Re: A few comments

Hi Paulo --

File reports with bugs or suggestions.  That makes it easier to keep 
track. Suggestions on email are easily lost. (Some of the recent changes 
are the result of bugs/suggestions that were reported several years ago.)

On 6/29/24 03:29, Paulo Nogueira wrote:
> 
> 
>   Hi Michael,
> 
>   thank you for your e-mail and suggestions. Tried to install
>   version 3.4.0 on an oldish installation (F31) just to get an
>   idea, and after a few quirks DDD seems to be up and running.
>   It'll have to be testedt more thoroughly of course (on some
>   more recent Fedora installation, on another day) but the
>   first impression is that things do have improved.
> 
>   On the graphical side, the Data window can now be freely
>   enlarged but the Console remains "vertically-constrained"
>   (which is probably less important than having the Data
>   window constrained in the same way).
> 
>   On current higher resolution displays the scrolling bars are
>   rather too slim, and the scrolling bit can become tiny if
>   the source file is large. Should these be reported as bugs,
>   or sent in as suggestions for improvement?
>   In case these things are to be done formally then I will have
>   to remember to add my previous suggestion about having more
>   than one Data window. Whereto should they be send them in?
>   (if they haven't been added already) -- or perhaps you are
>   keeping a record of incoming suggestions.
> 
>    Kind regards,
>     Paulo Nogueira
> 
> 
>    PS  Yes, a decade or more of stagnation can contribute a lot
>       to convey the idea of "persistent bugs"
> 
> 
> 
> On Fri, 28 Jun 2024, Michael Eager wrote:
> 
>> Hi Paulo --
>>
>> DDD-3.3.12 was released about 15 years ago and all work on it paused. 
>> Development on DDD restarted about three years ago.
>>
>> The current version of DDD, available on Fedora, is 3.4.0.  There have 
>> been many bug fixes and improvements.  Version 3.4.1 will be released 
>> shortly. More information is available at 
>> https://www.gnu.org/software/ddd/
>>
>> Please install DDD-3.4.0 (or build DDD-3.4.1 from the source 
>> repository) and see if that addresses your issues.  Make sure you have 
>> the latest version of GDB as well.  Some of the issues you mention may 
>> be caused by
>>  GDB, not DDD.
>>
>> There has been no testing of DDD-3.4 with languages other than C and 
>> C++. Please submit bug reports or feature requests related to using 
>> DDD with Fortran.  The bug tracker is here:
>> https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=ddd
>>
>> As the warning mention in your PS says, you should avoid running any 
>> software, particularly debuggers, as root.
>>
>>
>> On 6/28/24 17:24, Paulo Nogueira wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>    Hello,
>>>
>>>    Although I have used DDD quite a number of times, and it must
>>>    be said that almost every feature works, there seem to be, in
>>>    my experience, some rather persistent and nontrivial problems.
>>>    Whether these problems are due wholly to DDD, created by the
>>>    distro (Fedora) I have been using, or to some configuration on
>>>    my computer is unclear. There is always the possibility of
>>>    reporting them as bugs, but I am rather unsure about that
>>>    since this kind of problems should have been reported before.
>>>
>>>    These are the problems I have been experiencing for some time
>>>    with DDD+GFortran (typically compiled with flags -O0 -g, but
>>>    -Og does not seem to be an improvement, at least when I tried
>>>    it in a brief session, hence returned to -O0 -g):
>>>
>>>    1) the positions of the boxes in the Data window may often
>>>    change (and even overlap) after restarting DDD;
>>>
>>>    2) some of the boxes may disappear, or the respective
>>>    titles/headers may change from the name of the variable to
>>>    some kind of characterization of the variable itself;
>>>
>>>    3) the number of such boxes may _double_ after each restart;
>>>
>>>    4) the number of breakpoints may also increase after each
>>>    restart (one may get multiple breakpoints for the same line
>>>    of source code);
>>>
>>>    5) DDD claims not to know about some parameters defined in
>>>    the modules used by some given subroutine -- only when asked
>>>    to display their values, mind;
>>>
>>>    6) DDD can freeze for no apparent reason, and has to be
>>>    launched anew;
>>>
>>>    7) gdb can also become unresponsive, and has to be stopped;
>>>
>>>    8) DDD can save (overwrite) the original init file with
>>>     some extended file that does not work properly;
>>>
>>>    9) the height of the usable area of the Data window seems to
>>>     have an upper bound (in pixels?) but nowhere can I find a
>>>     description of that parameter -- thus, one cannot make
>>>     effective use of the larger displays (the Data window can be
>>>     enlarged, but the non-gridded, grey lower part is unusable).
>>>
>>>    I would very much appreciate your comments on these issues.
>>>    Recently, I have been using version 3.3.12.
>>>
>>>    As a suggestion, I would like to put forward the following
>>>    idea: allowing some small number of sub-programs (functions
>>>    and subroutines, in Fortran) to have their own Data windows.
>>>    If problems (1) and (6) were solved for the current (global)
>>>    Data window, this suggestion would be less relevant. Even
>>>    in that case, however, having "sub-Data-windows" could be
>>>    helpful, so as not to mix variables from different subroutines
>>>    (with the same name, say).
>>>
>>>    Another suggestion: an init parameter to let the boxes in the
>>>    Data window to be "pinned" by default, and "re-pinned" with
>>>    new coordinates if moved by the user.
>>>
>>>    Kind regards,
>>>     Paulo Nogueira
>>>
>>>
>>>     PS  there is a message about "being run by the root user"
>>>       and formatting warning messages, but I suppose there is
>>>       no relation to the above issues
>>>
>>>
>>
>> -- 
>> Michael Eager
>>
>>

-- 
Michael Eager