Subject: Re: bug#53058: etc/DEBUG could say more about --enable-check-lisp-object-type

From: Sean Whitton <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2022 13:41:52 -0700

Hello,

On Fri 07 Jan 2022 at 08:58AM +02, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> But it really doesn't affect the debugging.  You just need to
> understand what it does, and if we describe this in etc/DEBUG, we'd
> need to describe gobs of other similar factoids about the various
> build options.

Well, it doesn't affect the debugging in the way that the CFLAGS
discussed there do, sure, but from a less experienced gdb user's point
of view, it does indeed affect the debugging.  In my case, I encountered
a problem setting a conditional break point, and I wouldn't have even
considered revisiting that flag because I had just read text which I
took to be telling me that the flag wasn't connected with the way gdb
works.  I had to wait for your input to learn that it is connected, in a
relevant sense.

To me, conditionalising break points is a fundamental debugging action,
something that a beginner is likely to want to do.  And it's Emacs, so
chances are those conditions will involve Lisp objects.  So having
instructions aimed at someone just getting started telling you to use a
flag which makes that basic debugging action much less likely to work
seems worth improving.  Do you have any other ideas as to how that could
be done?

Thanks.

-- 
Sean Whitton