Hello everyone,
As expected, there was some feedback. Here is a summary:
1. The layout should mirror the classic debugger
- The previous layout was chosen to show more of the stack and to make use of the screen real estate.
- But, as that is not an essential component of GTDebugger, the current implementation of the generic stack debugger looks like this now:
2. it would be interesting if the buttons would have text
- This is something we need to work on
3. Why is there bytecode shown?
- There is none by default :). This only appears when the developer explicitly chooses the Bytecode debugger
4. why is there a _thisContext _stackTop?
- Because this is what the SpecDebugger offers as well :).
- But, we removed them for now from the list.
- There would be a possibility to add them to the context menu of the stack or to add them to bottom of the list
5. why is there a Type column in the inspector
- Because we want to know what kind of variable we are dealing with (parameter, instvar, temp). This is not explicit in other debuggers.
- Furthermore, you can filter the variables by clicking on the type tag. This can be particularly useful when we deal with large states.
Please let me know if I missed anything. Of these only point 2 requires work.
Cheers,
Doru
On Jan 8, 2016, at 1:07 PM, Tudor Girba <tudor@tudorgirba.com> wrote:
Hi,
We are about to integrate in Pharo a new member of the Glamorous Toolkit: the GTDebugger. As this is a significant change that might affect your workflow, here is some background information to help you deal with the change.
First, you should know that the change is not irreversible and it is easily possible to disabled the new debugger through a setting. However, please do take the time to provide us feedback if something does not work out for you. We want to know what can be improved and we try to react as fast as we can.
A practical change comes from the fact that the variables are manipulated through a GTInspector, which makes it cheaper to maintain in the longer run.
While the first thing that will capture the attention is the default generic interface, the real power comes from the moldable nature of the debugger. Like all other GT tools, GTDebugger is also moldable by design. This means that we can construct custom debuggers for specific libraries at small costs (often measured in a couple of hundred lines of code).
For example, the core configuration includes also the SUnit and the bytecode debugger. These are around 150 lines of code. Here is how the bytecode debugger looks like:
<bytecode.png>
You can find more information in an introductory overview blog post that also includes some links for further reading:
http://www.humane-assessment.com/blog/gtdebugger-in-pharo/
Please let us know what you think.
Cheers,
Doru
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