Has $Debug been working well for you?

[FellippeHeitor]

It's been 5 months since v2 came out, and although I'm personally a heavy user of the new $Debug features, I was wondering if/how it's been useful to you guys as well.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, please make sure to check the release video again:

Curious for your feedback.

Love to all!

Fellippe.

[Dimster]

Lord knows I need all the help I can get....it's been very, very helpful. Thank you for same. You wouldn't by any chance have a written wiki dedicated to just all the features and how to use $Debug most effectively??

[FellippeHeitor]

@Dimster not in detail yet. The wiki page for $Debug contains a summary, but the feature does indeed deserve more documentation. Glad it's been a good companion for your coding!

[mdijkens]

Very happy with $Debug
It is not in my system yet to automatically think about using it, but that happens more and more until I don't know any better :-)

One minor thing missing that I really loved in PBDS7 was to put a cursor on any variable and press Shift-F9 to lookup it's value and then Enter to add it to watch-list.

[bplus]

Honestly I had established my own ways of debugging before and this is too complicated to remember or go back and watch the video over and over.

[FellippeHeitor]

@mdijkens Great to hear! The variable lookup is planned for a future update, I'll keep you posted.

@bplus: I respect that.

[mdijkens]

@mdijkens Great to hear! The variable lookup is planned for a future update, I'll keep you posted.

That is really cool!
I remember I used 'instant watch' more then regular watch-list.
Imagine you put a breakpoint in the troublesome code, use F8 and Shift-F8 to walk through it
and at any time quickly look at any variable with Shift-F9 Esc, other variable Shift F9 Esc, etc.
Way quicker then searching variable list or typing an expression to add it to the watch list

[bplus]

@FellippeHeitor  What would be extremely helpful, not just with debugging but other things as well, is a having a message box modal dialog for QB64, either use Windows Api call or QB64 routine.

We could get some inside info from program without ruining the output screen.

If I get really desperate for debugging I threaten myself with dragging my message box code in to use. So far never that desperate to drag that clunky thing in but when I review oh, I might just add it to Interpreter.

Oh my reply answers same point as @mdijkens ha, ha, great minds think alike! :)

[RhoSigma]

Hi @FellippeHeitor,

$DEBUG has been very valuable to me lately when revising the falcon tool set to allow printing on non-32-bit alpha blended screens. It works like charm. However, there was especially one feature I've missed in the variabels watch list. It would be great, if we had a chance here to change the display of numeric variables to either DEC/OCT/HEX/BIN instead just default it to decimal. Had been made checking the 32bit color values much easier to have them as HEX rather than DEC. As I already added the new _BIN$ function to the 2.1 development branch, this is maybe a neat feature to add in the future.

[FellippeHeitor]

Hi @FellippeHeitor,

$DEBUG has been very valuable to me lately when revising the falcon tool set to allow printing on non-32-bit alpha blended screens. It works like charm. However, there was especially one feature I've missed in the variabels watch list. It would be great, if we had a chance here to change the display of numeric variables to either DEC/OCT/HEX/BIN instead just default it to decimal. Had been made checking the 32bit color values much easier to have them as HEX rather than DEC. As I already added the new _BIN$ function to the 2.1 development branch, this is maybe a neat feature to add in the future.

Sounds cool (and very doable!) indeed. Thank you, Rho!

[RhoSigma]

Sounds cool (and very doable!) indeed. Thank you, Rho!

Great, and best would be, if the variables would remember its current display choice between the debug sessions, at least as long as they're not removed from the watch list or the IDE is closed at all.

[FellippeHeitor]

Suggestion noted 😉

[FellippeHeitor]

@RhoSigma Does this look like what you had in mind?

[RhoSigma]

@RhoSigma Does this look like what you had in mind?

@FellippeHeitor, that's perfect. Nice & easy implemented. With that tiny button appearing when hovering a number I'd even say, we can waive to the "remember" feature I suggested, as access and changing the value is only a click away :), well done...

[FellippeHeitor]

Hmmm, too late. Added it already 🤩

I'll get this one in its own thread as soon as it's out in the latest Dev build, so you guys can help me break it.