Hi Jan -
If you have write access to the "require"d file, you can try setting a 
breakpoint in it, via setting:
$DB::single = 1
The following worked for me:

In t.pm:
package t;
BEGIN {
debug: $DB::single=1;
    $a = 1;
}
debug: $DB::single=1;
$a = 3;
1;

In t.pl:
require 't.pm';
print "done\n";

When I run:
perl -d t.pl
The debugger correctly breaks at the lines labeled 'debug' above.

Best,
Jay Rifkin



Jan Ploski wrote:

>Hello,
>
>I am the current maintainer of EPIC (http://e-p-i-c.sf.net), searching
>in despair for a sensible way of reliably breaking in "require"d source
>files (and some "use"d ones, too).
>
>Let me provide a few simple examples first:
>
>require '/some/abs/path/foo.pm';
>require 'foo.pm';
>require '/some/abs/path/../foo.pm';
>
>All the paths above when passed to Cwd::abs_path() resolve to
>/somewhere_else/abs/path/foo.pm (/some happens to bea symlink
>to /somewhere_else).
>
>I want to set a breakpoint in /somewhere_else/abs/path/foo.pm.
>I don't care how this file is referred to in the sources, I just want
>the debugger to break in it!
>
>However, if I pass the above canonical absolute path to "b load",
>it won't break, obviously, because Perl uses one of the strange paths
>to refer to the file in %INC. Hence I won't get a chance to set
>line breakpoints and EPIC users will rightfully complain about bugs.
>
>I thought I could work around this issue using a custom watchfunction
>to do the path resolution. I did. It worked, but it made the debugger
>potentially orders of magnitude slower (even an empty watchfunction
>has this effect). Wrong approach.
>
>Next I thought I could just hack perl5db.pl to break on all loaded
>filenames and do the path resolution then myself. Well, it seems to
>work and is faster, but it has an unfortunate side-effect that "step"
>commands break in strange places instead of finishing where they would
>have without this additional hack. Unlike with "continue", where I can
>just keep the debugger going in case it breaks on a line without
>a real breakpoint, I cannot do the same with "step" commands,
>simply because I would have to know where they are supposed to
>finish "naturally".
>
>I am now considering throwing away perl5db.pl or rewriting significant
>portions of it. But maybe someone has a better idea?
>
>Regards,
>Jan Ploski
>
>
>
>
>  
>