[fpc-devel] bounty: FPC based debugger

[Graeme Geldenhuys]

On 12/09/2011 11:43, Martin wrote:
> 
> The debugger itself (in my understanding) can either have a library-like 
> interface or command-line driven or both.

Duby already has both (in rudimentary form). At this point I will be
fine with a command-line debugger only, that can actually debug my code.
Integration in a IDE (eg: like the GDB-MI interface) can come later.
Duby even has instruction on how to integrate itself with Lazarus IDE,
but I have never been able to get that to work for whatever reason. I've
only used Duby from the command-line interface.

Just being able to debug your code without requiring writeln() or
log-to-file statements, would already be a 100x better than what we
currently have.


Here is what I would consider a "debugger":

 - command line interface at least

 - watches

 - breakpoints
    - expression handling with break points would be very handy.
      eg: break when i = 1234

 - watchpoints. break when data at memory address changed. Very
   handy to debug those procedural programs that loves to use global
   variables.  MSEide supports this (but it is actually a GDB feature)

 - querying variables, properties, arrays, strings. Irrespective if
   things like variables are local, global, or if parameters are from
   a nested function, method, event handler. Querying properties of
   a class instance (like can be done in Delphi for years) is very
   important (irrespective of the "potential" dangers in that).

 - Object Pascal expression evaluation (but I guess this goes
   hand-in-hand with Watches and Breakpoints.



Yes I know there are many other items than can be added (thread
debugging, remote debugging etc), but I would consider the above
features a "usable debugger" with FPC.


Regards,
  - Graeme -

-- 
fpGUI Toolkit - a cross-platform GUI toolkit using Free Pascal
http://fpgui.sourceforge.net/