• 5 years ago

I've always assumed that the `0x` prefix is to make copy & paste easier, i.e. so that you can copy the number, then immediate use it in a a C- or C++-like expression.

Improving GDB register model compatibility in LLDB

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