feature list
------------
o Fullscreen debugger
o Full symbolic debugging
o Very powerful tracing and breakpoint commands. You can trace until
a certain condition becomes true, or trace just before the next
branch, or trace until a certain register changes, ... PowerVisor has
profiler breakpoints, conditional breakpoints and a lot more
o Primitive source level debugging (C, assembler, ...) In future
more will be possible
o PowerVisor is compatible with the 68000, 68020 and 68030. The 68040
is also supported (in the disassembler for example) although some
features don't work on that processor (like memory protection) due
to lack of information
o Memory protection system. With this system you can read or write
protect ranges of memory for all or some tasks
o PowerVisor can show the MMU registers and special 68020/30 registers
o Primitive floating point support (display and modify registers). In
future more will be possible (like expressions)
o Powerful ARexx interface
o Intuition menus and gadtools scrollbars (AmigaDOS 2.0 version only)
o The PowerVisor screen is a public screen (only for AmigaDOS 2.0)
o Powerful expression evaluator. Almost all C operators are supported
and some additional operators as well
o Online help system with AmigaGuide or MultiView (for AmigaDOS 3.0)
or internal system
o Very customizable: screen or window on WorkBench, fonts, colours,
menus, multiple windows, ...
You can add your own PowerVisor commands with aliases
All keys can be redefined and you can add macros or commands to
any key you want
o You can call any library function you want from within PowerVisor.
With this feature you can test existing library functions or you
can test your own libraries
o Powerful stack usage checker. With this command you can see how
much stack a program uses
o Resource tracker. With this command you can see how much memory
a program allocates (and how much memory it doesn't deallocate),
all allocated signals, all locks and open files
o Profiler. With this system you can see which routines use much
CPU time and are useful to optimize
o Crash trapping
o You can kill and freeze tasks
o Powerful tag and structure system. With this system you can define
structures in PowerVisor. The disassembler will recognize these
structures if possible and it will use names for all offsets instead
of numbers. This makes debugging a lot easier
o PowerVisor can list almost anything: tasks, libraries, devices, ports,
resident modules, autoconfig devices, dos devices, windows, screens,
fonts, ...
In addition PowerVisor can dump the internal structures of many
operating system elements like tasks, processes, CLI structures, ...
o You can open any Exec device from within PowerVisor and send commands
to it. This is useful for debugging your own devices
o You can monitor the usage of a library function. Each time the
library function is called PowerVisor will perform some action (like
printing a message, or storing the information from the call in a
buffer, or simply blinking the powerled)
o PowerVisor can list the gadgets of a window
o PowerVisor can remove a lot of things like tasks, resident modules,
input handlers, windows, screens, ...
- New '#' operator to get the address for a linenumber in the
currently loaded source
- It is now possible to issue ARexx commands to PowerVisor even when
PowerVisor is in hold mode
- The speed of PowerVisor output has been greatly enhanced. I don't
use RawDoFmt anymore for the conversion of an integer to a
hexadecimal string. The speed difference is very large with
the 'memory' command
- Better floatingpoint support with 'fregs' and 'float'
- The complete documentation has been converted to AmigaGuide
(© Commodore) format. There are four new standard alias commands
provided for easy access to the documentation from within
PowerVisor. With 'ahelp' you simply go to the main screen, with
'cmdhelp' you can ask help about any command, with 'funhelp' you
can ask help about any function and with 'index' you can search
any topic you want in the complete PowerVisor hypertext manual.
Note that you need AmigaGuide to be able to use these four new
aliases
- New install script for AmigaDOS 2.0 which makes use of the
wonderful 'Installer' program (© Commodore). It is highly
recommended that you install PowerVisor with this script
(if you have AmigaDOS 2.0 of course)
- Instead of \0a it is now possible to use \n. This is more
intuitive
- New 'appendto' command to append the output of a command to
a file. This new command is completely equivalent to the 'to'
command except that the output is appended to a (possibly)
existing file
- Four new aliases in 's:pv/ExtraAliases': 'm0', 'm1', 'v0' and 'v1'.
With these aliases you can go back with 'memory' and 'view'
- The restriction that there can only be one PowerVisor in memory
at the same time is removed. You can now run as many instances
of PowerVisor as you wish (and as memory permits). However, only
the first (the master) PowerVisor traps crashes and allows
debugging. The name of the ARexx port, the PowerVisor port, the
input handler and the public screen are extended with a dot ('.')
and the number of the slave (starting with 1). The master instance
does not have this extension
- New 'pv' constant to ask the number of the PowerVisor instance
(0 = master, 1 = first slave, ...)
- New 'pubscreen' function to get the name of the public screen
for this instance. Very useful for ARexx scripts
- New 'arexxport' function to get the name of the ARexx port
for this instance. Very useful for ARexx scripts
- New '-c' commandline option to skip the reading of the
PowerVisor-config file. PowerVisor uses all the default values
- New '-s' commandline option to skip the reading of the
PowerVisor-startup script
- New 'a' option for 'attach' so that a command is always executed
(invisible) even if PowerVisor is busy doing something else
- The 'string' command has a new optional argument for the maximum
length of the returned string
- New 'getline' function to get the pointer to the line on the
current position
- Added new hilighting technique to the window system: inverse video
- New 'ListEnv.pv' script for a specialized list environment (see
the script for more information)
- New \01, \02, \03 and \04 characters useful for hilighting text
on the PowerVisor window
- New optional argument for 'debug n' and 'debug c'. Normally those
two commands waited for the next process or task. With this
optional argument you can wait for the n'th process or task with
n greater than 1. This is useful if you want to debug a task
that is started immediately after a certain program runs (for
example)
- The 'stru' list (the list containing all structure definitions)
now always contains some structures that were already present in
PowerVisor but not accessible until now. You can now use 'peek'
and 'apeek' to read or write values in the standard structures
(like 'task', 'proc', 'cli', 'wins', ...)
- MAJOR MAJOR MAJOR MAJOR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
AT LAST! The MMU memory protection system is here and it even
works! All you need is a 68020 with a 68851 or a 68030 (at this
moment the 68040 is not supported) and you can use this extremely
powerful feature. You can protect any region of memory for write
access or for read access
- The new MMU memory protection system uses the already existing
tag system to describe the protected regions. The 'addtag' command
has been extended to allow for extra protection flags for a region
of memory. The 'tags' command has been extended to show these
extra flags
- New 'watch' command to enable the new memory protection system.
This command also moves the VBR to another position so that writing
in low memory is not as harmful anymore
- New 'protect' command to protect memory according to the current
tag list. Use this command in combination with 'watch'
- New 'getmmuentry' function for some specialized control over the
new MMU features
- Three new scripts ('ProtectRCustom', 'ProtectWCustom' and
'StopCustom') to protect illegal custom chip access. These scripts
make use of the new memory protection system
- New 'tagtype' command. With this command you can assign a certain
tag list for the protection of one task only. In this manner you
can protect regions for one task but not for the others, or you
can have other protection characteristics for each task. For
example: task 1 may write on some region but can't read while
another task can read but not write on the same region (or part
of it)
- Disassembler is a bit faster (10000 instructions disassemble in
35 seconds instead of 46 (still no blazing speed however))
- MAJOR: Disassembler understands tags and structures when you are
debugging (in the debug display). An example: If a1 contains a
pointer to a structure in memory and there is a tag for this
memory that defines the structure, then the instruction:
MOVE.L (<offset>,A1),D0
will automatically be disassembled as:
MOVE.L (<name of offset>,A1),D0
The only thing you need to do to get this feature is to load
all needed structures with 'addstruct' and define your memory
regions with 'addtag'
- There is also a new 'TypeMemory' script that defines tags
for some standard structures
- New 'struct' command. With this command you can make and change
structures in an interactive way. This is VERY useful in combination
with the tag system and the structure offset disassembly mentioned
above. You can also save the newly made structures. So you don't
have to use 'mstruct' (external utility) anymore to make a simple
structure you were only going to use once anyway
- The loading of symbols is a LOT faster. Loading 1850 symbols used
to take about 34 seconds. Now it only takes 3 seconds!
- All PowerVisor windows now share the same port. This means that you
can open as many windows as memory permits. There is no longer a
limit of five windows
- Added '_node' standard structure to the 'stru' list
- New 'fd6' alias in 's:pv/ExtraAliases' to load the fd-file
corresponding to the library currently in @a6 (while debugging)
- Totally new internal memory mamagement system.
advantages :
o No more MungWall hits
o Slightly faster
o Compatible with all possible future operating systems (this
was not completely the case for the previous memory management
system)
disadvantages
o PowerVisor uses somewhat more memory
- New 'pvmem' command to see how PowerVisor uses memory (only useful
for PowerVisor debugging purposes)
- PowerVisor detaches from the CLI (only if you have AmigaDOS 2.0
or higher)
- New commandline option '-d' to disable detaching
- New 'a' option in 'source' command. With this option you can show
the source starting with another label
- New 'h' option in 'source' command. With this option you can lock
the source logical window. When this is done, the source will no
longer follow the program counter
- 'refresh' (with the 'refresh' command) will from now on also work
when you have activated another PowerVisor (or physical) window.
You need not activate the 'Main' physical window anymore (Note!
This is only true while another POWERVISOR window is active)
- New support for scrollbars (with GadTools, so this feature only
works for the AmigaDOS 2.0 version) in logical windows so that you
can scroll in the window with the mouse. This feature is disabled
by default. Use 'mode sbar' to enable it (and 'mode nosbar' to
disable it again)
- New flags in logical window for scrollbars
- The 'Source' logical window has seperate scrollbar handling
routines. Instead of scrolling the logical window, the scrollbar
in the 'Source' logical window scrolls in the loaded file
- The 'Source' logical window always has a scrollbar (note that
you can change this with the 'prefs' command). NOTE! This feature
is NOT true if you still work with an old 'PowerVisor-config'
file. Delete this file (or use 'prefs logwin ...' and 'saveconfig'
manually if you have an old (pre-V1.40) configuration file
- The 'Debug' and 'Source' logical windows now refresh correctly in
all circumstances
- 'pvcall 65' is obsolete and is replaced by an equivalent, but
less powerful, routine (so scripts using 'pvcall 65' will not
crash)
- New powerful 'prof' command for profiling. With this command you
can monitor a task you are debugging. Using this feature you can
choose which routines are candidates for optimization
- New 'debug q' option to prevent a debug task from quiting. This
is useful in combination with the profiler. Normally when a debug
tasks quits, all symbols are removed. All information in the
profiler table would loose its meaning. To prevent this you can
use 'debug q'
- New 'AllocSignal', 'CreateMsgPort', 'CreateIORequest', 'Lock',
'UnLock', 'Open', 'Close', 'OpenFromLock', 'DupLock',
'DupLockFromFH', 'AllocRaster' and 'FreeRaster' patches in 'track'
command (resource tracker)
- Bug fix: it was not possible any more to run more than two instances
of PowerVisor at the same time
- Bug solved in the AmigaDOS 1.3 version of PowerVisor: the 'stack'
and 'prof' commands probably never worked at all! I never tested
these two commands in AmigaDOS 1.3. The bug is now fixed
- Menu file has been enhanced a little bit
- New 'mode dirty' and 'mode nodirty' options to allow debugging
programs that use 'trap' instructions. When 'mode dirty' is on
PowerVisor will correctly execute the trap handler the program
installed, but this option is not on by default because it is
not very system friendly (it patches some exception vectors which
are considered private) and it makes debugging a little bit slower
(especially conditional tracing and such). When 'mode nodirty'
is on your Amiga will crash when you try to debug programs that
use 'trap' instructions. You are warned!
- The 'quit' command did not work on 68000 Amiga's (Why does one
need this command anyway :-)
- 'trace c' (conditional tracing) is a little bit faster
- 'trace r' (register tracing) is a little bit faster
- New 'trace q' (quick conditional tracing) for faster conditional
tracing. The advantage of this new command is that it is a lot
faster (compared with 'trace c'). The disadvantage is that it only
works with very primitive expressions (it uses a simple expression
compiler)
- 'mmurtest' and 'mmuwtest' are removed since they didn't seem to
give any useful information and I was hunting for routines to
optimize (removing a complete routine is one of the best possible
optimization methods :-)
- Solved little bug in floatingpoint debugging in combination with
AmigaDOS 3.0
- PowerVisor uses NewLook menus if you have AmigaDOS 3.0
- New 'trace gf', 'trace qf', 'trace cf' and 'trace rf' commands.
These commands are equivalent to 'trace g', 'trace q', 'trace c'
and 'trace r' respectivelly. The difference is that the conditional
test to stop tracing is only done when a change of programflow
occurs. This is a lot faster but somewhat less accurate. These
four new commands only work if you have a 68020 or higher in your
Amiga
- I finally located and solved the bug that haunted the AmigaDOS 1.3
version of PowerVisor. I THINK that debugging works perfectly
now in AmigaDOS 1.3 with a 68000 (or any other) processor
- Stacksize for programs to debug is set to 20000 instead of 10000
(in future it will be possible to change this number without
having to reassemble PowerVisor :-)
- From now on it is also allowed to type 'a = 3' instead of
'a=3'. In other words, you may put spaces round the '=' in an
assignment. Note that it is still not possible to use spaces
in expressions. Thus 'a=a + 1' is still not valid
- PowerVisor no longer crashes when it can't find a source file
for the sourcelevel debugger
- s:pv/PrintMode.pv is updated for the new 'mode' arguments
- Little bug fixed in 'info', 'list exec', 'interprete', ... when
the PowerVisor window only has 80 columns. In that case, each
output line would not fit on one line. This is now fixed
- 'duse' correctly refreshes the source logical window
- Refreshing of the 'debug' and 'source' logical windows is
better. The windows are correctly refreshed in combination with
the 'duse', 'dwin' and 'swin' commands. This was not the case
in earlier versions of PowerVisor
- The 'with', 'tg', 'on', 'appendto' and 'to' commands remember the
result from the command that is executed.
Using this feature you can, for example, transfer register values
from one debug task to another
- 'with' works better in combination with the fullscreen debugger.
The fullscreen debug display is not refreshed with the 'with'
command
- New floating point routines (Adriaan vd Brand). The 'fregs' and
'float' commands are now fully functional
- Bug solved in 'mode' command. Some arguments prevented the
proper execution of the other arguments. This could even
cause crashes in some weird cases (this probably solved the bug
that caused some strange crashes about once in a month)
- 'mode' command is a lot better. Less flashing, less buggy and
the 'mode' settings are restored when there is an error. It is
also possible to type 'mode no lace' instead of 'mode nolace'
(the old format is still supported). In other words, the 'no'
keyword is considered seperate. This keyword also works for
flags which are not toggles, but the meaning of this is not
always very useful (for example, you can do 'mode no pal'. The
result will be that PowerVisor switches to the default monitor)
- 'mode patch' now works from the beginning. This should solve some
debugging problems on some Amiga's
- 'mode viking' is renamed to 'mode a2024'
- New 'default', 'euro36', 'euro72', 'sup72' and 'super' arguments
for 'mode' command (support for extra ECS screen modes)
- All signals are freed on exit
- New 'dprevi' and 'dnexti' commands to scroll in the fullscreen
debugger instruction by instruction. The 'dnexti' command works
perfectly in all cases but the 'dprevi' command can fail and go
back to the wrong instruction. If that is the case, simply
run 'dprevi' again, and chances are that everything will be ok
again
- The new 'dprevi' and 'dnexti' commands are attached to the
<ctrl>-<up> and <ctrl>-<down> keys. You can still use <ctrl>-<left>
and <ctrl>-<right> to scroll in multiples of 2 bytes
- 'StackPtr' is replaced by 'StackU' in task listing (stack usage
is more useful than the stackpointer which you can see with the
'info' command anyway)
- The 'getstack' function will compute the REAL maximum used stack
size instead of an estimate
- The output for commands like 'list', 'vars', 'alias', ... is a LOT
faster. This is significant if you want to use the 'refresh'
command
- 'info' did not seem to work for function monitor nodes (made with
'addfunc') with type 'fullled'. The display for the first task was
correct, but not for all following tasks
- 'pathname' and 'unlock' were to critical in their test to see if
the argument is really a lock
- Interrupting the 'lock' listing will (at last!) give a 'Break...'
message. This bug was harmless but I fixed it anyway :-)
- Bug solved in 'to' command. If the 'to' command failed because
you didn't specify the second argument (the 'command' to execute)
the file would not be closed
- Similar bug fixed in 'tg' command. If you didn't specify the
'command' argument, the current tag list would not be restored
to the original value. This is of course less harmful than the
previous bug
- New fields in task structure ('_task' in 'stru' list and 'info'
command) : 'TC_FLAGS', 'TC_LAUNCH' and 'TC_SWITCH'
- Some fields have changed their name (because they wouldn't fit
in the available space). Especially in the ExecBase and
GraphicsBase structures ('exec' and 'graf' lists)
- Bug fixed in the execution of macros (with 'attach' command) and
the output for ARexx macros (with 'rx'), Refresh (with 'refresh')
and PortPrint (with an external program using the 'PowerVisor'
library). Sometimes the output of the macro would not appear
on the current logical window, but on the special current logical
window for the previously mentioned type of output ('Rexx',
'Refresh' or 'PPrint' logical windows)
- New 'p' and 'pf' options for the 'trace' command ('pf' is only
for 68020 or higher) for 'profile tracing'. With this feature
you can get the exact amount of times each symbol in your
program is called (with the 'pf' option) or simply passed
(with the 'p' option). This command makes use of the profiler
system that was already present with the 'prof' command. It may
seem unbelievable, but this new command is implemented with only
12 extra machinelanguage instructions (no macros!), one extra
byte in a string and one extra longword in a table!
- New 'getsymstr' function to get the name of the symbol on an
address (not for general use)
- 'quit' will ask for confirmation if the user wants to quit
while there are still some debug nodes in memory
- New 'symbol t' command to remove all temporary symbols from the
symbol table. Temporary symbols are symbols that start with a
dot '.' or end with a '$' and only contain digits
- The 'refresh command' (the command that is executed once in a
while by the refresh handler (see 'refresh')) starts a new page
at each tick (a new logical page). This means that there will be
no more wrong -MORE- messages when the 'refresh' logical
window is not open
- Bug fixed in 'colrow' and 'setfont'. These two commands would
ignore the settings set with 'colrow' (yes, 'colrow' ignored
the settings set by 'colrow' :-) for standard logical windows.
For all other logical windows (opened with 'openlw') the
'colrow' command worked fine
- Most commands which have a logical window as an argument check
if the argument is really a logical window (a simple consistency
check)
- When you used 'screen 0' or 'screen <other screen>' (so that
the PowerVisor 'main' window is no backdrop window) PowerVisor
would not activate this window automatically
- Bug solved in 'rblock' command. When this command failed (because
there was no disk in the drive for example), the allocated memory
would not be freed correctly. This could cause crashes
- Bug solved in 'loadtags' and 'savetags'. 'loadtags' would not work
if there was a tag definition for address 0 in the file. The
disadvantage of the fix is that tag files are NOT compatible
anymore!!! If you have important tag files you can fix them by
changing the last four bytes of the file (this should be 00000000)
to FFFFFFFF (-1)
- I FINALLY solved the bug that's been haunting me for years
(literally)! This bug involved the 'front', 'hold', 'screen' and
'mode' commands. Whenever PowerVisor temporarily closes its
screen there was a potential problem. This problem was almost
always noticable when you issued a 'front' command from within
ARexx when PowerVisor was in hold mode. This would cause an
almost certain crash. If you had unexpected crashes using 'mode',
'screen' or 'hold', these would probably be caused by this bug.
But don't despair! The bug has been fixed!!! I checked my private
history file and I think that this bug must have been made on 5
January 1991 (the introduction of the current window system for
PowerVisor)
- It is now possible to execute ARexx commands with output while
PowerVisor is in hold mode without crashing the system (for one
thing because of the bug fix mentioned above and also because of
yet another bug fix)
- Commands like 'scan' and functions like 'key' are now safe to
use when PowerVisor is in hold mode (This means that '-MORE-'
also works). These commands and functions are simply ignored
while in hold mode. Also commands like all the logical window
commands, the physical window commands, 'mode' for screen
arguments (like 'fancy', 'lace', ...) and 'screen' are also
safe to use from within hold mode. 'screen' is ignored but all
other commands are performed invisible. When the screen is
open again everything will have happened as if the screen
was never closed
- New flags for 'gadgets' command: 'TABCYCLE' and 'STRINGEXT'
- In spite of all the previous improvements the new PowerVisor is
still smaller than version 1.31!
- I REALLY solved the bug in 'quit' and 'debug' for 68000 processors.
From now on, debugging should work on the 'little' Amiga's :-)
This is the main reason that I release this new version so soon
without waiting for more new features to emerge (I still have a
lot of new features to implement)
- Bug solved in CLI commandline parsing. Using the '-d' option at the
end of all other options would discard the previous options. This
is solved
- The PowerVisor parser is a little bit extended to allow calling
library functions with conflicting names (with variables). You
can now use quotes for library functions (and you can't use
quotes for variables) so if you want to call the Input dos.library
function (for example), you can use 'input'()
- Bug solved for dummy debug nodes (created with 'debug d') and
the source level debugging. This bug was also visible with the
'duse' command even if you didn't use the source level debugger
- Little bug solved in 'assem.pv' (see 'asm' alias for assembler)
- Bug solved in 'fit' command (bug was introduced in the previous
version 1.40). This command simply didn't work
- 'cmdline.pv' ARexx script (a primitive way to support debugging
on a normal shell (maybe even remote debugging)) is a little
better
- Fixed bug for 68040 processors (Amiga 4000). You needed the '-m0'
option for PowerVisor to run on an 68040 processor. This is not
needed anymore
- Address errors are fully recoverable on the 68000 processor. Thanks
to John Harper for making the necessary adjustments to my source
- PowerVisor uses 'MultiView' (AmigaDOS 3.0) instead of 'AmigaGuide'
for the hypertext documentation. You have to change the alias
defined in the PowerVisor-startup file to use 'AmigaGuide' again
- New 'mhelp' alias to use 'MultiView' instead of 'AmigaGuide'
('MultiView' is new in AmigaDOS 3.0)
- You can also use the 'f' (flow) option after the 'n' trace option
(instead of tracing multiple instructions, this traces multiple
branches)
- You can also use the 'f' (flow) option after the 'j' trace option.
This option is recommended for 'trace j' if you have an 68020
or higher
- New 'r' option after 'trace n', 'trace g', 'trace p', 'trace r',
'trace q', 'trace c' and 'trace j'. With this option PowerVisor
will singlestep the current routine and will execute all
subroutines called from within this routine at full speed. Using
this feature you can limit your singlestep condition to the
current routine
- The documentation for 'trace' is better (in 'CommandRef.guide')
- New 'while' command to repeat actions
- New 'checksum' function to compute the checksum for a region of
memory
- New 'trace z' (with optional 'f' and 'r') to trace until the
checksum for a given memory range changes
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