Subject: Re: ddb Upcoming enhancements/changes/history
To: John Hawkinson <jhawk@mit.edu>
From: Erik Fair <fair@clock.org>
List: tech-kern
Date: 05/27/2000 23:36:54
The number One thing that DDB needs from where I sit is helpful help 
text, with particular reference to the machine dependent commands. 
When you have a dead kernel in front of you, unless you're a 
developer, you don't have man pages or web browsers handy, and it's a 
pain in the patoot to have to try every bloody variation of "mach 
halt" or "mach prom" and so on to get back the system firmware...

At minimum, there should be two levels of help:

	help - gives the command list
	help command - gives the behavior and arguments of "command".

In fact, some of the nominally "machine dependent" commands ought to 
have common names (like "halt" or "prom") even when they have a 
machine dependent implementation. I bet a survey of the machine 
dependent DDB commands would find a bunch which could be elevated to 
MI, with an MD implementation.

	Erik <fair@clock.org>