RE: Debugging with JDEE

I second Javier's words. I think the way to go is to integrate with what is already available, specially given 1) the increasing complexity of those tools and 2) the limited time (and number, unfortunately) of Emacs Lisp-proficient developers out there. Better to focus on evolving the JDE core and making sure contributions and bug fixes can be added in a timely basis.

As for JSwat, by all means use it. We could also get in touch with Nathan Fiedler and ask his opinion on a closer integration. He is very nice and might acomodate requirements to make the integration easier. JSwat already supports an embedded console where you can type commands, jdb like, so it might not be too much of a stretch to support some kind of direct interaction between the JDEE buffers and JSwat. This would be great as it would isolate JDEE from the changes and nitty-gritty details of dealing with JPDA.

Paul, we all love an appreciate the work you have put on JDE all those years - it has been a long journey for sure! :-) But I think you really need to focus now not on new features, but on a way to allow other developers to more easily contribute their packages. Think of yourself as Linus Torvalds for JDEE - Linux would never be so succesful if he was the only one commiting code :-) 

/Nascif

PS: Suraj, I reall would like to see your JDT support added to JDEE. Does it support flymake or a flymake-like functionality? Since I upgraded to Emacs 22 flymake (and many other things) are breaking left and right...

-----Original Message-----
From: Javier S. Lopez [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Wednesday, June 28, 2006 1:35 PM
To: jde-users
Subject: RE: Debugging with JDEE

Paul,

Since I mainly used JDB I vote for removing JDEbug. JDE in general tends to integrate with tools rather than write its own. i.e. Ant, make, javac, jikes. It makes sense to write tools for things not provided elsewhere. But tools that are already widely supported and used elsewhere like debuggers is really make sense to only support integrations.

Javier

"Paul Kinnucan" <[email protected]> writes:

> Hi Suraj,
>
>  
>
> My day job has grown increasingly demanding over the last couple of 
> years and I?ve also been preoccupied with my children?s transition 
> from high school to college. This has left me with less time than I 
> would like to devote to the JDEE.
>
>  
>
> However, I plan to continue to update and make releases. One thing 
> that would help would be to streamline the JDEE itself and its source repository.
> Currently, there are two branches, a main branch and a maintenance 
> branch. The reason I branched was that last year I embarked on 
> restructuring the JDEE?s interface to jdb and JDEbug to try to create 
> a common interface and thereby reduce the maintenance burden. 
> Unfortunately, this was a far more time-consuming project than I had 
> anticipated, in fact was soaking up all the time I had for the JDEE. 
> Meanwhile a large backlog of bugfixes and incremental improvements 
> were accumulating. So at some users? suggestion  I decided to branch 
> from JDEE 2.3.5 in order to be able to release accumulated bug fixes and other improvements. Just creating this branch was a time-consuming operation.
> Now, I?m stuck with a main branch that has the new generalized 
> debugger interface in a half-finished state with no prospect of 
> finishing it any time soon and a maintenance branch that allows me to 
> keep releasing but requires double-updating for every change.
>
>  
>
> I?ve been giving some thought has how to extricate the JDEE from this 
> morass and have been considering doing the following:
>
>  
>
> * Drop JDEBug from the JDEE.
>
>  
>
>   I?ve never been happy with JDEbug. I think it was overly ambitious 
> in design and complicated in its implementation and as a
>
>   result is difficult to use and maintain. Personally I use the JDEE?s 
> jdb interface for debugging and find it adequate for my purposes.
>
>   Dropping JDEbug would allow me to focus on improving the jdb interface.
>
>  
>
> * Include Nascif?s JSWAT interface in the JDEE distribution for those 
> JDEE user?s who need a more capable debugger than jdb.
>
>   I don?t know whether it?s possible but it if is it would be nice to 
> provide a JSWAT interface that allows source-level debugging
>
>   within Emacs, i.e., I?m thinking that it might be possible to have 
> JSWAT replace JDEbug as the backend for a full-featured
>
>   source-level debugger in Emacs.
>
>  
>
> * Move the JDEE from Sunsite to SourceForge with  JDEE 2.3.5.1 
> becoming the new base CVS version of the JDEE.
>
>  
>
> I would be interested in your feedback on this plan as well as that of  
> Nascif, Jens, and other JDEE users.
>
>  
>
> Paul
>
>  
>
>  
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------
>
> From: Suraj Acharya [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Monday, June 26, 2006 8:50 PM
> To: Jens Lautenbacher
> Cc: jde-users
> Subject: Re: Debugging with JDEE
>
>  
>
> I have no idea about when the next release will come out, sorry :-)
>
> But in Paul's defense, the minor release that he put out recently is 
> definitely an improvement over the state of things before that. I 
> guess he has a day job to work on also, and cannot spend as much time on JDEE as we'd like him to.
>
> But Paul, it would be helpful if those of us who'd like the process to 
> be speeded up could contribute in some way in getting releases out. 
> Maybe we could integ patches or test them out.
>
> Suraj
>
> On 6/20/06, Jens Lautenbacher <[email protected] > wrote:
>
> On Mon, 2006-06-19 at 23:39 -0700, Suraj Acharya wrote:
>> I use jdb. I remember Paul mentioning on the list at some point that 
>> until the next major JDE release (2.3.6), the jdb interface is likely 
>> to be more usable than JDebug.
>
> Do you know anything more specific about when this will be? It's been 
> a long time without any real progress now, and I'm wondering if JDE is 
> more or less dead? As far as I can see, not even external stuff (like 
> your truly excellent jde-usages) is being integrated into CVS...
>
> Maybe you know more about the current plan?
>
>         jtl
>
>  
>

--
Javier S. Lopez
Software Developer
Forum Systems, Inc.
95 Sawyer Road, Suite 110, Waltham, MA 02453 http://www.forumsys.com


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