dmd 1.0 symbolic debugging on Ubuntu 9.04

[y0uf00bar]

I upgraded a VMWare Ubuntu from 8.10 to 9.04.

Installation of zerobugs specific for 9.04 succeeded, but unable to
run by typing "zero" at the command line. Output read something like..

Detecting plugins...
Cache detached,
Error Signal 11.

There is an ambiguity in text on the download version page. The page
asks to pick the version based on "the processor". However my
processor on the VMWare ubuntu shows up /proc/cpuinfo as
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz, and the host machine
runs AMD 64 bit version of OS (Arch linux actually). The guest is
running 32 bit OS ( uname -m returns "i686"). After experiencing the
above failure I tried to install the 64-bit version, but of course, as
I expected, the installer requires the OS match type, and not the
processor type.

I succeeded in getting the 8.04 version to work on 9.04 by installing
its expected versions of dependent packages libboost-python and
libgtksourceview. At start up zero did output that ***** Python plug-
in expects interpreter 2.5.2 got: 2.5.4.

I stepped through a D1 program compiled with -g and setting
breakpoints on the version for 8.04 worked fine. Most of the types in
the variables and watch variables came up as unsigned long long or
pointer to thereof. There was almost no help in the automatic "local
variables" or "watch variables" for looking at character arrays, ie
string variables, which for me is a really big part of helpful
debugging. I was spoilt by Delphi programming on windows many years
ago. I do not know if enough symbol debug information has been
provided by dmd 1.0 compiler for this, or whether special type
knowledge needs to be available in the debugger.

I was annoyed at one point by an alert dialog on every step that told
me there was a variable "datum with null type". Surely this could be
put in the watch window so I did not have to click OK on the dialog
every time.

So I go back to needing to print debug output on the terminal. I may
still buy a copy of zerobugs, because its relatively cheap.