[lazarus] Debug server available.

[Michael.VanCanneyt at Wisa.be]

On Fri, 3 Jan 2003, Mattias Gaertner wrote:

> 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.

It is polling, but that shouldn't matter. Look at the GTK frontend I wrote,
there should be no problem implementing it for Lazarus.

> 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?

It should work with 1.1 as well as 1.0, since it only uses FCL and some
packages.

Michael.