[alt.msdos.programmer] TC++ debugger oddness: others' experiences?

burleigh@cica.cica.indiana.edu (Frank Burleigh) (09/08/90)

I've been happily using TC++ professional 1.0 for a few months
now.  All is basically well except for the debugger within the
TC++ environment and some facets of the standalone debugger.
I'm curious if others have noticed any of these and, if so, have
a way to solve/improve them.

I have a 20MHz 386 with 4mb, several MB of which is EMS memory.
I start TC 

   tc prjname /e

The integrated debugger has two annoying characteristics:

1. Evaluate/modify is slow.  With the cursor on a data item,
   press ^F4 to evaluate it.  The pane comes up with that
   data item name in the evaluate window.  It takes TC a long
   time to show the contents of the item.  It sometimes takes
   maybe 10 seconds or more for the contents to be visible.

   Watching a data item is even slower!  if you have a data
   item in the watch window, stepping through your code can
   be *excruciatingly slow.*  [I also note that stepping in
   the standalone debugger involves a perceptable delay from
   one step to another.]

2. Sometimes TC cannot evaluate a data item, which it claims
   is unknown to it (message to that effect), even though the
   item is local.  TC seems to get into a "mood" when it can't
   show me anything declared within a function.  I must say
   that when I see this, it's always been in the same function
   of my current program...

Some other bad things just popped into my head...

3. Last week TC would die and kill my pc (protection violation
   message from 386^max) every time I tried to compile even one
   module in my project.  After a lot of horsing around I found
   that if I deleted the .prj file and built a new one, I could
   continue my work.  Apparently TC can corrupt a prj file but
   does not recognize when the prj file is corrupted.

4. There is no documented way to clean out the history list on
   dialogs where down arrow (show previous choices) is allowed.
   The delete key will remove an item, but as soon as you press
   any direction key, the (deleted) text is restored.  This is
   not a big thing, but is a little annoying to me.

If anyone knows of ways around any of the above, I'd appreciate
hearing from you.  Thanks in advance.

-- 
Frank Burleigh  burleigh@cica.cica.indiana.edu
USENET: ...rutgers!iuvax!cica!burleigh BITNET: BURLEIGH@IUBACS.BITNET
Department of Sociology, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana 47405

poffen@sj.ate.slb.com (Russ Poffenberger) (09/11/90)

In article <4866@cica.cica.indiana.edu> burleigh@cica.cica.indiana.edu (Frank Burleigh) writes:
>I've been happily using TC++ professional 1.0 for a few months
>now.  All is basically well except for the debugger within the
>TC++ environment and some facets of the standalone debugger.
>I'm curious if others have noticed any of these and, if so, have
>a way to solve/improve them.
>
>I have a 20MHz 386 with 4mb, several MB of which is EMS memory.
>I start TC 
>
>   tc prjname /e
>

[stuff deleted]

>
>Some other bad things just popped into my head...
>
>3. Last week TC would die and kill my pc (protection violation
>   message from 386^max) every time I tried to compile even one
>   module in my project.  After a lot of horsing around I found
>   that if I deleted the .prj file and built a new one, I could
>   continue my work.  Apparently TC can corrupt a prj file but
>   does not recognize when the prj file is corrupted.

This is a known bug. There is a patch file available called (if I remember
right) tcppt1.zip. It fixes the corrupted .prj file problem along with a few
other problems. It is avaialble in the PROGB section of the Borland forum on
Compuserve. Note that you must rebuild your .prj files after applying the
patch before the problem goes away. This is documented.

I believe that someone has uploaded the patch to simtel recently.

Russ Poffenberger               DOMAIN: poffen@sj.ate.slb.com
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