Thursday, January 19, 2006

Debugger (again)

Hi All,

I think I'll stop playing with the debugger... it's not fun anymore... There's nothing left to speed ;-)

I've tried some other python debuggers, just to compare them in 'performance', and I must say that pydev took an A+ (considering that those are A+ too!!)

I won't say the names of those, because you never know what others could say about it, but in speed terms the new version 0.9.8.8 (still unreleased), will be the best by far when compared to other pydev versions.

I've also managed to make the variables be returned 'on-demand', so that there are only 'very-short' delays when hitting a breakpoint and for later getting any variable (instead of a very long one when a breakpoint was hit).

As for features, we've already have the basic stuff such as breakpoints, step in, out, variable inspection and some intermediate stuff, such as evaluating some expression or making a conditional breakpoint (and all that supporting python and jython).

I believe that what is missing for a 'complete' feature-wise debugger is:
- break for exception (intermediate)
- pause running program (intermediate)
- remote debugging (intermediate): this would require the user to add pydevd.py in its pythonpath and use some calls to it (I already have a 'prototype' for it, but won't make it available just now...)
- attach to running program (hard) note: this is quite different from having just a 'pause' button (in which case we already lauched it from within pydev), and I'm not really sure how feasible it is
- mixed-mode java/jython debugging (hard)

Cheers,

Fabio

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

pydev.sf.net
download page has wrong html/head/title of "faq" :)

Anonymous said...

I've got interested in pydev recently since (in my opinion) it is only good Python IDE (although the eclipse is a bit of a beast). What i realy can't wait is remote debugging (for mod_python). Sooo, if a sneak-peak of a solution for the same is possible...

Anonymous said...

Hi. I've been in need of a serious Python IDE, hence I've tried out most [if not all] of the commercial and OpenSource solutions - and found your PyDev in combination with Eclipse to be probably the best choice for an experienced coder. Or at least for me.

So far, I'm more than pleased. Thank you for your hard work and competence. I'll try donating some from time to time, although that's complicated since PayPal doesn't do transactions from Croatia.

Cheers.

Anonymous said...

About debugging, and specifically remote debugging. Have you looked at how mod_python debugging can be done?

I've been looking into it lately, as it's really something that I miss from the Python development toolchain.

mod_python can use PyDB, and this requires Apache to be run in debug mode (because it uses the console for interaction). I guess it could somehow be possible to hook it into the Eclipse/PyDev debugger instead of the console, although I'm not sure what would be required to do this.

I'm a little bit tempted to take a look at this myself, but I would have no idea where to start. ;)