Debugging with jdb

Question

Trying to figure out my way around Sphinx 4 (the CMU speech recognition engine in Java), I tried to use a demo included with the distribution by altering it to what I wanted it to do (the name of the demo is Aligner). I am running into problems and want to use jdb from the command line for debugging the same. I read the documentation given here, but it is limited and does not have a solution to my problem, which in brief is as follows:

1. I invoke jdb like so:
   jdb Aligner (name of the main class of the project).

2. Set a breakpoint like so: stop at Aligner:33
   The output I get (on the command line):
   Deferring breakpoint Aligner:33.
It will be set after the class is loaded.

3. In the file demo.xml (which is the makefile equivalent for this Project),
   javac debug=true is mentioned.

My questions:
1. Where should I invoke jdb from? Should it be invoked from anywhere in the entire sphinx directory or should I invoke it from the same directory as Aligner.java?
2. How can I use jdb with the jar for this project?

P.S: I know I can use Eclipse with this, but I am not sure I know how to do that. My first priority is to get this up and running.

P.P.S: I am a Java newbie and do not know much about the language. My preference for the command line comes from my background of C/C++ programming on the command line.

Any help is most welcome,
Thanks!

Answer 1

What are you actually trying to do?

If you are not so familiar with Java, why not use Sphinx3 or pocketsphinx, both of which are implemented in C?

http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/wiki/download/

Also, you might get better responses on this topic by checking the forums on the above site, or checking in to the IRC channel #cmusphinx

Finally, you mention that your program name is 'aligner', which makes it sound like maybe you are trying to do forced alignment? There are already existing tools for this in the sphinx3/sphinxtrain/pocketsphinx packages and it would probably be worth your while to check them out.