Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Debugger Breadcrumb

In 3.5M5 Eclipse Platform introduces a Breadcrumb feature in the Debug view. Since it's a platform feature it is automatically available with JDT, CDT, or any commercial debugger built on the Eclipse framework. To see the breadcrumb, simply resize the Debug view to make it really short (about one line of text), and the view will automatically switch.

We hope that this feature will make it easier for users to stay in their regular development perspective for majority of their debugging tasks. For example here's a screen shot of the C/C++ perspective with the Debug view breadcrumb above the editor.


If you'd like to try debugging outside of the Debug perspective, there are two things you need to do:
  1. Disable the automatic switching of perspective when debugging happens. Go to Window->Preferences->Run/Debug->Perspectives and select Never for both of the options that start with Open associated perspective...
  2. Enable view management in your development perspective. Go to Window->Preferences->Run/Debug->View Management and select the check-box for your perspective. This will cause Variables, Breakpoints, and other debugger views to automatically appear and disappear when you need them.
Keep in mind that this is a brand new feature and really a whole new work-flow. We already have a growing list of issues to fix, but if you find something new or have ideas for improvements, let us know.

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