[lazarus] Debug server available.

[Mattias Gaertner]

On Thu, 2 Jan 2003 16:17:43 +0100 (CET)
Michael.VanCanneyt at wisa.be wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Some of you will maybe be familiar with the 'gexperts' package for Delphi.
> It contains a 'debug server', with a unit 'dbugintf' to communicate with
> it.
> 
> The idea is that, to debug your programs, you include the 'dbugintf' unit
> in the unit you wish to debug, and statements like
> {$ifdef debug}
>   senddebug('Passed here') ;
> {$endif}
> can be put in various locations. (more methods exist, to send variable
> values etc)
> 
> The debug server catches the messages sent by the dbugintf unit, and
> displays them in a nice way.
> 
> This is very useful for debugging GUI code: A normal debugger will
> interfere with the GUI events (focus shifts etc) and so messes up any
> attempts to debug code. Also daemons (servlets) etc. can use this unit to
> do debugging.
> 
> I made such a debugserver for the kylix book I co-authored, and now I've
> implemented and extended it for use with Free Pascal.
> 
> There are 2 versions:
> - Console or system log.
> - GTK version (currently uses fpgtk)
>   Displays all messages nicely in a list, as the original 'gdebug'
>   program.(there are various options which can be set)
> 
> Currently, it works on Linux, and it can use a unix domain socket,
> or a TCP/IP socket. (so you can log to a debugserver on a separate host)
> 
> It seems to work nicely. I did a speed test (10000 messages in a tight
> loop) And all works ok. I've committed the lot under utils/debugsvr.
> 
> Question to the Lazarus team:
> Currently, there are 2 server front-ends available:
> - console (also can use linux system log)
> - GTK (uses a thin GTK OOP wrapper: fpgtk)
> The server mechanism is available in a separate unit, so it is easy to
> write a new server which handles the messages differently.
> 
> I think it would be a nice idea if someone would look at the GTK interface
> (it is really small) and produce a Lazarus interface.  The GUI code is
> written in such a way that you will have almost no changes to do.
> 
> I think it would even be possible to include the debug server in the
> lazarus IDE itself, if properly coded.
> 
> A win32 version is in the works, I still need to port the ssockets code to
> windows. AFter that it should work with just a recompile.
> 
> Comments, suggestions etc. always welcome.

:)
I think, a remote logger is a very useful tool and a frontend should be
added to the IDE. It should be easy to implement, if the server is not
polling. Currently I'm busy, so I can't say when I will do it. Any help is
welcome.

Michael, can you adapt it for fpc 1.1?


Mattias