>>i'm running on an i386 (so perhaps i'm biased) but i can run the
>>console in any of 25, 28, 40 and 50 lines, with 80 or 132 columns.
>>how easy would it be to make ddb automatically pick these from the
>>pcvt console driver and use then instead of the default 18 and 50?
>
>Ick!  DDB is MI code; it should never try to access MD code like
>pcvt.  A far better suggestion would be to add function(s) to the MI
>console interface to return the size of the console, if they don't
>already exist.

vis a vis your ick, i turned it around and made pcvt (see patch below)
nudge ddb to the correct size.  this became "necessary", since i find
myself dropping into the debugger more and more frequently now that
i'm hacking on the tcp stack.  :)

i'm guessing that the other architectures could do more or less the
same thing from their own hooks into the debugger.  but while my
"patch" does do it when i manually drop into the debugger, i still
won't win if the machine panics and i've never manually done the drop.

*** pcvt_kbd.c.orig	Fri Oct 18 07:18:00 1996
--- pcvt_kbd.c	Tue Jul  1 14:43:51 1997
***************
*** 1390,1395 ****
--- 1390,1399 ----
  
   		if(!in_Debugger)
   		{
+ 			extern db_max_width, db_max_line;
+ 			db_max_width = vs[0].maxcol;
+ 			db_max_line = vs[0].screen_rows;
+ 
   			in_Debugger = 1;
  #if PCVT_FREEBSD
  			/* the string is actually not used... */

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