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- Path: sparky!uunet!noc.near.net!news.bbn.com!news.bbn.com!news
- From: aking@BBN.COM (Allen King)
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.programmer
- Subject: A few small changes for 3.1
- Date: 19 Dec 1992 19:01:08 GMT
- Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge MA
- Lines: 64
- Message-ID: <lj6sbkINNhg9@news.bbn.com>
- Reply-To: aking@BBN.COM (Allen King)
- NNTP-Posting-Host: bbn.com
-
- Here are a few little nuisances I've found with 3.0 which maybe
- NeXT could clean up before 3.1 comes out. Perhaps others have found
- them too, perhaps not. Other's may want to add to the list too. I'd
- hate to have a new release come out without them, just because NeXT
- didn't think of them and nobody thought to mention them, especially if
- they are easy ;-).
-
-
- EDIT
- 1. when editing a .m file, a quick "edit associated .h file"
- button. Ditto for .h to .m.
- 2. A menue which would display only .m and .c files. Perhaps
- that's a file selection mask on the file:open_folder... . Something
- like "*.m *.c PB.*".
- 3. A way to get a TAGS search. Currently I only seem to be able to
- use TAG files for Source commands, and it would eliminate alot of
- grepping
- 4. A way the find pannel could do complete-word searches. It is
- important to find all of the instances of short variables (e.g. "k").
- Think C has it as a mode which works well -- it might also be a
- "variable-break" special character.
-
-
- GDB
- 1. Everything possible to speed up the compile/load/debug/go cycle:
-
- 1a. The idea of staying in gdb between compiles is great, with
- automatic detection an reload of symbols on recompile. However, there
- seems to be a bug, and the symbols are loaded incorrectly when it
- tries to do this are. I could spend some time and give you an example
- if you cannot recreate it yourself.
-
- 1b. When reloading symbols, much time is spent loading shared
- library symbols, such as libMedia_s.A.shlib, libNeXT_s.C.shlib, and
- libsys_s.B.shlib. Why can't those symbols be loaded once and never
- reloaded? E.g. load them first, and save the high-water marks, or an
- image of them. If only portions are loaded, it still deserves some
- work, because I'd bet that the portion that gets loaded very
- infrequently changes.
-
- 2. The browser should not reposition sliders during step, because
- often one wants to monitor a variable at the bottom, and the sliders
- keep bumping back to the top.
- 3. Have gdb print out what variables were changed by the statement
- just executed, and their new values. I spend a lot of time tracing
- this information down when I step through a program. I'm not sure how
- the symbol table could be made to contain this, but it'd be nice to
- have.
- 4. A compiler switch to make all variables visible in gdb (by
- forcing them out of registers). (Maybe this already exists.)
-
- WORKSPACE
- 1. When duplicating a file in the workspace, let the name be edited
- while the copy is in progress. That's a very frequent sequence, and
- things would go much faster that way.
-
- PB
- 1. Why not recognize the suffix .project, and not require the full
- name PB.project? It seems more standardized, and would allow me to put
- a bunch of projects onto my shelf and tell them apart. This way, they
- all look alike!
- 2. The debug button should be smarter about not spawning too many
- Terminal's. If there's one there, use it and tell it that things have
- been recompiled.
-