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Re: Mysterious gdb behavior.


On Mon, Jul 29, 2002 at 10:00:41PM -0400, Paul Derbyshire wrote:
>On 29 Jul 2002 at 5:36, Nicholas Wourms wrote:
>> You really need to take a course in problem-solving.  Finding out
>> what's causing the problem isn't always going to be black-and-white. 
>
>No, it's not. Sometimes you have insufficient information to diagnose 
>the problem and then you have to ask the experts. And hope the 
>experts aren't all condescending arrogant twits.

It's funny but I was going to say exactly the same thing about the
people asking questions of the experts.  Guess I owe you a coke.

>>You must eliminate the usual suspects before you resort to assuming the
>>bug lies in the software.  That means checking out the relevant FAQ for
>>the platform/software you are using and asking yourself "does this
>>condition exist?"
>
>Does which condition exist?  Every time I have a problem you expect me
>to open up the FAQ and read it cover to cover for every single
>possibility?  Sorry, no way.  I might scan it for a relevant error
>message or whatever and do mailing list archive searches for the same.
>That's it.

We're sorry!  We're sorry, ok?  Sob.  Why oh why did anyone ever
suggest reading documentation?  It's just wrong!  Wrong!

>In this case, I just got a cryptic "unable to spawn process, error 
>193" or such. This didn't prove to be a fruitful search, in the FAQ 
>(the copy I downloaded when I got cygwin, months ago) or elsewhere.

Yep, that old from months ago copy of the FAQ.  No reason to consult
anything but that and those dog-eared encyclopedias you got as a boy.  I
think the answer to this one may lie in deepest Persia...

>If you won't meet a user who has a problem halfway, and instead expect
>the users to solve problems entirely by themselves, then why are you
>participating in this mailing list responding to questions?  I question
>your motives.

I think we all expect that we offer a suggestion and the user actually
tries it.  In this case, the suggestion was made that the problem might
have something to do with directories with spaces in them.  I'm now
on my third or fourth iteration of explaining that I don't think that
is what your problem is.  You'll probably ignore this message too.

>> I know the answer is there as I had to do so myself.
>
>Why would it occur to me to search the mailing lists a second time 
>for *the same problem*? I searched once for the error message. The 
>search was fruitless. Therefore I switched to plan B: ask the mailing 
>list and discuss the issue until someone tells me how to fix it. 
>Instead, it seems I'm expected (by you at least) to go back to square 
>1 and search the list archives a second time? It seems your idea of 
>the ideal helping a newbie session is:
>
>Newbie gets error message.
>Newbie searches mailing list archives. Solved or:
>Newbie posts error message on list.

I posted what the error message resolved to.  Did you go the extra step
of trying to do a specific google search on ERROR_BAD_EXE_FORMAT?  Or
did you get sidetracked in your nonstop responses to people who suggested
the "directories with spaces" argument?

I'll answer for you.  You chose the latter.  You don't trust google but
you do trust any random person who responds on a mailing list.  You
apparently trust them so blindly that you do not even do empirical
experiments to see if their assertions are correct even though providing
clear explanations about what you tried would actually be helpful to
the whole process.

Btw, here's a URL for you:  http://cygwin.com/bugs.html .  Should have
suggested this when you first posted.  I suspect a cygcheck -r -s -v
would be useful in debugging your problem (see below).

>Helpful person posts a word and says "Search for it."

Now that you provided more details in another thread.  I wonder if it is
possible that you're somehow not using the cygwin gcc compiler but are,
instead, using the djgpp compiler.  If so, that could explain your
problem.  I don't have a djgpp compiler to confirm but I suspect that
cygwin/windows gdb probably can't debug executables built with the djgpp
gcc, i.e., as far as gdb is concerned the EXE FORMAT is BAD and that's
considered an ERROR.

cgf
--
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Use the resources at http://cygwin.com/ .

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