MD Debugger and Error Handler v.2.5

- Stable AS support, Backtrace, KDebug integration and much more!

It's sure been a while: over 5 years since version 2.0 release in 2018, but development was slowly but surely going~
Version 2.5 brings some new incredible features, major QoL and stability improvements! It's also 100% backwards-compatible with v.2.0, meaning it's almost a drop-in replacement for the old users!

Feature highlights

• Stable AS support
  • Better integration with AS projects, stable debug symbol extraction.
• Backtrace, address registers analysis and custom built-in debuggers
  • On any exception screen, press B to display backtrace, A for address registers, Start to return;
  • You can map A/B/C buttons to your custom debuggers;
• Log in-game events, benchmark code, breakpoint with KDebug integration
  • Blastem-nightly and Gens KMod allow you to log debug messages in emulator's console/window;
  • No side-effects on unsupported emulators and the real hardware.
• Debugger now supports assertions.
• ConvSym, the debug symbol extraction utility, is now fully cross-platform.
• Slightly improved exception display, many QoL and stability improvements.

See MD Debugger's version history for the detailed changelog.

Version 2.0 to 2.5 migration guide

If you were already using version 2.0, migration is really simple as the new version is 100% backwards compatible.

1. Download the correct version for your project (errorhandler-as.7z or errorhandler-asm68k.7z).
2. Replace the old files; remove ErrorHandler.bin from the old installation because it's now inlined into ErrorHandler.asm.
3. Download and replace convsym utility for your platform (see below for Windows, Linux, BSD and MacOS versions).
4. Everything should work already, but to support features like assertions and KDebug integration you need to modify your build system to generate DEBUG builds. Just find an installation guide for your disassembly and follow the "Install ConvSym to generate debug symbols" step.

Installation guides, documentation and help

MD Debugger comes with exhaustive documentation, installation guides and usage examples. See the following links for details:

• Installation guides
• Documentation and help

MD Debugger and Error Handler v.2.0

- Now with AS support and much more!

So, it's been almost 1.5 years since version 1.0 was originally released.
But during these years, people were still asking me about some new features, to add more customization and extensibility. So I took all the feedback and requests into consideration and completely reworked debugger's internals to make some insane new features possible and yet preserve a bit of back-compatibility and the same appearances.

While the key feature in version 1.0 was decoding raw offsets into actual labels/symbols in the source code, the key concept behind version 2.0 and the focus of further additions is creating your own debuggers and error handlers with ease!
This becomes possible with debugger's new high-level features, available natively for ASM68K and AS with a set of new macros.

• The debugger is now built around an extensible modular architecture
• You can write your own console programs and custom error handlers using additional commands to control console and format its output
• Includes new and improved symbol storage format: DEB v.2.0 (or simply, DEB2)
• Includes the updated symbol extraction utility (ConvSym.exe) with tons of new features
• And finally, all the new features fit into a tiny 3 KB blob!

Please refer to the following post for more information on the release: http://sonicresearch.org/community/index.php?threads/advanced-error-handler-for-your-hacks-and-homebrew.4442/#post-78456

This release includes bundles for the following assemblers:

• ASM68K
• The AS Macroassembler (version 1.42 Bld 55 and above)