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* Re: [TUHS] SDB debugger
@ 2020-05-02  2:52 Doug McIlroy
  2020-05-02 17:45 ` Larry McVoy
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 26+ messages in thread
From: Doug McIlroy @ 2020-05-02  2:52 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

>  Does anyone know if dbx ended up 8 or 9th

I believe the only debuggers on research machines were
db      v1-v6
adb     v7,v9,v10
cdb     v3-v6
sdb     v8-v9
pi      v8-v10

Doug

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 26+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] SDB debugger
@ 2020-05-03  2:21 Norman Wilson
  2020-05-03  2:41 ` Larry McVoy
  2020-05-03  3:05 ` Rob Pike
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 26+ messages in thread
From: Norman Wilson @ 2020-05-03  2:21 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

Doug's list is slightly off:

adb	v7-v10
sdb	v8-v10

sdb may actually have been in V7; I'm quite sure
it was present in 32/V.  But it's not in the V7
manual.

adb and sdb were certainly working fine when I
arrived in 1127, but they still used ptrace
because nobody wanted to touch the code.  I used
adb quite often (still would were it available
in modern worlds!), so I cared enough to take
it over, restructuring it quite a bit to make it
easier to retarget for different instruction
sets and byte orders, and of course to use /proc.
I also made some trivial, compatible changes to
how numbers were read and printed to conform to
Rob's Rule (of which I am also a fan) that what
a program presents as output it should also
accept as input.

sdb I wasn't as fond of, but I did want to get
rid of ptrace, so I tinkered it just enough to
accomplish that.

I do remember clearly celebrating the death of
ptrace by removing ptrace(2) from the copy of the
V8 manual in the UNIX Room.  It took up two
pages, and they happened to be facing pages,
so I glued them together.

I wish it was as easy for others to have such
satisfaction these days.

Norman Wilson
Toronto ON

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 26+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] SDB debugger
@ 2020-05-01 20:48 Paul Ruizendaal
  2020-05-01 21:57 ` Clem Cole
                   ` (3 more replies)
  0 siblings, 4 replies; 26+ messages in thread
From: Paul Ruizendaal @ 2020-05-01 20:48 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: TUHS main list

Reading some more stuff about the road from 7th Edition to 8th Edition, this time about debuggers.

My current understanding is as follows:

- On 6th edition the debugger was ‘cdb’

- On 7th edition it was ‘adb’, a rewrite / evolution from ‘cdb’

- In 32V a new debugger appears, ‘sdb’. Its code seems a derivative from ‘adb’, but the command language is substantially reworked and it uses a modified variant of the a.out linker format - in essence the beginnings of ‘stabs’. Of course the compiler, assembler, linker and related tools all emit/recognize these new symbol table elements. 

- The July 78 file note by London/Reiser does not mention a reworked debugger at all; the 32V tape that is on TUHS has ’sdb' files that are dated Feb/Mar 1979. This stuff must have been developed between July 78 and March 79.

- In the SysIII and 3BSD code on TUHS (from early 80 and late 79 respectively) the stabs format is more developed. For SysIII it is ‘VAX only’. With these roots, it is not surprising that it is also in 8th Edition.


Two questions:

(1) According to Wikipedia the original author of the stabs format is unknown. It also says that the original author of ‘sdb’ is unknown. Is that correct, is the author really unknown?

(2) As far as I can tell, the ’sdb’ debugger was never back ported to 16 bit Unix, not in the SysIII line and not in the 2.xBSD line. It would seem to me that the simple stabs format of 32V would have lent itself to being back ported. Is it correct that no PDP11 Unix used (a simple) stabs tool chain and debugger?




^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 26+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2020-05-12  4:37 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 26+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2020-05-02  2:52 [TUHS] SDB debugger Doug McIlroy
2020-05-02 17:45 ` Larry McVoy
2020-05-03 16:16   ` Rich Morin
2020-05-12  4:36     ` Dave Horsfall
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2020-05-03  2:21 Norman Wilson
2020-05-03  2:41 ` Larry McVoy
2020-05-03  7:14   ` arnold
2020-05-03  3:05 ` Rob Pike
2020-05-01 20:48 Paul Ruizendaal
2020-05-01 21:57 ` Clem Cole
2020-05-02  9:10   ` Paul Ruizendaal
2020-05-02 16:04     ` Clem Cole
2020-05-01 23:05 ` Jeremy C. Reed
2020-05-02  0:49 ` Noel Hunt
2020-05-02  1:22   ` Rob Pike
2020-05-02  3:49     ` Noel Hunt
2020-05-02 20:16   ` Paul Ruizendaal
2020-05-03  6:58     ` arnold
2020-05-03 16:13     ` Clem Cole
2020-05-03 16:53       ` Henry Bent
2020-05-03 17:06         ` Henry Bent
2020-05-03 17:13       ` Henry Bent
2020-05-03 20:26         ` Clem Cole
2020-05-03 17:35       ` Paul Winalski
2020-05-03 21:27       ` Paul Ruizendaal
2020-05-12  4:15 ` Dave Horsfall

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