Sun 30 Mar 2014 11:43:33 AM UTC, comment #1:
Well, I kinda got the same message under different circumstances. Perhaps related, perhaps not. But just in-case, I'll share.
My scenario. I'm on an OpenSUSE 12.3 (32-bit) pc running the latest ddd 3.3.12 and remake (make3.82+dbg0.9).
More details on the steps to replicate my issue here:
https://github.com/rocky/remake/issues/6
At the end of it, after typing "exit", I still wind up with that "GDB could not be started" error message.
One additional observation; prior to me typing exit, not only is the mouse pointer an hour-glass, but in addition, I also noticed that the status bar has a message "Opening session 'abc123etc...'" stuck in it. It doesn't ever go away...
I've been doing a lot of debugging of the ddd code to try figure this out, as Rocky mentioned that nobody seems to be maintaining this ddd code anymore, it hasn't been touched since 2009.
I've got a few leads, but not a full solution yet.
I've overcome one issue. Inside "GDBAgent.C" - ends_with_prompt(), there is code to handle parsing of output from remake/gdb/bashdb/etc. There is a test to detect the prompt-message in these, eg "(gdb)" for gdb, "bashdb<...>" for bashdb, and "mdb<...>" for remake.
But the latest version of remake uses a "remake<...>"-style prompt.
So I tried tweaking the code to look for "remake<" instead, but still had problems.
There is some extra string-matching tests done that use the GNU RX library (via a RUNTIME_REGEX define).
I noticed inside "config.h" that RUNTIME_REGEX has been set to zero, with an interesting comment preceding it saying that it used to be turned on in ddd version 2.1 and older, but was turned off in newer versions (to save on memory and speed).
I thought I might be able to manually turn this setting on, as I saw this old post of somebody doing similar.
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-ddd/2004-05/msg00030.html
But reading here, the GNU RX library has been decommissioned.
https://www.gnu.org/software/rx/rx.html
So as an alternate workaround, I tried commenting out the use of the rx-library in the search for the "remake<...>" prompt. There is a 'possible-match' method used prior to using the rx-method, and I just contented myself with a 'possible-match' and returned true.
I tried running ddd after this tweak. It seemed to get one thing fixed, the status bar no longer has the "Opening session 'abc123etc...'" message in it, but I see a "Welcome to DDD 3.3.12 "Dale Head" (i686-pc-linux-gnu)" message instead. That sounds better...
I also see a "tip of the day" popup window, which I didn't see before.
Other elements are still missing though:
1) the 'command tools' box was missing, but I noticed I could toggle this on from the menus with "View >> Command Tool..." instead.
2) there still isn't any source displaying in the top-pane.
Hmm, ok then. I'll try debug the source-pane issue in future and hope I get to the bottom of it...
Another approach that Rocky suggested was to use an older version of remake from the time this ddd version was released. I haven't given that a try yet. (I was a bit wary of this, as I recall having problems with an older version of remake in opensuse and had to upgrade to a newer version, but I may give it a try later out of desperation)
I'll also upload my semi-finished patch, just in-case I give up on this, and somebody else wants to push the study into this issue further.
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