Edit-and-continue

[Jonathan Wakely]

On 18 July 2010 16:25, Rick Hodgin wrote:
> Ian,
>
> The idea is to create a program database of the compiled program on a full compile. Then when asked to re-compile with the edit-and-continue switch, it only looks for changed code and compiles those few lines. Everything else it needs to carry out compilation is there from previous full-compile as was originally parsed, or from subsequent edit-and-continue compiles which updated the database.
>
> The resulting changes are passed to gdb for insertion into the running program's memory in real-time.

That might be harder to do for optimised code, where there isn't
necessarily a direct correspondence between individual source lines
and executable code.  IIUC Visual Studio will only debug unoptimised
code, gcc doesn't have the same distinction  between "debug build" and
"release build" - you can debug optimised code.  It would also need
more integration between gcc and gdb than currently exists.