Improved Debugger

[thor]

You can copy all visible disassembly lines in GUI if you right click in disassembly and select "Copy"->"Copy all" (probably best in F5/F6 window because of more lines visible) or use the disassembly command in the F1 or F2 output window and mark and copy the lines you want there.

[BippyM]

It's a bit long winded if I need more..

Can a command not be added where start/end is set and then copied to clipboard or saved to a txt file?

[thor]

I could add a "Copy range" to the "Copy" section in the context menu. Would that be good enough for your needs?

[BippyM]

yeah sounds good thanks

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by bippym

wouldn't it just be simpler to use the actual mnemonic?

Disassembler is quite simple and instructions like MOVEM <registers>,<memory> and MOVEM <memory>,<registers> are different instruction types and all instruction names must be unique. (this is slightly improved in recent betas, MOVEM and MOVEC are properly shown now)

[BippyM]

I've managed to kill the GUI debugger.. all I get now is the cmd debugger console.. how do I fix this?

[thor]

You switch between them with xx

[BippyM]

Any news on the suggested improvements?

[thor]

No, I haven't done anything as I don't have time and have other things in mind currently. It will be done, but I don't know when I can continue working on it.

[crabfists]

Hi,

I am heavily using the WinUAE GUI debugger at the moment for the game I am reverse engineering and I am loving some of the new improvements. My thanks go out to thor for implementing them.

Thing is, I find it's difficult to know exactly what is possible with the debugger as some features are hidden away. For example, I've wanted to scroll up and down the memory and disassembly window for ages and just presumed it wasn't possible but then I read this thread and realised you could do the Alt+Cursor up and down thing. Do you think it might be worth listing all these features and key shortcuts in a txt file which is distributed with WinUAE or available on the net somewhere? Just an idea.

This is purely a crazy idea but one feature which would be nice (for reverse engineering stuff anyway) is a way to import a list of labels of routines so you could see the names of which routines were being called. If there was a text file which listed pairs of addresses and routine names then in the disassembly window the name of the routine could be displayed along with the address. Only thing is, I haven't properly thought this through as it would only work for fixed address routines. Not that useful for relocatable exes.

Something else which would be nice is if it labelled custom chip access. So the debugger could display something like this (ignore crap syntax):

000100EC 4bf9 00df f000 LEA.L $00dff000,A5
000100F2 3b7c 7fff 0096 MOVE.W #$7fff,(A5, $0096 [DMACON]) == $a5a5a63b

[thor]

Originally Posted by crabfists

I am heavily using the WinUAE GUI debugger at the moment for the game I am reverse engineering and I am loving some of the new improvements. My thanks go out to thor for implementing them.

Thanks for the comments and input.

Thing is, I find it's difficult to know exactly what is possible with the debugger as some features are hidden away. For example, I've wanted to scroll up and down the memory and disassembly window for ages and just presumed it wasn't possible but then I read this thread and realised you could do the Alt+Cursor up and down thing. Do you think it might be worth listing all these features and key shortcuts in a txt file which is distributed with WinUAE or available on the net somewhere? Just an idea.

I thought about adding a documentation for the debugger commands and GUI to the EAB wiki with explanations and examples, but that's low priority and as I can't work on any project currently, I can't see this happen in the near future. If such project could be started by other persons, that would be nice. For now, all available information regarding the GUI is in the WinUAE beta threads (1.4.2 was the first version with the GUI I think) and this one.

This is purely a crazy idea but one feature which would be nice (for reverse engineering stuff anyway) is a way to import a list of labels of routines so you could see the names of which routines were being called. If there was a text file which listed pairs of addresses and routine names then in the disassembly window the name of the routine could be displayed along with the address. Only thing is, I haven't properly thought this through as it would only work for fixed address routines. Not that useful for relocatable exes.

Of course it would be possible to do such thing, however it's not GUI specific and personally I don't think it's worth implementing (see disadvantage you gave).

Something else which would be nice is if it labelled custom chip access. So the debugger could display something like this (ignore crap syntax):

000100EC 4bf9 00df f000 LEA.L $00dff000,A5
000100F2 3b7c 7fff 0096 MOVE.W #$7fff,(A5, $0096 [DMACON]) == $a5a5a63b

That would be possible too without much effort, but again it's not GUI specific and probably not worth it as that information is only valid if the register is loaded with the correct base address. For example you have $dff000 in A5 currently but somewhere further from the PC you have A5 loaded with something else and the next instruction is like move.l #123, $4(A5), it would show totally wrong information there.