And just in case that this is not known:
GDB is highly extendable, you can also define your own commands, hooks,
and ... lots of highly usable stuff to explore.
The referenced extensions from COBOLworx are a good example, and I'm
actually using this "at work" (slightly modified).
GDB also can be "integrated", for example there are bindings for VIM,
EMACS, ... (those will commonly "highlight" code, often provide
"code-insights" (like showing the definition of a variable, go to
definition of variables/labels/programs/...) and most of those editors
allow you to map keys, so you can get an animator-like experience if you
want to [I personally prefer the Debugger Console])...
and lastly there is the GDB TUI-mode, too (may be seen as most easy
"out-of-the-box" [recent versions of GDB also provide COBOL syntax
highlighting).
In my opinion you can get out a much better source code debugger than
the animator ;-)
Other than GDB (plain, with binding, ...) there is also Gix-IDE [1],
which looks promising.
A "full gdb wrapper" in vscode is also available - the gnucobol-debug
extension [2]. That's the best option that I know for vscode based
editors, but that is "vscode only", no console option (but integrated
docker-support and also support for GC 2.2).
Speaking of vscode extensions the adjustable Rech COBOL Debugger [3]
seems very promising (you'd need the COBOLworx gdb extensions and create
a new configuration for that extension to work with GDB - I'd love to
see it working that way, but don't have the time to do this myself in
the next months).
There are also multiple "preparser" solutions available, the most known
one is likely TP-COBOL-DEBUGGER [4], but those seem to be only useful
nowadays if you need them for an older version of GnuCOBOL, not
supported with GDB extensions (or Gix-IDE).
Hope this helps - and if someone creates the configuration for the rech
extension: please drop a note :-)
Simon
[1]: https://sourceforge.net/p/gnucobol/discussion/cobol/thread/6f9cc8fe2a/
[2]: https://open-vsx.org/extension/OlegKunitsyn/gnucobol-debug
[3]: https://open-vsx.org/extension/rechinformatica/rech-cobol-debugger
[4]: https://sourceforge.net/projects/tp-cobol-debugg/
Am 18.05.2021 um 20:42 schrieb James K. Lowden:
Hi Michael!
On Tue, 18 May 2021 12:43:00 -0400
Michael Potter <pottmi@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Are there any full screen debuggers for GnuCOBOL that are comparable
to MicroFocus Animator?
https://cobolworx.com/pages/cbl-gdb.html
https://gitlab.cobolworx.com/COBOLworx/cbl-gdb
I really have no idea how it compares with the Animator. It's an
adapter for gdb that maps the generated C onto the Cobol source. It is
packaged to be used with the various incarnations of Visual Studio.
We would be interested in your feedback. It's a work in progress, and
of course patches are welcome!
--jkl
