WSAD: Of debugging and other daring do.

WSAD, or as I heard a Blue Meanie pronounce it "Wussad", is a giant champion sumo wrestler as software goes. It needs a minimum of 512mb RAM to run, but probably a hell of a lot more. Needless to say, it is far too big and hairy for my effeminate laptop.

Still, that aside, here is a small note on its debugging capabilities, which I have been playing with recently (a cry for help?). Rather than dribble on in any great detail, I shall just point out groovy bits that you don't get with Domino Designer.

• Run to Line: You can simply stick your cursor in the source, right click and execute "Run to line". This, as you would imagine just jumps to that line. I realise you could just add more breakpoints but a nice touch.


• Viewing variables: when the debugger is running you can hover over a variable name in the code and a popup window will appear showing the value. This works for simple variables and it even shows the javadoc if there is any. For objects, there is a variable window where you can expand and view all member variables etc.


• Display View: In the debugger you can open the display view which enables you to evaluate java expressions. For instance you could type in a variable name (name) and add something to it (name + " hello"), highlight and right click and the result is displayed "Spuggy hello". Furthermore, you can change the value of variables by executing assignment expressions in the display view (name = "Blue Meanie"). These values will be used through the rest of the executing code.


• Hit Count Breakpoints: Add a breakpint and edit its properties. The hit point allows you to state how many times you want the breakpoint to be passed before suspend execution.


• Logic condition Breakpoints: Similar to the hit count but suspends when a particular expression is reached(name.equals("spuggy")


• Exception Breakpoints: Exception breakpoint are like being able to say "jump into the degugger when Object not set happens". This feature allows you to select an exception from a list and add it to your breakpoints view. Anytime this exception is thrown the debugger will susspend


• The Scapbook: Not officially part of the debugger but a feature that allows you to quickly type in code to experiment with, rather than entering straight into the source and waiting for big compiles.


• Hot code replace: This feature enables you to fix the buggy code there and then, rather than closing the debugger down.

I thank you.