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On shipping software and the fate CorDBG

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We are in the end game for .NET Framework 2.0 and I *LOVE* this stage of the product… it is so cool because there is so much pressure to ship the right product at the right time that ideas get tested and retested in a crucible of reviews. There are no sacred cows at this stage – everything is on the table. We consider and reconsider cuts, changes, tweaks we could make to the product to ensure we can have a high quality, usable product in the right timeframe. It is in that vein that we revisit the fate of CorDBG (a command line debugger for the managed code).

If you have not used CorDbd you can stop reading now…

Last year, Mike Stall asked you about some feedback regarding cordbg. The feedback was helpful and it got us think even harder about this space…

Our current thinking is that we could meet customer needs best by focusing the limited time we have left in the 2.0 development cycle on the core MDbg debugger itself, and dropping support for the CorDbg skin. As I am sure you could imagine, trying to emulate the behavior of a different debugger is relatively expensive to do well and we don’t currently see it being a great return on investment. We also believe that having only one “blessed” command-line debugger will decrease the confusion and support costs created by giving customers two choices here. Of course we’d like to release the source for the skin (CorDBG) as a sample that people could play with and use if they like, but it wouldn’t be included in the SDK. Initial feedback from people we’ve talked to is that the quality/functionality of our .NET Framework 2.0 command-line debugger is much more important to them than maintaining the look-and-feel of CorDbg. But we wanted to open it up to a broader audience… what do you think?

So, my question to you… if I gave you $100 to spend on command-line debuggers in for .NET Framework 2.0, how would you allocate that money?

_____ Quality of MDbg

_____ Functionality of MDbg

_____ Release CorDbg skin in source form for developers to use\modify

_____ Release CorDbg skin in completely supported form

_____ Other:

Love to hear your allocation and your comments… while we can’t always make every customer 100% happy, we do value your feedback as it helps us make more informed decisions.

Update: if you have issues or questions about MDbg please send them to use: ClrMdbg@microsoft.com

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 15, 2005
    50, 30, 20, 0, 0


  • Anonymous
    March 15, 2005
    30,70,0,0,0
    It's time to have a managed code Debugger,
    so my money goes for more functionality. MDebug (or CorDGB for that matter) is not (yet) a Debugger.

  • Anonymous
    March 15, 2005
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    March 16, 2005
    45, 45, 10, 0, 0

  • Anonymous
    March 16, 2005
    Quality of MDbg: 70
    Functionality of MDbg: 20
    Release CorDbg skin in source form for developers to usemodify: 5
    Release CorDbg skin in completely supported form : 0
    Other: Scaring cows - 5

  • Anonymous
    March 17, 2005
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    March 17, 2005
    49, 49, 2, 0, 0

  • Anonymous
    March 18, 2005
    Quality of MDbg: 50
    Functionality of MDbg: 30
    Release CorDbg skin in source form for developers to usemodify: 20
    Release CorDbg skin in completely supported form : 0
    Other: 0

    Quality is more important than functionality.

  • Anonymous
    March 20, 2005
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    August 13, 2005
    Soma (my boss's boss's boss's boss) recently blogged about how the CLR took a major change to fix Nullable. ...

  • Anonymous
    February 14, 2006
    MDbg is a debugger for managed code written entirely in C# (and IL), which started shipping in the CLR...

  • Anonymous
    November 22, 2006
    MDbg is a debugger for managed code written entirely in C# (and IL), which started shipping in the CLR

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