Hi All,
I'm lazy and also I don't write the most elegant UI code but I had an idea I want realized so I thought I'd see if I could interest anyone in implementing it. Dora is doing amazing work with the Moldable Debugger but this is a poor man's alternative that can get us a lot of benefit.
In the JIT I find myself wanting to run a number of doit while debugging to print out information, change virtual breakpoint locations (where a variable is tested and if the JIT is at the right point halt is sent) etc. Typically one has to type these into the receiver inspector in the bottom left of the debugger. Having some strings in the paste buffer helps in not typing them but one has to load the paste buffer at least once before a debugging session and its tedious.
I modified the inspectors in VMMaker already so that one can choose the default base used to display numbers because hexadecimal is much more useful in looking at machine code, the GC, object headers, etc. So how about this...
A class may implement something like receiverMenuForDebugging, either on the instance or the class side. Whenever the receiver inspector is asked to open up the yellow/middle button menu on its list it checks for the presence of receiverMenuForDebugging and adds this as a submenu being the first item in the menu. So one can write all the application specific snippets one wants and invoke them quickly and conveniently from this menu.
Anyone interested in implementing this? It would make my day, hell it would make my month, and make my year so much nicer :-).
_,,,^..^,,,_ best, Eliot