[fpc-devel] bounty: FPC based debugger

[dmitry boyarintsev]

On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 10:03 PM, Paul Ishenin <ip at kmiac.ru> wrote:
> 14.09.2011 9:21, dmitry boyarintsev wrote:
> How would you estimate the costs of this task? Would you take it if we
> collect some good sum of money or do work for a full day now?

It's not just 1 task. These are multiple tasks:
1) Abstract Debugging API (i.e. start debugging process, catch
debugging events) - this part is done. However, I'm expecting that
there're more changes required.
1.1) Win-32 implementation for the API - working.
1.2) Win-64 implementation for the API - working.
1.3) Linux-32 implementation for the API - working.
1.4) Linux-64 implementation for the API - working.
1.5) MacOSX - implementation - not working at all (kenrel man pages
are not really helpful) - Jonas explained above.
1.6) GDB implementation - never started.
2) Abstract Debug Data reading API - designed and working
2.1) STABS implementation - working
2.1.1) STABS-FPC corrector?
2.2) Dwarf 2 implementation - undone (code part is copied from FPdebugger)
2.3) Dwarf 3 implementation - undone (code part is copied from FPdebugger)
2.4) PPU reader (what FPC version? all of them?)  - never started.
3) Debugging Data Processor. The most "interesting" part of the
debugger. Where the type-info is being used to read the actual data
from the debugged processed, using Abstract Debugging API. Some kind
of virtual machine(?!)
4) Abstract Expression Source API - a component that would handle user
evaluation expression. The result of user evaluation should some kind
of instruction-list handled by the Debugging Data Processor.
4.1) Object Pascal syntax parsing implementation.
4.x) ...any other languages?...

"working" - means - it worked for me. Never thoroughly tested or used.

That's all i have in my mind. Any other "additional" debugging
features can be built on top of this 4 core parts.
The development can be paralleled, so I'd expect the team of 4 people
working 4 hours a day on the project would be able to show some good
results in 6 months.

My current employment keeps me off open sourcing - no time at all! :(
I would even grand leader rights for the duby project to anyone else.

thanks,
Dmitry

P.S.: as Graeme noted above, I really don't want to make FPC-debugger,
it should be a debugger with the primary FPC-support. I.e. part 2.1
shouldn't rely on FPC implementation of Stabs, but there're should be
an additional plugin for FPC-generated Stabs - 2.1.1, that is to be
used if FPC executable detected.