Demi Marie Obenour writes: > On 9/19/25 14:45, Alyssa Ross wrote: >> Demi Marie Obenour writes: >> >>> On 9/8/25 05:25, Alyssa Ross wrote: >>>> Demi Marie Obenour writes: >>>> >>>>> The version of less in BusyBox cannot handle horizontal scrolling, so it >>>>> is much less useful for debugging than less(1). As long as it less is >>>>> needed, it is better to have a more useful version. >>>>> >>>>> Signed-off-by: Demi Marie Obenour >>>> >>>> Is it needed? >>> >>> When I was debugging, I kept getting frustrated with limitations >>> of Busybox less. This patch helped me quite a bit, so yes, I think >>> it is needed. >> >> What I mean is: is less needed at all? (I was referring to you saying >> "as long as less is needed".) >> >> So far I haven't added tools that are only useful for debugging to the >> image (although the core dump handler is an exception). I frequently >> use strace, for example, but I don't think it really belongs as part of >> the system image. less is only really present at all because it snuck >> is as part of busybox. I also don't want to have images used for >> development to differ from the real ones, because then wee can miss >> stuff in testing more easily. So here's an idea: what if we attach an >> extra block device in "make run" that includes some debugging tools, and >> then that can easily be mounted to get the extra tools when needed for >> development, while still being able to use a normal build of the >> Spectrum host system? > > That's a great idea! I'll work on it later, though. In the future > it might make sense to provide a debug build of Spectrum for use by > developers tracking down problems. That's a task for even further > in the future. I mean ideally I'd prefer we never have a debug build, because as soon as that exists it'll start diverging from a real one. Would be fine to distribute an extra image full of debugging tools or whatever though, in a way that could be used on a real system as well as just in the development environment.