I noticed that Pike 9.0 is in a beta release situation (I’m not sure how I missed that!), and I was wondering if there was still time and/or interest in getting the pike debugging functionality that a few of us have worked on merged before the final release. I know I said I’d do this more than once, but I’ll make it happen this time, if there isn’t any objection.

This consists of:

Some C-level modifications to allow stepping, built on top of some features that Grubba built specifically for this purpose (getting access to locals, etc from within the debugger core)

Pike code that implements the Debug Adapter Protocol (DAP), as well as most of the higher level debugging functionality (step into, over, etc).

Some modifications to master.pike that allows the DAP server to start up and (optionally) hold the interpreter in a wait state until a debugging client connects.

I think the highest risk code exists in the C code (as is usual); the pike level code doesn’t get used if debugging isn’t occurring.

A few years ago, I wrote some detail about how it would be used in practice, as well as potential limitations, in case anyone is interested, see below. It seems that the LSP server in development plus DAP support would make a very useful development duo.

Any comments and suggestions are welcome!

Bill

and