Re: [Vala] Debugging Vala w/ CMake

[David Lechner <david lechnology com>]

On 02/05/2015 01:10 PM, Steven Oliver wrote:
> I want to start debugging my Vala code so a simple good turned up some
> pretty easy directions, the only problem is I can't seem to integrate those
> directions with CMake.
>
> The instructions I found on the Vala webiste actually work very well for
> the example given [1]. My problem is when combining those with the CMake
> files from Jakob Westhoff [2] that are so popular these days, I always get
> the error that you can't combine the valac option -C with --save-temps.
>
> Does anyone know a way to do both without breaking my existing CMake setup?

TL;DR: Use -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug

CMake is passing the -C option to valac which means generate .c files 
but don't compile them. CMake then later calls gcc itself to compile the 
generated .c files instead of the valac command calling gcc.

The --save-temps means save the .c files, so obviously it is redundant 
when using the -C option and should be left out.

If you read the readme from J. Westhoff[1], you will find that you need 
to set -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug to get a debug build. I assume the fork 
you linked works the same way. Setting this will pass the -g option to 
valac (and gcc), so you don't have to add it in the OPTIONS section. If 
you just try to add -g to OPTIONS, it does not get passed to gcc when 
compiling the generated .c files and of course you won't be able to debug.

[1]: https://github.com/jakobwesthoff/Vala_CMake