Re: RFC: Porting DDD to Gtk(mm)

Hey, really looks great - I would really appreciate a GTK GUI as the
motiv based GUI is quite painful from time to time.

Ciao, Fabian

2006/9/2, Peter Wainwright <[email protected]>:
> On Tue, 2006-07-04 at 12:18 +0200, Andrew Gaylard wrote:
> > Hi Peter,
> >
> > On 7/1/06, Peter Wainwright <[email protected]> wrote:
> >         Functionally, DDD is the best debugger I've ever used (at
> >         least, on
> >         a Free Software platform). Over the past 5 years it has become
> >         an
> >         indispensable part of my programming toolkit.
> >
> >         However, visually, it is as UGLY as SIN. Clearly, Motif was
> >         an
> >         obvious choice of toolkit when DDD was first conceived, but
> >         now
> >         it sticks out like a sore thumb on modern Linux systems, with
> >         their anti-aliased fonts and desktop themes.
> >
> > Actually, Motif can look quite beautiful with the proper defaults.
> > Try DDD under CDE and see what I mean.  The trouble with Motif
> > is that it makes the easy things hard and the hard things bloody
> > impossible -- so much so that one has to go behind it's back and
> > mess with raw X events and X windows.  For instance, try capturing
> > the ESC keypress when a button has the focus.  And yes, I fully
> > agree about anti-aliased fonts.
> >
> > Anyway, for all these reasons, Motif isn't the future, that's for
> > sure.
> >
> >
> >         So, in response
> >         to my itch (also popular demand) I've embarked on the process
> >         of
> >         porting DDD to Gtk - or more precisely the C++ binding
> >         thereof,
> >         Gtkmm. I notice this question comes up from time to time on
> >         the
> >         mailing list, but it is a daunting prospect and no-one seems
> >         to
> >         have grasped the nettle yet. Since I have some experience of
> >         both
> >         Motif and Gtk, and have ported a small application between
> >         these in
> >         the past, I felt I should try to start a project to do just
> >         that.
> >
> > Excellent!
> >
> >
> >         This work is at a very preliminary stage - I haven't even got
> >         the
> >         first version to compile yet. However, some code will be
> >         available
> >         soon, I promise ;-)
> >
> > OK.
> >
> >
> >         I'm not underestimating the difficulty of this task. At the
> >         moment,
> >         I am just running through the code, porting the obvious stuff
> >         and
> >         deferring the tricky (and less important) stuff until I have a
> >         working
> >         demo. The final code should have a compile-time switch which
> >         will
> >         revert to a full-featured Motif version. The approach I am
> >         taking is
> >         this:
> >         (1) Use a compile-time preprocessor macro, IF_MOTIF.
> >         (2) Comment out all the Motif, Xt Intrinsics and standard X11
> >             include directives thus:
> >            #ifdef IF_MOTIF
> >            #include <Xm/...>
> >            ...
> >            #endif // IF_MOTIF
> >         (3) Try to compile - of course the code breaks.
> >         (4) Step through the errors: these are all the Xm, Xt and
> >         standard
> >             X calls; fix each of these in turn (a long job, still
> >         ongoing).
> >         (5) All files which included <X11/*>, <Xm/*> now also include
> >         asince t
> >             "gtk_wrapper.h". This is an abstraction layer. This
> >         contains
> >             a big preprocessor conditional
> >            #ifdef IF_MOTIF
> >            ...
> >            #else
> >            ...
> >            #endif // IF_MOTIF
> >         (6) In some cases the equivalences are easily dealt with in
> >         the short
> >             term by typedefs or macros, where there is a 1-1
> >         correspondence
> >             between the concepts in Motif and Gtkmm:
> >             typedef Gtk::Widget *Widget;
> >             #define XtPopdown(w) (w)->hide()
> >         (7) In other cases I have put #ifdef...#else...#endif
> >         conditionals. When
> >             we have created a prototype we can go back and look though
> >         these to
> >             identify the requirements for a portability layer. I hope
> >         that in
> >             future this could accommodate QT as well (although I have
> >         no
> >             experience of QT programming). There are a a very limited
> >         number
> >             of Motif idioms in DDD, which gives me some hope that the
> >         task
> >             is not impossible. The main difference is the XtCallback
> >         mechanism
> >             versus the signal-slot stuff, but there seems to be a
> >         natural
> >             mapping for most of this.
> >             My own feeling is that the most elegant solution would be
> >         to
> >             wrap the required parts of Motif (not all of it) in an
> >             object-oriented layer like Gtkmm, with
> >         constructors/destructors
> >             and a signal-slot paradigm such as provided by libsigc++.
> >             The result would look a lot more like pure Gtkmm but
> >         would
> >             still provide Motif as an alternative backend (Xmmm,
> >         perhaps?).
> >
> >         I'm still looking at this and hope to post some sample code in
> >         the
> >         next few months.
> >
> > I guess the #define method is the simplest approach.  However,
> > you'll lose the OO-nature of gtkmm in the process.  As you've
> > probably seen by now, much of the DDD source is littered with
> > Motif function calls.
> >
> > I agree that the neatest way to do this would be to make a GUI
> > layer, separating the debugging logic from the display logic.
> > Then it would be a lot easier to swap from one widget set to
> > another.  This may be more work than you want, though!
> >
> > Keep us posted, and if you'd like CVS access, just ask.
> > Andrew.
> >
>
> I now have a prototype. I can load an executable and grab
> a screenshot:
>
> http://www.ceiriog.eclipse.co.uk/ddd-gtk.jpg
>
> The patch http://www.ceiriog.eclipse.co.uk/ddd-3.3.11-gtk.patch
> is presently littered with IF_MOTIF conditionals. These can
> be eliminated progressively if we introduce a proper abstraction
> layer for the toolkit.
> I think I have slightly broken the Motif version, but I should be
> able to restore it easily so that it will compile the Motif or GTK
> version according to the "--with-gtk" configure option.
>
> I'd be happy to create a new CVS branch for this if you are
> willing.
>
> Peter
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ddd mailing list
> [email protected]
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/ddd
>
>
>
>