[Freedos-user] Announcement: lDebug release 8
Hello list. Here's another release of lDebug (with a small L). This application is an advanced line-oriented debugger for 86-DOS alike systems. It can be loaded instead of a DOS kernel (bootloaded), as a device driver, or as a DOS application. The DOS uses may attach or detach from processes using the ATTACH and TSR commands respectively, adding the resident debugger mode to the normal use as a DOS application. There is a build included in the release which supports running as a DPMI client to debug another DPMI client. This is a bugfix and incremental release after last month's release 7 [1]. A few highlights of what changed: Release packages do not contain listing files any longer. Some temporary files are also deleted after building This saves a lot of space for all the build packages except for the SvarDOS binary-only package. One reason for dropping the listings is that the debugger main listing as well as the Extension for lDebug listings are not particularly useful with a non-debuggable build of the debugger, which is the only build provided with the release. If desired, the listing files can be obtained in two ways: Either by running (from ldebug/source/) "./make reproduce" and "./makinst.sh" and (from ldebug/source/eld/) "./mak.sh", or by downloading yesterday's [2] or today's [3] current builds from our server. (Today's current build is not yet available but will be created later today before midnight in the +0100 timezone.) We have ensured that the map files and listing files for these builds are almost exactly the same, excepting the text contents of some version strings of the main debugger executable. One of the bugfixes in release 8 concerns filling the AMIS description message to avoid differing offsets due to a difference in the message length. Another fix involves running the debugger as a device driver. During initialisation of this mode, the debugger can accept command line switches. However, specifying a program name to load is invalid for the device mode debugger before an ATTACH command ran successfully. When such a name is provided on the command line, it will now display an error message that reads "Cannot terminate attached while resident." instead of crashing the kernel [4]. Another set of bugs fixed involves the drive locking needed to write sectors to a drive on MS-DOS v7 and v8. The first bugfix is that the correct drive is now unlocked after the write operation, rather than a random one. The second bugfix is that the lock and unlock calls are also done on MS-DOS v7.00 (from the original MSW 95), which has the locking feature (to protect its LFNs) but does not use the new style disk packet interface (for FAT32 drives) introduced in MS-DOS v7.10 (corresponding to a later MSW 95 revision and MSW 98). I also attempted to add a way to preserve the current lock state of a drive before locking it for writing, but this turned out not to work (at least not in pure MS-DOS mode without MSW running). As this failed, the debugger will now unconditionally unlock a drive after it wrote a sector. (This was the intended mechanism for this, but did not work correctly prior to the bugfixes.) Another change is that the compressed executables now default to support depack progress displays. This defaults to a dots display for bootloaded mode and no display for device driver and application mode. For the DOS modes (that is, not bootloaded mode) setting the environment variable %LDEBUGPROGRESS% allows to select a different progress display choice. The defaults for the progress display can be patched in the inicomp (depacker) stage. Newly provided C programs [5] can be used to patch both the inicomp progress display choices as well as the query patch site in the iniload boot loading stage [6]. Unlike the earlier patch Script for lDebug shipped with ldosboot, these programs can be used even when arbitrary data is appended to the debugger executables. The provided build contains DOS executables compiled from the C sources using tkchia's gcc for 8086 DOS targets. However, the C sources can be compiled for direct use on other platforms as well. Another bug that got fixed was likely introduced during the reorganisation of the Script for lDebug and Extension for lDebug loaders when ELDs were added and refined. In bootloaded mode, a "Y :label" command within a Script for lDebug file would not work any longer. This command is used to "call" a different part of the same Script for lDebug file that is already running. Finally, the test suite was adapted and verified to run to completion correctly for lDebug, lDebugX, lDDebug, lDDebugX, and lCDebugX (all both in bootloaded or application mode). The ELD comparison program was also run on all registered ELD test install commands [7] and test run commands [8]. The testing did turn up the Y bug described in the previous paragraph as well as two wrong relocations in the dpb.eld
[Freedos-user] Announcement: lDebug release 7
Hello list!
Today I prepared release 7 of lDebug (small L). lDebug is an advanced
debugger for 86-DOS like systems. It is based on Paul Vojta's and
Japheth's FreeDOS Debug/X, which in turn started out as a clone of
MS-DOS Debug. Like all of these, it operates with a line-based terminal
interface. lDebug expands a lot on the capabilities of its ancestors
however.
Release 7 adds one big feature that's new: The debugger now allocates
space for and allows loading of Extensions for lDebug (ELDs). Several
dozen ELDs have been written so far. They're included in the release in
the bin/ subdirectory (lDebug original packages) or in BIN/ (FreeDOS
package). The ELD architecture was created to allow optional extensions
of the debugger without bogging down the build, particularly the code
segment, with a lot of most likely unused code.
Other than that, some bugfixes have arrived. To summarize from the
manual's list of news [1]:
* The DIL command works now, fixing an embarrassing bug in release 6
for which I provided patches [2].
* The INSTALL command correctly works with the AREAS keyword followed
by another keyword.
* Two bootloaded mode file system read errors were fixed, one when a
file ends exactly on a cluster boundary and another when a FAT12 entry
is read which straddles a sector boundary in the FAT.
* The BOOT PROTOCOL= command with two kernel load files (MS-DOS v6 or
IBM-DOS load protocol) now allows to freely select the second (DOS) file
in any subdirectory of the partition to boot from.
A few new features were added (aside from those implemented by
Extensions for lDebug):
* An INSTALL TOGGLE command to switch certain features on or off.
* A fractional digit sometimes displayed for formatted sizes.
* ::scripts:: and ::config:: keywords can be used in pathnames passed
to Y, EXT, or BOOT DIR commands in bootloaded mode.
* The debugger will allocate a 2 KiB environment block for itself (in
any mode) which is intended for storing Variables for lDebug using the
set.eld and variable.eld.
* The application and device init will try to work with a smaller
initial allocation instead of enforcing a maximum-size ("init max")
layout early on.
Several new switches are now recognised by the application and device
mode init. /X resizes the ELD code instance segment from its default
size, /Y does likewise for the ELD data block area, and /H is the switch
to do the same to the debugger's history buffer. There is also the
undocumented /T switch, described some on the blog [3].
Some little-used features of the debugger were actually thrown out. The
build options _EMS, _RM, and _RN are now disabled by default. They
correspond to the X commands, as well as the RM and RN command. If
desired, then apart from creating a build with the options enabled,
users may instead choose to install the Extensions for lDebug that share
the sources of the disabled commands. They are named x.eld, rm.eld, and
rn.eld. They can be used either as transient ELDs (to run a single
command; requires DOS or bootloaded FS access each time) or installed as
resident ELDs (needs to access the file only for ELD install).
The packages of this release are found on our server [4]. In the fdpkg
subdirectory I placed a FreeDOS package, and in the svardpkg a SvarDOS
binary and sources package each. As usual, all changes are recorded in
the hg (Mercurial) repository, which can be browsed using our hgweb [5].
As a news blurb for the FreeDOS website (and the sourceforge.net news
tracker [6]) I would suggest the following:
lDebug release 7
lDebug (small L) is a DOS debugger based on FreeDOS Debug/X. Today's new
release 7 adds the architecture for Extensions for lDebug, with 52
different ELDs included in the release package. Further, a number of
smaller improvements and fixes are included, several of which make
lDebug better in its bootloaded mode. The application and device mode
init is less memory-hungry than it would be with its prior "init max"
approach. Find more details on [the mailing list], and everything lDebug
at [the lDebug website][7].
Regards,
ecm
[1]: https://pushbx.org/ecm/doc/ldebug.htm#news-r7
[2]:
https://pushbx.org/ecm/dokuwiki/blog/pushbx/2023/0911_live_patching_the_debugger_itself
[3]:
https://pushbx.org/ecm/dokuwiki/blog/pushbx/2023/0911_debugger_relocation_all_switches_explained
[4]: https://pushbx.org/ecm/download/ldebug/
[5]: https://hg.pushbx.org/ecm/ldebug/log/release7
[6]: https://sourceforge.net/p/freedos/news/
[7]: https://pushbx.org/ecm/web/#projects-ldebug
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