Purpose: record notes about using pdb in the Jython environment. Audience: Those interested in experimenting with pdb.

line-by-line debugging is a dearly missed feature of IDL and Java programming environments. These environments let you place a breakpoint in the code, and when execution reaches the breakpoint, the application stops and the developer can query the current state of the environment or step through code line-by-line.

Here's how anyone can experiment with the current state of the debugger. Note it is easy to hang Autoplot if this is not done properly.

• enable the debugger with:

 AP> from java.lang import System
 AP> System.setProperty("jythonDebugger","true")

• Presently the script must be modified to use the debugger.
  • import pdb
  • pdb.set_trace() should be called where the Jython interpreter should stop. An odd GUI pops up with Step and Next buttons. Also it shows the state of the state machine that is used to parse PDB output.

Note:

• You can't debug GUI code, because the GUI thread would be hung and the debugger GUI would be locked up.

• https://sourceforge.net/p/autoplot/feature-requests/381/
• sftp://jfaden.net/home/jbf/ct/autoplot/script/demos/pythonDebugger