Hi! Maybe I'm just touching the concrete examples, I just try to show that things aren't that bad. On Mon, Dec 07, 2009 at 01:56:15AM +0100, Carlos E. R. wrote:
On Sunday, 2009-12-06 at 17:22 -0600, Rajko M. wrote:
On Sunday 06 December 2009 12:12:10 Egbert Eich wrote:
However for contributing small things, look at the code to track down a bug doesn't require very good probramming skills.
It often requires just ability to set break point with a message, to locate code that makes trouble. No much need to understand the code.
It is not only code, it is tools. I used turbodebugger (Borland), locally or over a serial port. I can't use the linux debugger, I have no idea how.
Perhaps this two-page intro might be useful? http://linux.bytesex.org/gdb.html For my taste, for a basic intro it is missing just two things, 'next' for step without recursion and 'info threads' for examining other threads.
To program in C I used borland C IDE. You press ctrl-F1 over a function and you get help on that particular function. Or you you browse the help index to find a function to do something... AFAIK that is not possible here. Plus, I got a set of books, in paper, explaining the set of libraries I got. Explaining how to do things... Yes, here there is documentation, but you have to find it. Dispersed.
If you use vi, move over the function with cursor and press 'K' (if a shell command documentation pops up instead, try '3K' or '2K'). I'm sure other editors have similar gadgets.
When I was taught C they "forced" me to write a small preamble on each file explaining what this file of source code this. To document each and every function on what input to receive, what output it produced, what variables it changed, and what it did. To write a document on how the program worked; not a user documentation, but a developer documentation. Both, actually.
I don't see that kind of effort here.
That is true, some may see it as bigger problem, others as smaller. If you are debugging the net stack code, that's quite troublesome, if you are debugging crash in some simple tool, I don't think that's that a big deal. Also, individual software packages differ a lot. -- Petr "Pasky" Baudis A lot of people have my books on their bookshelves. That's the problem, they need to read them. -- Don Knuth -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org