Re: 23.0.60; gdb not running the program first time around

[Nick Roberts]

 > I've just tried
 >     (setq gdb-many-windows t)
 > - not used this before and apart from being faviourably impressed :-) 
 > I've come across one problem.
 > Our code tends to swap languages - top level is C++ which calls a c 
 > layer which then invokes some fortran,
 > when I get down to the fortran I get a debugger segmentation fault 
 > immediately, I don't see this issue when gdb-many-windows is nil

You're probably stretching the boundaries of Gdb a bit - it's not so good with
C++ but it's getting better.  Also I've found that for fortran debugging, g77
is better than gfortran as it currently generates better debug information.  I
think gfortran is the future, however, and compiles fortran 95.

 > Do you want me to create a separate report for this - I assume there's a 
 > couple of issues here a gdb one and a gdb-ui.el one?

A debugger segmentation fault means a bug in Gdb, so the report should go to
the gdb mailing list (address@hidden).  Most users probably don't debug
inside Emacs, so you really need to find a way to reproduce it from the
command line.  Since it only happens with gdb-many-windows it is probably
caused by one of the gdb commands that Emacs runs behind the user's back
to update the extra buffers:

info stack
interpreter mi "-stack-list-locals --simple-values"

If you can get to where the debugger segmentation fault occurs from the
command line then issing these commands might trigger it.

 >                                                      Is it possible to 
 > run gdb within gdb in emacs?

I'm not sure what you mean, but certainly you can debug Gdb using Gdb in Emacs,
where Gdb just replaces ipsa-so in your scenario, and I often do this.

Also, if the problem is with Emacs, and not Gdb, then I will debug Emacs
running a Gdb session using Gdb in Emacs.

-- 
Nick                                           http://www.inet.net.nz/~nickrob