FreeLists / arachne / [arachne] Re: Internal Editor.. more musings

["John Sparks" <johncsparks@xxxxxxxxxx>]

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----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Greg Mayman" <gmone@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: <arachne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, May 29, 2004 12:58 AM
Subject: [arachne] Re: [a4dos-list] Internal Editor.. more musings
<snip>
> > Difficult to track down without some hard data. Would it be
possible
> > to build a debug version of Arachne in which a selective memory
dump
> > could be invoked by the user? This might allow a developer to view
how
> > the memory was allocated when the problem was present, and obtain
some
> > clues.
>
> I'm not sure that a memory dump would be needed, or useful.
> There would be such an amount of stuff to wade through it would
> be difficult to find where the trouble had occurred.
> Perhaps the memory allocation would be better.

Could indeed be a problem. I had envisaged that a developer would give
some thought to what data might be most useful and arrange for a
"selective" dump of that data.

>It could be
> automatically written continuously every time anything was
> written to memory.
>
> But since anything like this would require the use of memory, it
> becomes another case of the very fact of the observation altering
> the subject of the observation.

If the proposed code which does a selective data dump is only invoked
after the fault has appeared and, as far as possible, runs to
completion without letting Arachne back in, then this problem might be
avoided (at least in theory)

> The correct way of course is to go through Arachne's code with a
> fine-toothed comb, and find the place that causes this memory
> conflict.
> And be assured that it ain't gunna be at all obvious.

Definitely worth a try.

> It would
> almost certainly be quicker and easier to rewrite all of Arachne's
> code from scratch.... v2.0....

There could be a problem with that theory ;-)
If one assumes that: writing any new bundle of code the size of
Arachne is bound to introduce at least one difficult bug; and follow
with the above, then....
(well you would't stay at V2.0 for very long!)

Better keep the data-dumping code small then <g>

John



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