[pmmail-list] PMMail/2 Sys3175 Crash

[Kenneth Porter]

On Mon, 17 Dec 2001 18:29:54 -0800, Warner Young wrote:

>Trying to decipher someone else's C code when it's not well-written can
>be a real nightmare.  At least, I usually have trouble with it.  On top
>of that, trying to fix bugs in it, while simultaneously converting it
>to a C++ code base, and integrating a new editor, while worrying about
>2 platforms, is probably not that fun.  I could be completely wrong
>about this, and hopefully Peter's much better with inheriting old
>source code than I am, but I definitely wouldn't want to tackle
>anything like that.

I inherited a pretty good-sized OS/2 app with lots of 2-letter
variables. You need a good source navigator to unravel it. I purchased
SourceLink before IBM started giving it away with a DevCon
subscription. Works great on pure C code. Not as good but still usable
on C++.

For any product you have in the field, you want to make sure you have
images of your build for anything out in the wild, so you can reproduce
problems. You then migrate the fix forward into the current sources, if
applicable. Version control is a big help here, as you can just check
out sources for any given release.

The big issue is how good one is at working from register dumps back to
C source. As an embedded developer working on many architectures, I do
this all the time, but many programmers have never seen assembler and
depend on the IDE to hold their hands. The question I would have is
whether Trevor and Peter know how to "get their hands dirty" and get
down into the guts of the code. Can they switch to "mixed mode" (C
intermixed with compiler-generated assembler) and figure out what's
really going on? Perhaps more important, do their tools allow them this
extra power?

Ken
mailto:shiva@well.com
http://www.sewingwitch.com/ken/
[If answering a mailing list posting, please don't cc me your reply. I'll take my answer on the list.]



- pmmail-list - The PMMail Dicussion List ---------------------------
To POST to the list, send your message to:
pmmail-list@blueprintsoftwareworks.com

To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message to mdaemon@bmtmicro.com with the first 
line of the message body being...
UNSUBSCRIBE pmmail-list@blueprintsoftwareworks.com
---------------------------------------------------------------------