Re: [9fans] 9vx is really excellent, link it on the bell-labs pages?

[ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com>]

I think we owe the vx32/9vx guys some help here.

So here's the question. 9vx is running. It breaks. How should we go
about providing
- useful diagnosis
- useful backtracking

There are some tools. Worst case, those of us who see it die from time
to time could elect to run it under gdb for a while. No real pain
there, and we could get some gain. For real pain but possible gain, we
could run it under a function tracer.

Even better, somebody using these tools might have a bright idea for
debugging programs using vx32 or under 9vx and improve the process.

Now I have to confess I can't recall how to print all the thread
callback stacks when 9vx breaks, not having had to do it for a year or
so but ... I'm happy to set up a gdb for it and do what commands are
needed should it break. Any recommendations here Russ?

I see 9vx as a great tool, but, also, a great way for people to start
mucking with the plan 9 kernel and learning. It's a great deal more
approachable than Linux. And with 9vx there's no hardware required.

One other question -- anybody know how to create a 'tracking fork' in
mercurial such that I can fork 9vx, but update from Russ's version to
mine over time? I have some things I want to try out. I have not found
a way to do this  yet. The reason to do this "private repo" would be
to have some other place to store my experiments than my laptop ...

thanks

ron