Re: [Nemiver-list] Variable monitor widget

[Dodji Seketeli <dodji domain hid>]

Hey Jonner,

Jonathon Jongsma a écrit :

[...]

> I am thinking about starting to implement a variable monitor widget
> (aka a variable 'watch' widget) for nemiver.  If anyone has any
> comments about how it should be implemented, feel free to share them.

FWIW, at an 'engine' level, I think it would be interesting to base the 
widget on the IVarListWalker interface. That interface can update the 
state of a defined set of variables upon a call on its 
IVarListWalker::do_walk_variables() entry point.

I do have some questions concerning the user interaction. How do you 
think we should do to add variables to the monitor ? I was thinking 
about being able to type in the monitor widget, the name of the variable 
you wanted to monitor. It could also be nice to be able to select a 
variable in the source code editor, right click and hit "add to 
monitor", or something like that. What do you think ?

Then there is the problem of "out of scope" detection and reporting.

Suppose the user is stepping in a function foo_func() and wants to 
monitor a variable foo that is local to that function foo_func(). What 
happens when the current instruction pointer suddenly goes out of the 
scope of the function ? I think we should detect that and visually flag 
the variable somehow, showing the user that the variable went out of 
scope. I have no idea how to present that to the user. Even the engine 
part of is not clear to me yet because error reporting on variable query 
is pretty weak in our infrastructure at the moment. So this is something 
we need to address.

There is also the need to be able to be able to monitor "locations" 
pointed to by addresses, instead of just variable names. I am not sure 
how to present that either.

I am not sure this helps much, but I thought I'd be good to write about 
my current state of thoughts on the matter :-)

Thank you for raising this up.

Cheers,

Dodji.