[Lazarus] Debug Lazarus source

[Martin]

Hans-Peter Diettrich wrote:
> Mattias Gärtner schrieb:
>
>>> How do you people debug Lazarus source code when developing it?
>>>
>>> Yesterday I was able to open the whole Lazarus project
>>> "lazarus/ide/lazarus.lpi" and debug it with Lazarus itself.
>>
>> Yes, that is one way.
>
> I have more problems, in patching Lazarus. Since the lazarus.lpi is 
> not a complete project, that can be compiled like other projects, 
> every change to the Lazarus code requires to rebuild everything 
> (Tools/Rebuild...), before the compiler notices an error in an updated 
> unit.
Not necessarily everything

Example: if I make a change to SynEdit, I only need to recompile 
SynEdit, (on the advanced tab, I can disable all others) and I know if 
the code compiles.
- Of course I cannot test those changes in the IDE then, but I can run a 
test-case with the recompiled code.
- And of course, if i made changes to the interface, i do not see if I 
broke depended packages (but then the IDE is not the only dependend package)

Same for the LCL
you can rebuild the LCL alone. Then you have the IDE running as it was, 
but any project you compile will use the new IDE