I need a REAL debugger!

It’s shameful that Clarion doesn’t have a decent debugger.
It lacks basic features like the ability to see the value of an ANY variable !
Let alone all the WYSIWYG features that you can find in other professional products.
I can’t save breakpoints, I can’t have conditional breakpoints, I have to search for the variable I’m looking for in the right procedure or module. I need a lot of time only to setup a debugging session.
It can’t be that hard to add these features but if they don’t think a debugger is important why don’t they release the source code for us to modify it ?

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I hear ya!

If they do that I think we have some good options. I encourage you to reach out to SV directly and make it known how important this is. Honestly I think they don’t know.

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Hey Brahn!
I wrote on the sv.clarion.clarion10 newsgroup in March 2015.
This is the R. Zaunere reply:


Alberto,

“Work is being done on the debug info that is generated, so that
eventually you can use other debuggers (e.g. Visual Studio debugger)
with your Clarion apps.”.
This was a good news in my opinion.

To get to that point requires a fundamental change in the Obj format - we’re
intending to make it there but its not a small short-term change.

Robert

Ouch, that doesn’t age well does it. I mean, I guess it just hasn’t bubbled up the priority list or something but hmmph! I use the debugger quite often but each time it is a pain.

I bumped the thread in the newsgroup.

As with all things SV, believe it when you see it. The resources are just not available for making significant changes in a timely manner.

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And I replied to your bump.

I agree. So I proposed to release the debugger to the community. They’ll never do it, but it’s worth trying

Just read what Zaunere replied… no hope for the next three years to say the least, but I would do a conspicuous bet on five years.
And obviously no reply to my foolish idea of releasing the source code of the current debugger.

I use UltimateDebug and send debugging info out the standard DebugView from SysInternals.
Include their clw in each app, then I declare a new class in the procedure I want to debug.
By using the property DebugOff, you can turn it on/off as needed so once you setup a procedure it can be turned off for production and if there is a problem just turn it on recompile and you’re good to go.
There is a bit of setup time, but once a procedure is ‘debugged’ via code, all you have to do is turn it on and you have detailed debugging on what you want to see.

DebugView is useful to debug in certain situations and I’ve succesfully used it.
In normal situations the Clarion debugger is more flexible, but still nowhere near to a modern debugger.
Visual Studio has had a modern debugger since about 1997 … 20 years …

Probably a 0% chance, but any news on this?

This is my number one bugbear as a Clarion newbie, clearly having been spoilt with Visual Studio debugging!

Nothing that I know of. I encourage you to email softvelocity directly and ask them. Politely of course :smiley:
If no one asks then they don’t think it is important as far as I can tell.

Nothing wrong about being diplomatic, but I believe the honest answer is “a snowball in hell.”
SV simply does not have the resources to improve what they have. The problem has repeatedly come up over the years without any response.

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SV simply does not have the resources to improve what they have.

I think that the problem is as simple as that.

However in the long term this is not going to be a problem anymore for me and my colleagues: we are (slowly) starting to convert our huge application to C#. Obviously we have other reason for this extreme decision than the lack of a good debugger.

The chances of you ever getting sourcecode to the debugger are slim. Add to the fact it’s written in large part in Modula2 and you’ll understand why no-one wants to touch it. The TSWD debug format that Clarion uses is available if you know what you’re looking for, you’d be better off writing a plug-in to Windbg so that it can understand your binary