untangling c & tcl code

[Duane Ellis <duane_ellis at franklin dot com>]

In a previous thread... 

andrew> Just BTW, gdb's internals have changed.

things do look far better. :->

yes, I've noticed. We have 3+ custom ports of GDB for our custom CPU
chips that we do. I maintain them.

I'm in the process of updating one of them a 1998 snapshot release of insight.

Does anybody have a good solution to debugging (er, untangling, and
understanding) how tk and tcl interact with GDB.

My problem:

   When I need to figure out how something works I use a debugger to
   step through the C code. But then... GDB calls some TK/TCL script
   function and I cannot step through that portion in any productive
   way.

   Oh yea, I can see that the code is calling the cached pre-compiled
   bytecode for something.... Just what... is next to impossible
   to figure out.

   I'd really like to stop right there and start stepping through
   the tcl/tk code so I can see how that interacts and then calls
   back into the C code at various places.
   
   It's a mixed language debugging problem.

The only solution I've found is to insert lots of "printf()" type
statements in the tcl/tk code and spew forth messages. And that sucks
cause you have to stop, go instrument the tcl/tk code and restart
debug session.

-Duane.