>I recently was introduced to the wonderful world of programming
>debugging tools, using the CaseVision Workshop of SGI.  Now I realize
>it is unlikely there is anything this polished for NetBSD, I wanted to
>try the X interface to gdb, but although it compiles with no warnings,
>when I run it, it just exit, without even drawing a window when I place
>it.  Any ideas/site where I can get a binary?

Lousy error handling on xxgdb's part, and a lousy Imakefile.  What's happening
is that since it isn't including DEFGDB as part of the DEFINES variable,
-DGDB isn't being defined, and it's trying to use "dbx" as it's debugger.
Put this in the Imakefile:

#ifdef NetBSDArchitecture
DEFINES = $(DEFGDB)
#endif

Re-run xmkmf and remake xxgdb.  It should work.  (But to be honest, you
_could_ have tried debugging this yourself a little harder.)

>Secondly, from time to time I am forced to use Linux for portability
>testing, and programs like xxgdb that I can't make run on NetBSD.
>I can deal with the 50% drop in network performance, but I cannot deal
>with not having my files.  Putting my home directory in a msdos
>partition could  concievably work, but I would have no control over
>permissions, and since there is no NetBSD partition on the Linux/MSDOS 
>drive, disklabel has eaten my partition table.  Any ideas?

I'm afraid there isn't a good solution that I know of.  The only common
FS between the two operating systems is MSDOSFS.

--Ken