4.2BSD/usr/lisp/ch15.n
." $Header: /na/franz/doc/RCS/ch15.n,v 1.1 83/01/31 07:08:47 jkf Exp $
.Lc The\ FIXIT\ Debugger 15
.sh 2 Introduction 15
FIXIT is a debugging environment for
.Fr
users doing program development. This documentation and FIXIT
were written by David S. Touretzky
of Carnegie-Mellon University for MACLisp, and adapted to
.Fr
by Mitch Marcus of Bell Labs. One of
FIXIT's goals is to get the program running again as quickly
as possible. The user is assisted in making changes to his
functions "on the fly", i.e. in the midst of execution, and
then computation is resumed.
.pp
To enter the debugger type \fI(debug)\fP.
The debugger goes into its own
read-eval-print loop. Like the top-level, the debugger understands
certain special commands. One of these is help, which prints a list of
the available commands. The basic idea is that you are somewhere in a
stack of calls to eval. The command "bka" is probably the most appropriate
for looking at the stack. There are commands to move up and down. If
you want to know the value of "x" as of some place in the stack, move to
that place and type "x" (or (cdr x) or anything else that you might want
to evaluate). All evaluation is done as of the current stack position.
You can fix the problem by changing the values of variables, editing
functions or expressions in the stack etc. Then you can continue from
the current stack position (or anywhere else) with the "redo" command.
Or you can simply return the right answer with the "return" command.
.pp
When it is not immediately obvious why an error has occurred
or how the program got itself into its current state, FIXIT
comes to the rescue by providing a powerful debugging loop
in which the user can:
- examine the stack
- evaluate expressions in context
- enter stepping mode
- restart the computation at any point
The result is that program errors can be located and fixed
extremely rapidly, and with a minimum of frustration.
.pp
The debugger can only work effectively when extra information is kept
about forms in evaluation by the lisp system.
Evaluating \fI(*rset\ t)\fP tells the lisp system to maintain this
information.
If you are debugging compiled code you should also be sure that the
compiled code to compiled code linkage tables are unlinked, i.e
do \fI(sstatus\ translink\ nil)\fP.
.Lf debug "[ s_msg ]"
.No
Within a program, you may enter a debug loop directly by
putting in a call to
.i debug
where you would normally put
a call to
.i break.
Also, within a break loop you may enter
FIXIT by typing
.i debug.
If an argument is given to DEBUG,
it is treated as a message to be printed before the debug loop
is entered. Thus you can put \fI(debug |just before loop|)\fP into
a program to indicate what part of the program is being debugged.
.Eb
\fIFIXIT Command Summary\fP
TOP go to top of stack (latest expression)
BOT go to bottom of stack (first expression)
P show current expression (with ellipsis)
PP show current expression in full
WHERE give current stack position
HELP types the abbreviated command summary found
in /usr/lisp/doc/fixit.help. H and ? work too.
U go up one stack frame
U n go up n stack frames
U f go up to the next occurrence of function f
U n f go up n occurrences of function f
UP go up to the next user-written function
UP n go up n user-written functions
...the DN and DNFN commands are similar, but go down
...instead of up.
OK resume processing; continue after an error or debug loop
REDO restart the computation with the current stack frame.
The OK command is equivalent to TOP followed by REDO.
REDO f restart the computation with the last call to function f.
(The stack is searched downward from the current position.)
STEP restart the computation at the current stack frame,
but first turn on stepping mode. (Assumes Rich stepper is loaded.)
RETURN e return from the current position in the computation
with the value of expression e.
BK.. print a backtrace. There are many backtrace commands,
formed by adding suffixes to the BK command. "BK" gives
a backtrace showing only user-written functions, and uses
ellipsis. The BK command may be suffixed by one or more
of the following modifiers:
..F.. show function names instead of expressions
..A.. show all functions/expressions, not just user-written ones
..V.. show variable bindings as well as functions/expressions
..E.. show everything in the expression, i.e. don't use ellipsis
..C.. go no further than the current position on the stack
Some of the more useful combinations are BKFV, BKFA,
and BKFAV.
BK.. n show only n levels of the stack (starting at the top).
(BK n counts only user functions; BKA n counts all functions.)
BK.. f show stack down to first call of function f
BK.. n f show stack down to nth call of function f
.Ee
.sh 2 Interaction\ with\ \fItrace\fP
FIXIT knows about the standard Franz
trace package, and tries to make
tracing invisible while in the debug loop. However, because
of the way
.i trace
works, it may sometimes be the case that the
functions on the stack are really un\fIintern\fPed atoms that have
the same name as a traced function. (This only happens when
a function is traced WHEREIN another one.) FIXIT will call
attention to
.i trace's
hackery by printing an appropriate tag
next to these stack entries.
.sh 2 Interaction\ with\ \fIstep\fP
The
.i step
function may be invoked
from within FIXIT via the STEP command. FIXIT initially turns off
stepping when the debug loop is entered. If you step through a function
and get an error, FIXIT will still be invoked normally. At
any time during stepping, you may explicitly enter FIXIT
via the "D" (debug) command.
.sh 2 Multiple\ error\ levels
FIXIT will evaluate arbitrary LISP
expressions in its debug loop. The evaluation is not done within an
.i errset,
so, if an error occurs, another invocation of the debugger
can be made. When there are multiple errors on the stack,
FIXIT displays a barrier symbol between each level that
looks something like <------------UDF-->. The UDF in
this case stands for UnDefined Function. Thus, the upper
level debug loop was invoked by an undefined function error
that occurred while in the lower loop.