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Re: Debugging Gimp plugins
- To: Insight Mailing List <insight at sourceware dot cygnus dot com>
- Subject: Re: Debugging Gimp plugins
- From: lduperval at sprint dot ca
- Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 20:39:50 -0500 (EST)
- Reply-To: lduperval at sprint dot ca
On 8 Feb, Keith Seitz wrote:
> lduperval@sprint.ca wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> If anyone has experience successfully debugging gimp plugins with
>> insight, please drop me a line. I can't figure out the proper way to do
>> it yet.
>>
>> L
>
> I don't know much about the Gimp (gasp!),
Hhhhhhhhhh!! Shame! Shame! :-)
> but I assume that it's plugins
> are just loadable modules (almost identical to shared libraries).
>
I don't think so. I've looked at the source and it seems to be
socket-based. It looks like the plugin is a standalone program that
communicates with GIMP using sockets. But don't take my word for it.
So my situation is that I'm trying to write a Tcl-based extension (or at
least make an old one work with the new GIMP). It requires running a new
wish process. That wish process loads a dynamic module. And there are
some dependencies on shared libs also. I find it to be a debugging mess
but I thing it would be an even bigger mess for me to try to compile a
monolithic binary containing the Tcl, Tk, gtk, gdk, glib and my own libs
all in one.
> If so, I've found that the easiest way to debug them is to set
> breakpoints AFTER the module is loaded (i.e., after gdb knows about its
> symbols). For example, if there is a way to harmlessly load the module
> with the gimp, do that. Then interrupt the program and set your
> breakpoint(s) as normal.
>
> If your module does something naughty before you can do this, you'll
> need to find out what function in Gimp loads the module and set a break
> there. After the module is loaded, its symbol table will be available to
> you.
>
> The problem is that gdb doesn't know that modules even exist. If that
> wasn't bad enough, if you attempt to add symbols from the modules (via
> add-symbol-file), you'll need to know the starting address for the text
> of the the module (after it is loaded into memory, that is)! Yikes!
>
Yikes is right. Someone on the gimp newsgroups suggested something
similar so I'll be trying it this week (provided I can get more than 10
minutes of work done). If it doesn't work, looks like I'll be going the
static compile route. Ugh!
Thanks for the suggestions.
L