DDD - Data Display Debugger - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)

DDD News
About DDD
Getting DDD
Building DDD
Documentation
Alpha Releases
Reporting Bugs
Help and Assistance
References

DDD News

(2008/05/06) New plans for DDD. The new maintainer has communicated to the official DDD distribution list about the intention of change the GUI to a Qt based interface. At the end, it seems that what is going to happens is that DDD will have two branches, one with a GUI based in Qt and other based in Gtkmm, with a common core that will be independent of the GUI. So, it will be possible putting any other GUI based in any other library. As you know Qt is GPL v3 licensed.
(2008/04/30) New maintainer found: Jose Maria Gomez Vergara. If you want to know a little more about the new maintainer you can have a look to his profile in Linkedin.
Following the DRY (Dont repeat yourself) he has put here a link to his professional profile at LinkedIn:
(2008/03/03) Seeking a new maintainer. We are officially looking for a new person to take over as maintainer of DDD. When I (Andrew) began doing it back in 2003, my day-job permitted me to spend a percentage of time on it. That's no longer the case. As you can see, it's been over two years since the last release, and I'm worried that DDD is suffering from this lack of attention. So if you feel you are sufficiently (a) dedicated and (b) qualified to take over as maintainer, please let me know. Two possible projects might be of interest:
- Add in functionality to display C++ standard containers (std::vector, std::map, et al). This is likely to require work on gdb too.
- Move the DDD codebase to a modern widget-set. Motif is quite labour-intensive, which makes it unnecessarily hard to fix bugs and add new features. The fact that it's C-based means is isn't a good fit when the rest of the code-base is C++. It also doesn't match modern desktop environments. Using a modern toolkit such at gtkmm would be a great improvement to DDD. The work involved in this transition is not to be underestimated. DDD is a rich GUI app, and there is no clean separation of logic between the UI and the rest of the code.
And of course, there's the usual stream (trickle, actually) of bug fixes to deal with. I estimate that you'll need to spend about 3 hours per week on bug-fixing and answering queries on the mailing list. That'll increase if you take on one of the challenges above (or one of your own, of course).
(2005/10/16) The DDD mailing list is now for subscribers only. Since I took over from Andreas as the maintainer of DDD, I've been trying to get admin access to the mailing list server web interface, in order to make the list a subscriber-only list. In other words, only those subscribed to the list can post messages to it. I'm pleased to say that I've finally got help from the system admins at gnu.org, who have granted me access. So from now on, the DDD list will be a closed list. Anyone who wishes to discuss DDD is welcome to subscribe. Anyone who is a subscriber can post with no restrictions. I regret that this can't be an open list any more, but this is the spam-strewn world in which we live.
(2005/03/16) DDD 3.3.11 is now available. DDD-3.3.11 fixes a problem introduced in 3.3.10 which affected DBX users. It also features a fix that helps when using I18N encondings.
(2004/10/20) DDD 3.3.10 is now available. DDD-3.3.10 features many, many improvements to perl-5.8.x support. It also provides fixes for Sun's SunONE Studio dbx, as well as some fixes for MacOS X.
(2004/06/24) DDD 3.3.9 is now available. DDD-3.3.9 brings support for PHP; this is largely untested, so feedback is most welcome. Locating source files when using dbx now works automatically. The perl version supported by DDD is now 5.8.x; unfortunately there remain a few wrinkles, but we're working on them. The debugger settings window now starts at a larger, more reasonable size, and allows the user to resize it. Several minor bugs have been fixed, memory leaks plugged, code cleaned up, etc. And lastly, builds on many platforms have been improved, both with G++ 3.x and with various vendor compilers. If you've had problems building DDD on your platform (HPUX, Cygwin, Tru64, Solaris, Irix, AIX), then this is the DDD version that's for you!
(2003/11/10) DDD 3.3.8 is now available. DDD 3.3.8 contains some important memory corruption fixes, and better interoperation with gdb-5.x, gdb-6.0, and the Perl debugger. In addition, Arnaud Desitter has made literally hundreds of micro-optimisations throughout the codebase. Builds on HPUX-10.20 and NetBSD are improved too. The manual is now distributed in PS, PDF, and texinfo sources in the main distribution tarball (previously, it was a separate bundle). DDD 3.3.8 is the fastest and most stable DDD yet -- I strongly recommend upgrading if you are using an earlier version.
(2003/07/31) DDD 3.3.7 is now available. DDD 3.3.7 brings debugging of bash scripts (together with bashdb) and improved conformity with ISO C++: in particular, G++-3.x is now the compiler recommended for DDD. G++-2.x versions will definitely not work, and will no longer be supported.
(2003/05/15) Andreas Zeller has handed maintainership of DDD to Andrew Gaylard.

GNU DDD is a graphical front-end for command-line debuggers such as GDB, DBX, WDB, Ladebug, JDB, XDB, the Perl debugger, the bash debugger, or the Python debugger. Besides ``usual'' front-end features such as viewing source texts, DDD has become famous through its interactive graphical data display, where data structures are displayed as graphs.

For more information (and more screenshots), see the DDD Manual.

Where do I get DDD source?

DDD can be found at /gnu/ddd/ on ftp.gnu.org. DDD can also be found at SourceForge. You can also download GNU DDD from any GNU FTP server near you or buy copies on CD-ROM from the FSF. The ddd/ directory contains the DDD source distribution:

ddd-version.tar.gz -- this package is the one you want. It includes

the complete DDD source code,
building instructions, as well as
the DDD manual in TeXinfo, Info, PostScript, and PDF formats.

Here are further instructions on how to download and unpack GNU packages.

Where do I get DDD binaries?

The FSF does not distribute DDD binaries. You can ask for help if you need technical support.

DDD binaries for GNU/Linux are typically available via your GNU/Linux distributor:

DDD packages for Debian GNU/Linux are found here.
DDD RPMs can be found in http://rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/search.php?query=ddd.

The written word provides binaries of freely available software for various platforms. Their FTP server contains DDD and XPM packages.

What do I need to build DDD?

To build DDD from sources, you need

The DDD source distribution (see above).
The GNU compiler collection (GCC), version 3.0 or higher (or another ISO C++ compiler).
The LessTif user interface toolkit, version 0.89 or higher (or another Motif-compatible user interface toolkit).

The simplest way to build DDD is:

Unpack the DDD source distribution
Change into the ddd-version subdirectory
Type ./configure; make

To run DDD, you need the GNU debugger (GDB), version 4.16 or later (or another command-line debugger such as DBX, WDB, Ladebug, JDB, XDB, the Perl debugger, or the Python debugger).

How do I get started with DDD?

The DDD Manual contains a detailed tutorial.

Here are some free third-party tutorials on the Web:

There's an article on DDD in Dr. Dobb's Journal.
The book Programmierwerkzeuge has a detailed chapter on debugging with GDB and DDD (in German; select "Kapitel 11").
LinuxFocus has a DDD tutorial in English, Spanish, German, French, Korean, and Turkish.
Linux-Magazin has another DDD tutorial (in German).

Where do I get DDD alpha releases?

Recent (not necessarily tested) snapshots of GNU DDD can be found at http://sourceforge.net/projects/ddd/.

The DDD CVS repository (containing all versions of DDD, including the very latest changes) is available via http://sourceforge.net/projects/ddd/.

I have found a bug! How do I report it?

You can report bugs to bug-ddd at gnu.org. Before you do this, please check the following:

Please read the section ``Bugs and How to Report Them'' toward the end of the DDD Manual.
Be sure to include a copy of your ~/.ddd/log file which tells your DDD configuration as well as the interaction between DDD and the underlying command-line debugger.

The purpose of reporting a bug is to enable the bug to be fixed for the sake of the whole community of users. You may or may not receive a response; the maintainers will send one if that helps them find or verify a fix. Most GNU maintainers are volunteers and all are overworked; they don't have time to help individuals and still fix the bugs and make the improvements that everyone wants. If you want help for yourself in particular, you may have to hire someone for technical support.

If you are willing to help fixing DDD bugs, you can subscribe to the bug-ddd mailing list or access its archives.

I have a question regarding DDD. Where do I get assistance?

We have a general-purpose mailing list devoted to DDD. You can ask any questions to ddd at gnu.org. Patches and new releases are also announced here. Subscription info and mailing list archives are available. Owing to abuse by spammers, it is necessary to subscribe before posting to the list.

If you need technical support on DDD, you can ask for technical support.

Where can I learn more about debugging and debuggers?

Here's a couple of related resources:

GDB Home Page. Includes latest patches and development snapshots.
LessTif. The free Motif clone.
GVD. The GNU Visual Debugger.
HP Wildebeest (WDB). A port of GDB to PA-RISC/HP-UX, by HP.
Insight. A very nice GUI for GDB from Redhat, the GDB maintainers.
KDbg. A KDE-based GDB Interface with inspection of variable values in a tree structure.
xxgdb. The oldest and simplest X interface for GDB and DBX.
tgdb. A Tcl/Tk GDB interface (similar to Turbo Debugger or CodeView).
deet. A simple and extensible graphical debugger.
A list of available Perl debuggers. The ultimate Perl reference.
A GUI for the Perl Debugger. Written in Perl.
GNU Nana. Improved support for assertions and logging in C and C++.
GNU Checker. A tool to find memory errors at runtime
xwpe. A programming environment integrating a program editor with an external debugger.
Valgrind. No-one developing C or C++ code under Linux/x86 or Linux/PPC should be without it.

Have fun with DDD!

Current Maintainer:
Jose María Gómez Vergara <josemaria at jmgv dot org>

Former Maintainers:
Andreas Zeller <zeller at gnu.org>

Andrew Gaylard <apg at users dot sf dot net>

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Updated: $Date: 2008/05/06 21:16:31 $ $Author: jmgv $