Debugging Emacs (-nw)

[Nick Roberts]

When debugging Emacs while it is running in a terminal (-nw), I have found it
useful to use a separate terminal. In GDB this can be done, for example, in the
following way:

Create two xterms, xterm1 and xterm2 with associated terminals /dev/pts/1
and /dev/pts/2, say.

Type sleep 100000 in xterm2 (so the shell doesn't grab input).
Type "gdb emacs" in xterm1 followed by:
(gdb) tty /dev/pts/2
(gdb) run -nw

and Emacs appears in xterm2 while the gdb session remains in xterm1.

It is even possible to run gdb from within Emacs (from the first xterm or as
a standalone X application) if you set TERM to xterm first:

(gdb) tty /dev/pts/2
(gdb) set environment TERM xterm
(gdb) run -nw

I wonder if its worth mentioning any of this in DEBUG?


Nick