Watch Expressions

This past weekend I added a couple of new features to the ZeroBUGS debugger.

The user can now monitor arbitrary expressions in the "Watch Variables" window (not just variables, as it was the case up until now). For example you can watch for things such as argv[1], or x * y. (Function calls are supported but I would recommend extreme care in using them; calling arbitrary code in the debugged target may yield some rather interesting effects).

Another new feature is the ability to "map" source and library paths. For example, lets assume that you built your code in /home/joe/cool_project but later moved the source code to /home/joe/cool_source. The debug information inside the binary will still point to /home/joe/cool_project. ZeroBUGS allows you to work around this by setting an environment variable like this:

export ZERO_PATH_MAP="/home/joe/cool_project:/home/joe/cool_source;"

When the debugger encounters source file information prefixed by /home/joe/cool_project it will replace it with /home/joe/cool_source.

You may specify an unlimited number of such pairs, separated by a semicolon. I have uploaded new builds for Ubuntu (32 and 64 bit) and Fedora Core 8 (32bit) this morning, and will update the others over the next week or two.

And the total number of code lines has dropped from 142,992 as reported at the end of December, down to:

Total Physical Source Lines of Code (SLOC)                = 139,824
Development Effort Estimate, Person-Years (Person-Months) = 35.80 (429.61)
(Basic COCOMO model, Person-Months = 2.4 * (KSLOC**1.05))
Schedule Estimate, Years (Months)                         = 2.09 (25.03)
(Basic COCOMO model, Months = 2.5 * (person-months**0.38))
Estimated Average Number of Developers (Effort/Schedule)  = 17.16
Total Estimated Cost to Develop                           = $ 4,836,180
(average salary = $56,286/year, overhead = 2.40).
SLOCCount, Copyright (C) 2001-2004 David A. Wheeler
SLOCCount is Open Source Software/Free Software, licensed under the GNU GPL.
SLOCCount comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, and you are welcome to
redistribute it under certain conditions as specified by the GNU GPL license;
see the documentation for details.
Please credit this data as "generated using David A. Wheeler's 'SLOCCount'."

The decrease is mainly due to code refactoring and to removal of unsuccessful experimental features.