Opened 14 years ago
Last modified 5 years ago
#410 reopened enhancement
Component script debugger — at Initial Version
| Reported by: | Philip Taylor | Owned by: | Philip Taylor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Priority: | Should Have | Milestone: | Backlog |
| Component: | Simulation | Keywords: | |
| Cc: | Patch: |
Description
Component scripts are likely to get complex, so there needs to be a reasonable way to debug them. Currently there's just print() going to stdout, which isn't great.
Ideally there'd be a full graphical debugger with source code display and breakpoints and watches and stepping and so on. But that sounds really complex so maybe something simpler would be a more realistic idea.
SpiderMonkey has a debug API that is presumably necessary for this. Are there any existing higher-level libraries or tools or debugger implementations that would be reusable here?
The debugger should be able to pause execution. That means the thread running scripts will be paused inside its JS API calls, and the simulation will be in an inconsistent state. We could perhaps allow the engine to keep running (by using a reentrant game loop, or splitting the simulation into a secondary thread), but we'd need to be very careful since the engine isn't currently designed to do that. It might be better to implement the debugger as part of Atlas (which runs in its own independent thread), so it can communicate with an entirely paused engine, and also so it can use wxWidgets for the UI.
