CodeView

CodeView was a text-based debugger from Microsoft for debugging DOS, Windows and OS / 2 applications.

CodeView was not available as a separate product, but could only be purchased as an add-on with the Microsoft compilers; Microsoft C 4.0 , published in 1986, received CodeView for the first time . In contrast to older, very simple debuggers such as DEBUG.EXE , CodeView also enables the source code to be run through line by line and the monitoring of variables. By default, CodeView shared the screen output with the program to be executed, but CodeView could also be executed on a second screen if the computer supported this.

A big problem with CodeView were the limitations of DOS: Like any other DOS program, CodeView was limited to the 640 KB of conventional memory and had to share this with the program to be debugged, which made it difficult to debug memory-intensive programs. Since DOS did not offer any memory protection, CodeView and the program to be executed could influence each other or cause each other to crash. This was different only with CodeView for OS / 2 , which used the protection mode of the 80286 processor in order to be protected from other applications.

The last version of CodeView was version 4.1. With Visual C ++ the functionality of CodeView was integrated into the development environment.

The biggest competitor of CodeView was the Turbo Debugger from Borland .

Web links

• Microsoft CodeView - Window-Oriented Debugger for the MS-DOS Operating System (PDF, 10.6 MB)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Charles Petzold: Microsoft C Compiler 4.0 Adds Full-Screen Debugger . In: PC Magazine . tape 5 , no. 16 , September 30, 1986, pp. 38 .