[TxMt] Re: GDB integration in TextMate

[Hans-Jörg Bibiko]

On 25.03.2009, at 17:06, Mathieu Godart wrote:

> I'm still thinking on how to implement this debugger wrapper.
>
> To do so, I would need to create a thread in which GDB would be
> running. Ok, this is easy, but the tricky part is that I need to keep
> track of this thread (of its STD IOs, in fact) and I need this thread
> not to be killed when the TM command execution is done. And when a new
> command needs to be sent to GDB, I would need to send it to the STDIN
> of the thread and read back its STDOUT.
>
> Does someone have a hint for that? Or a bundle doing that where I
> could have a look?

Hmm, I do not know whether my hint could help because I have no  
exhausted experiences of using gdb.

I wrote the bundle "R Console (Rdaemon)" http://svn.textmate.org/trunk/Bundles/R%20Console%20(Rdaemon).tmbundle 
  which allows to run a Terminal process (here R) inside of a TM doc.  
This is done by spawning that process to an hidden terminal (pseudo- 
terminal). This works because R has a (relatively) fixed prompt '> '.

[in short words how it works]
If the R process was started it prompts '> ' to signalise please enter  
a task. In the TM doc I can type 'sqrt(2)' and press ↩. ↩ is bound  
to a script which sends the task 'sqrt(2)' to a named pipe which is  
linked to the input of the R process. Then this script waits for the  
output of the R process until R returns '> '. After having the prompt  
this script takes the delta of R's output file and inserts it as  
snippet into the current TM doc.

gdb also has a prompt '(gdb) '. OK. But the tricky part with gdb would  
be to get rid of, amongst others, prompted questions like:

The program being debugged has been started already.
Start it from the beginning? (y or n)

Here I do not know a way how to detect from a script that gdb is  
expecting something from the user. Maybe a solution would be to use  
the tm_interactive_input.dylib stuff. In R I got rid of it by  
overwriting e.g. the readline function (i.e. by using DIALOG).

I tested that approach also with 'irb' and basically it works.

But I guess this could become a very stony way.


--Hans