Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!torn!nott!cunews!tina.mrco.carleton.ca!knight
From: knight@mrco.carleton.ca (Alan Knight)
Subject: Re: Smalltalks need less intrusive breakpoint mechanism
Message-ID: <knight.792964425@tina.mrco.carleton.ca>
Sender: news@cunews.carleton.ca (News Administrator)
Reply-To: knight@mrco.carleton.ca (Alan Knight)
Organization: Carleton University
References: <MACRSHAP.95Feb16110652@labs-n.bbn.com>
Date: Thu, 16 Feb 1995 19:53:45 GMT
Lines: 38

In <MACRSHAP.95Feb16110652@labs-n.bbn.com> macrshap@labs-n.bbn.com (Richard Shapiro) writes:

>One the more annoying aspects of developing in VW as compared to
>CommonLisp is the inability to set breakpoints without editing
>methods.

This is indeed a serious problem. Fortunately it's at least partly a
solved problem.

>Are all Smalltalks like this, or is this problem unique to VW?

Digitalk has breakpoints. IBM doesn't have them in the UI, but I'm
pretty sure they have the underlying mechanisms to implement them
easily.

>I keep expecting to see this topic show up on this newsgroup or in The
>Smalltalk Report, but it never does. Am I the only person who sees a
>problem here? 

The ObjectDebugging goodie, available from st.cs.uiuc.edu supports
breakpoints, and additionally allows breakpoints on particular objects
(along with more general instance-specific behaviour). It's been
mentioned in this newsgroup quite a few times, it's been written up in
The Smalltalk Report "Debugging Objects, Hinkle/Johnson, July/August
1993", and I've referred to it several times in The Smalltalk Report
as well. Since it does quite a bit more than just add breakpoints,
it's easy to miss if that's what you're looking for.

It would be nice to see the vendors integrate this kind of capability
and make it easily accessible to users. A large percentage of users
don't know about or are worried about installing goodies that mess
with compilers and method dictionaries.

-- 
 Alan Knight                | The Object People
 knight@acm.org             | Smalltalk and OO Training and Consulting
 alan_knight@mindlink.bc.ca | 509-885 Meadowlands Dr.
 +1 613 225 8812            | Ottawa, Canada, K2C 3N2
