Jon Hylands <Jon at huv.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 28 Aug 2000 19:14:48, Mats Nygren <nygren at sics.se> wrote:
> 
> > I think there is a distinction to be made:
> > - some proxies like ObjectOut becomes their real objects. They inherit ProtoObject directly and will turn into their real object when debugged. (Probably before that).
> > - others like a decorator will remain a distinct object and never become what they proxy. These would be very difficult to debug unless they handled the debugger messages themselves so should inherit DebuggableProtoObject.
> 
> My feeling is that proxies should be as transparent as much as they
> can be. If you're debugging proxies, and it shouldn't happen very
> often, you can afford to do a little nastiness.
> 

I'm not sure that I agree.  The issue isn't whether you're debugging the
proxy, it's whether you're dealing with a proxy or the actual thing.  I
don't like the idea of the system lying to me about what I'm seeing. 
I'd suggest something like a split view that shows both the proxy and
all it's internal state, as well as the state of the object wrapped by
the proxy.  The System-Prototypes changeset posted recently creates
Inspectors on PrototypeObjects that work in a way similar to this.  I
guess there's no reason that it couldn't be configurable, though, so if
you want proxies to be invisible, be my guest.

I do like the idea of DebuggableProtoObject, as I was forced to add the
requisite methods to a subclass of ProtoObject that I created for a
purpose where it wasn't just a transparent proxy.

Joshua

> You don't want to have to go through hoops to debug your application,
> which is hopefully where most of the bugs are.
> 
> Later,
> Jon
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------
>    Jon Hylands      Jon at huv.com      http://www.huv.com/jon
> 
>   Project: Micro Seeker (Micro Autonomous Underwater Vehicle)
>            http://www.huv.com