Debugger performance and features

[Robert Wierschke-2]

Hi,

I'm currently working on a Java project using NetBeans 6.1 and noticed a few points about performance and features while trying to debug:

1) The debugger is extremely slow. May be 100 times slower than without the debugger and it gets even worser when using conditional breakpoints. Indeed it's so slow that it seems to be more convenient to manually code something like this

if (probablyBadCondition)
    System.out.println(var1)
    ....

and run this without the debugger.

2) The call stack windows lets you walk along the call stack but only shows method invocations along the way. It would be helpful if it would also provide the values of the variables at the time of invocation. Currently it seems to only show the current variable values which might be different form the values at invocation time.

3) I'm working on this project together with a ".NET guy" who permanently argues that Visual Studio has the ability to:
    - walk back while debugging (e.g. tell the debugger to re execute some lines of code)
    - if an exception occurs while in debug mode, hold at the code position where the exception occurs and show detailed information about the exception (even if there was no    try/catch) and I guess also to ignore the exception and continue execution

So has someone else such performance problems? Is there a way to speed things up?

Are there plans for similar features? Does someone else need such features?

regards
robert

[Filippo Mariotti]

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Hi Robert,

I completely agree with your point 2 and 3, (even thought I don’t think it is possible to ignore a not trapped exception in VS either).

Talking about MS VS I like very much its variable inspection method as well, it is integrated into the editor using navigable pop up windows.

You could submit RFE about your observations. I would vote them for sure.

Best Regards

 

Filippo Mariotti

 

 

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Da: Robert Wierschke [mailto:wierob83@...]
Inviato: domenica 18 maggio 2008 13.42
A: nbusers@...
Oggetto: [nbusers] Debugger performance and features

 

Hi,

I'm currently working on a Java project using NetBeans 6.1 and noticed a few points about performance and features while trying to debug:

1) The debugger is extremely slow. May be 100 times slower than without the debugger and it gets even worser when using conditional breakpoints. Indeed it's so slow that it seems to be more convenient to manually code something like this

if (probablyBadCondition)
    System.out.println(var1)
    ....

and run this without the debugger.

2) The call stack windows lets you walk along the call stack but only shows method invocations along the way. It would be helpful if it would also provide the values of the variables at the time of invocation. Currently it seems to only show the current variable values which might be different form the values at invocation time.

3) I'm working on this project together with a ".NET guy" who permanently argues that Visual Studio has the ability to:
    - walk back while debugging (e.g. tell the debugger to re execute some lines of code)
    - if an exception occurs while in debug mode, hold at the code position where the exception occurs and show detailed information about the exception (even if there was no    try/catch) and I guess also to ignore the exception and continue execution

So has someone else such performance problems? Is there a way to speed things up?

Are there plans for similar features? Does someone else need such features?

regards
robert