Contributions

From: Duane Ellis (duane_at_franklin.com)
Date: Thu Aug 20 1998 - 21:42:15 BST


Rod - I guess I should ask you.

We have a few additions we have done to UPS locally. I need to
integrate/test them into the latest & greatest one version of UPS -
for our own use.  [The additions we have done are listed below]

Once I get them integrated into the latest version, I'd like to
contribute them.

How should I go about doing this?

-Duane.

------------------------------------------------------------

The additions are:

Item (1) New Variable display format under "OTHER"

	 Hex String {aka: Hex dump}

	 Basically it displayes the variable using a 16 byte hex dump
	 instead of an octal string We find it much simpler to deal
	 with some of our compression generated data in a "HEX dump".

	 You can also edit the data in HEX form if you choose.

Item (2) New Variable display format under "OTHER"

         ISO String {ie: european text!}
   
	By default, UPS assumes that all strings letters in an char
	string are between 0x20..0x7E - here at Franklin We deal with
	a large amount of international text. It's easier to read
	european text with accents - then without.

	For example the name "Ren\351" (e-acute) would be displayed
	correctly using "ISO String". 

	This change has some limitations, if you don't have the font
	too bad. If your 'ups font' has the wrong encoding for your
	text - that's too bad.

Item (3) Longer Command line.

        By default, UPS only supports a 500 byte commandline.  It's
	not uncommon in our enviorment to have upto a 10K long
	commandline

	We've up'ed the #define to 10K bytes.

	[Typically these huge commandlines occur as a result of
	makefile expansion - no we don't type 10K of stuff the
	commandlines are typically generated]

Item (4) Automounter search path problems.

        At our site, we have 75+ Sparc stations running SunOS 4 (not
	solaris) We use GCC for all software development.

	When GCC inserts the 'stabs' debug record, it typically looks

	like this: /tmp_mnt/home/duane/game/code.c

        It really should be: /home/duane/game/code.c
	
	There are other simular auto-mounter releated problems
	that are solve by this fix/hack.

	When somebody else tries to debug the code on a different
	machine well /home/duane is an automount point - and UPS
	cannot find the source file - unless I insert a zillion search
	paths on the commandline.

	The 'hack' consists of:

	        when failing to find a source file - examine the
		existing name, if it begins with /tmp_mnt, skip that
		part - and try again.

	Our current implimentation has a few hard coded names that are
	site specific. (/tmp_mnt - is however quite comon)

	The implimenation that I propose to contribute would be to use
	some shell enviorment variable that lists the 'known
	automounter prefixes' for the users enviorment

	A better solution - would be to make UPS 'automounter aware'
	by making various system level calls [this approach while better
	is beyond by resources at this time]
	
	or make GCC 'automounter aware' and not insert this nasty
	stuff into the stabs records. (I think we submitted this to
	the GCC guys a while ago... Don't know what happened to it)
	But does not solve 'legacy' code that exists out there.


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