Demi Marie Obenour <demiobenour@gmail.com> writes:
On 9/19/25 14:45, Alyssa Ross wrote:
Demi Marie Obenour <demiobenour@gmail.com> writes:
On 9/8/25 05:25, Alyssa Ross wrote:
Demi Marie Obenour <demiobenour@gmail.com> writes:
The version of less in BusyBox cannot handle horizontal scrolling, so it is much less useful for debugging than less(1). As long as it less is needed, it is better to have a more useful version.
Signed-off-by: Demi Marie Obenour <demiobenour@gmail.com>
Is it needed?
When I was debugging, I kept getting frustrated with limitations of Busybox less. This patch helped me quite a bit, so yes, I think it is needed.
What I mean is: is less needed at all? (I was referring to you saying "as long as less is needed".)
So far I haven't added tools that are only useful for debugging to the image (although the core dump handler is an exception). I frequently use strace, for example, but I don't think it really belongs as part of the system image. less is only really present at all because it snuck is as part of busybox. I also don't want to have images used for development to differ from the real ones, because then wee can miss stuff in testing more easily. So here's an idea: what if we attach an extra block device in "make run" that includes some debugging tools, and then that can easily be mounted to get the extra tools when needed for development, while still being able to use a normal build of the Spectrum host system?
That's a great idea! I'll work on it later, though. In the future it might make sense to provide a debug build of Spectrum for use by developers tracking down problems. That's a task for even further in the future.
I mean ideally I'd prefer we never have a debug build, because as soon as that exists it'll start diverging from a real one. Would be fine to distribute an extra image full of debugging tools or whatever though, in a way that could be used on a real system as well as just in the development environment.