How to set executable /NODEBUG on Itanium

[Jay Olson]

I am helping a client move a large transaction processing application from Alpha to Itanium (or IA64 or whatever it is called these days). In the VAX and Alpha days, there was a nifty little command procedure called SET_EXE.COM which could toggle some bits in the image header of an executable image so that it would not start the debugger, even though it was linked /DEBUG. This is useful because most of the executables are started with SYS$CREPRC and it is not possible to type RUN/NODEBUG. We like to link /DEBUG so that we can use DEBUG/KEEP and connect to running processes and debug them with full symbols.

Anyway, SET_EXE.COM does not work on Itanium executables. Is there a newer version or an equivalent utility to be found anywhere?

Thanks in advance for any help

[John Gillings · Accepted solution]

Jay,

This functionality is now supported. See HELP SET IMAGE/FLAGS to toggle things like DEBUG on and off.

[John Gillings]

The other way to deal with the issue on versions that don't have SET IMAGE is to LINK/DSF to generate a Debug Symbol File.

It's kind of like "LINK/NODEBUG, but put all the debug stuff over there in case I need it later"

You can then RUN/DEBUG, DEBUG/KEEP or ANALYZE/PROCESS a process dump of the image, and have it DEBUG read the symbol information from the DSF.

[Jay Olson]

Thanks for the suggestions. I think the SET IMAGE/FLAGS command will do the trick.