[fpc-devel] Re: Debugger for FPC

[Graeme Geldenhuys]

On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 10:22 AM, Vincent Snijders
<vsnijders at vodafonevast.nl> wrote:
>
> I guess the fpc developers traded debuggability for maintainability, so you
> could have a better fpc (more features or less bugs). That is what it
> concerns to you as developer. Maybe you disagree with that trade off.

I did not mean any disrespect to the FPC developers. I simply tried to
make the point that as an application developer, you would only use
'ShortDateFormat' in your applications. So one would expect to only
have to use that variable in debugging and not the fully qualified
name 'DefaultFormatSettings.ShortDateFormat' as Martin suggested.

I do not see it as convenient or logical to have one format for usage
in applications and a different format for debugging. This breaks
tooltip evaluation in any IDE as well! Hence the reason I use resorted
to log files for debugging. I only have to use a single format no
matter what I am debugging - locale variables, object properties,
nested methods with it's local variable etc....

I love to promote Lazarus and FPC, but when somebody in the CodeGear
newsgroup mentioned the flaws in trying to debug FPC applications, I
was dumb founded and didn't have a snappy answer. Then it dawned on me
- I got so used to debugging via log files, I forgot how easy and
convenient it is under Kylix and Delphi.  I am wasting such a lot of
time adding Log(...) calls in my code and then later having to remove
them after the bug was fixed, or wrap them in ugly {$IFDEF DEBUG}
calls.

Having a fully working debugger must take some priority and hence my
willingness to learn about debuggers and try and help coding up
something that works. It will save myself and others a lot of time in
future projects. FPC is not just a hobby to me, it's the tool I use to
make a living!

Regards,
  - Graeme -


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