toiletmonster has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

ok. i'm trying to write a vim plugin that will allow me to visually step through and debug my code.

i discovered this DB.pm module and that seems pretty cool. (maybe it is what activestate uses for their windows gui perl debugger since it was written by a guy who works there?) it seems to be a debugger api type thing that is exactly what i would like to make my life easier. but its not working.

i can't get the debugger to load the file. i try to load the file with:
$self->loadfile( $file, $linenumber )
but that doesn't seem to work. if you actually look at the code for loadfile() in DB.pm, it should return the filename if it succeeds. its not succeeding.

i think i'm doing something fundamentally wrong. any ideas? here is my code: 
#!/usr/bin/perl -w


package PerlDebugger;

use DB;
@ISA = qw( DB );


sub new {
   my $type = shift;
   my $self = {};
   bless $self, $type;
}  

sub startDebugger   {
   my $self = shift;
   my $sourceCode = shift;

   print "\n>>$sourceCode<<\n";

   $self->register();
   print ">>" . $self->loadfile( $sourceCode, -1 ) . "<<\n";
   print ">>" . $self->ready() . "<<\n";

   print "\n>>";
   print $DB::filename;
   print "<<\n";
}

sub quit   {
   my $self = shift;
   $self->done();
}

package main;
use strict;

my $code = "/home/eric/code/tmp/foo.pl";

my $dbgr = PerlDebugger->new();
$dbgr->startDebugger( $code );

[download]
my other option is to not use DB.pm at all and to use open2() on perl -d. which is not as pretty. and the annoying thing with that is the debugger writes to /dev/tty instead using STDOUT and STDIN, and that was giving me fits too because i want vim to display to /dev/tty and the debugger always takes over.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: vim perl debugger integration
by toiletmonster (Novice) on Oct 29, 2002 at 01:38 UTC
    hmm.. thanks for the interest atcroft. i think i made some progress. the key is i have to require the script i am trying to debug. and also i had to add a sub called showfile().

    this stuff is not documented which is sad because it means i have to read the DB.pm source (ack gasp) and understand perl internals and i don't know perl internals and i am afraid of perl internals.

    anyway this is still very pre beta beginning new, but this seems to work (yeah!): 
    #!/usr/bin/perl -w
    

package PerlDebugger;

use DB; 
@ISA = qw( DB );
  

sub new {
   my $type = shift;
   my $self = {};
   bless $self, $type;
}   

sub startDebugger   {
   my $self = shift;
   my $sourceCode = shift;

   eval( "require \"$sourceCode\";" );

   $self->register();
   print ">>" . $self->loadfile( $sourceCode, 3 ) . "<<\n";
   print ">>" . $self->ready() . "<<\n";
  
   print "\n>>";
   print $DB::filename;
   print "<<\n"; 
}     

sub showfile   {
   print "showfile\n";
}
    
sub quit   {
   my $self = shift;
   $self->done();
}    
    
package main;
use strict;

my $code = "perlbot.pl";
  
my $dbgr = PerlDebugger->new();
$dbgr->startDebugger( $code );

    [download]
    i take it you use vim, atcroft? if i ever actually finish this i'll post it up on vim.sf.net and probably some other places too.

    thanks.
[reply]
[d/l]
Re: vim perl debugger integration
by atcroft (Abbot) on Oct 29, 2002 at 00:03 UTC

    I'm definitely not an expert (in either vim or debugging, although one day I hope to be better at both), but if I may suggest (since I don't know if this will help or not), you may wish to look for ideas in Devel::ptkdb, and in the utility scripts found on the vim site entitled perl.vim : Perl compiler script and ExecPerl : Utilities for executing perl scripts, among other resources.

    I hope that helps, and I look forward to hearing your results, and the suggestions of others.

[reply]

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