Memory Requirements for Real-Mode CodeView (CV.EXE)

ID Number: Q66513

3.00 3.10 3.11 3.14 | 3.00 3.10 3.11 3.12 3.50

MS-DOS | OS/2

Summary:

Real-mode versions of CodeView (CV) beginning with version 3.0 offer a

number of ways to utilize available memory in order to make the

greatest amount of conventional memory available to the program being

debugged. The amount of memory actually used depends on the

command-line options specified as well as the configuration of the

system used for debugging.

The following table shows the size of CodeView in standard DOS memory

with each of the memory-specific command-line options (see the "More

Information" section below for further details):

Option RAM Usage Option RAM Usage

------ --------- ------ ---------

/X 16K /D16 210K

/E 192K /D32 225K

/D 256K (same as /D64) /D128 320K

More Information:

The following descriptions of the three memory-related CodeView

options explain the ways in which each option affects memory

utilization in addition to the respective amounts of conventional

memory that CodeView requires with each. (This information pertains

only to CodeView versions 3.0 and later -- versions of CodeView

earlier than 3.0 require approximately 230K of RAM specifically for

CodeView.)

/X - Specifies that CodeView should utilize extended memory. Assuming

that enough extended memory is available, this option moves both

the symbolic information and most of CV itself into extended

memory. Allowing CV to be loaded into high memory requires that

approximately 16K to 19K of "control" code remain in conventional

memory, thus all free conventional RAM over 19K is available to

load the program to be debugged (the "debuggee").

/E - Specifies that CodeView should utilize expanded memory. Assuming

that enough expanded memory is available, this option moves both

the symbolic information and CodeView's own overlays into

expanded memory. The size of the CV "root" without the extra

overlayed code is approximately 192K. Since the overlays do not

cause any additional overhead with /E, all free conventional RAM

over 192K is available to load the debuggee.

/D - Specifies that CodeView should utilize disk overlays in

conventional memory. By default, this option creates a 64K buffer

area for loading disk overlays. With the 192K root, the 64K

buffer means CV will take about 256K of conventional memory with

/D. In addition, the symbolic information must also be loaded

into conventional memory; therefore, since symbolic data varies

with each program, it is not possible to specify the amount of

memory available for the debuggee alone.

The /D option can also be specified with a value that indicates

the size of the overlay buffer area. This parameter can be any

value from 16 to 128, which represents an overlay buffer size

from 16K to 128K. Specifying /D16 will minimize CodeView's size

with disk overlays to approximately 210K. This maximizes the

amount of conventional memory that will be available to load the

debuggee and the symbolic information. At the other extreme,

/D128 causes CV to use approximately 320K of conventional RAM.

This provides faster CodeView execution speed, but it will only

work with smaller debuggees.

Note: CodeView will default to the best memory usage possible. In

other words, if NO memory usage option is specified, CV will try to

use extended memory. If extended memory is unavailable, CV looks for

expanded memory. CV will use disk overlays on its own only if expanded

memory is not found.

Additional reference words: 3.14 3.00 3.10 3.11 3.12 3.50