Remote Debugger Frustrations

Monte Goulding monte at appisle.net
Tue Oct 31 17:14:06 EDT 2017


> On 31 Oct 2017, at 9:15 pm, Peter Reid via use-livecode <use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:
> 
> How are people getting on with the remote debugger facility? I'm finding it very useful but also frustrating for the following reasons:
> 
> 1. It's SLOW. I'm running LC 9 on an iMac with a 4GHz quad i7 processor and 24GB RAM connected by USB to an Amazon Fire 7 tablet, yet each step through the script in the debugger takes several seconds.

The remote debugger diverts calls to the debugger library to go over a socket to the remote process. It will always be much slower than debugging in the engine. If you have lots of variables or a lot of data in them then all of the values need to be requested and updated for each step.
> 
> 2. It's difficult to stop to make changes. Clicking the stop debugging button often doesn't work or takes a long time to react and even when apparently stopped it's still making everything slow.

If you have a good recipe for this then it would be good to open a report about it. It shouldn’t take more than a few seconds to stop the debugger.
> 
> 3. Often it steps through the script as it was just before the latest change, i.e. it doesn't take into account the latest script edits.

The script of being stepped through is copied over from the remote process so it will only show you the script as it was when you clicked the Test button.
> 
> 4. It can be difficult to change break points during remote debugging.

Can you give more detail? Once you hit a breakpoint you should be able to change breakpoints in the open debugger.
> 
> 5. The only way that guarantees a clean run is to quit LC and start again.

What do you mean by clean run here?
> 
> 6. A partial reset can be achieved by the following:
> 	a. having clicked 'stop debugging'...
> 	b. open & close Standalone Application Settings
> 	c. click Test, which prompts for Save
> 	d. click Save and the remote build & install starts
> 	e. however, the above doesn't always recognise script changes.

I think the above is related to #3. Perhaps a misunderstanding about what happens once you edit the local stack scripts during a remote debugger session?

Cheers

Monte


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