Interactive Console Debugger for Cucumber
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Demetrius Nunes
Oct 4, 2009, 9:56:04 PM10/4/09
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Hi guys,
I maintain a little Cucumber related tool called Swinger, for testing Java/Swing apps using Cucumber and JRuby.
I've recently added a really useful feature to Swinger that is a interactive console debugger that gets activated once it finds a step "When console!" or a feature tagged with "@console".
You can take a look at it here: http://github.com/demetriusnunes/swinger/commit/c7666cbee67e9097a88d1f45040bfe0aed88bc70
It's really simple code really.
Once the console debugger gets activated, we get into a regular IRB session in the middle of a feature execution with all the local, global and World scope available for inspection and manipulation. To get it going again, just exit the IRB session and Cucumber carries on.
It's been a real time saver for us, so I was wondering if it would be interesting to have it as built-in feature in Cucumber itself. What do you think?
I'd rather have only the "tag-based activation", but to get rid of the "When console!" step, we'd have to have a BeforeStep hook available (debugging is a nice use case for BeforeStep, btw - what happened to it?).
Ben Mabey
Oct 4, 2009, 10:29:46 PM10/4/09
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Hi Demetrius,
Creative use of tagging - I like it. About the console part.. how is it
different from using ruby-debug and placing a debugger statement
(breakpoint) in a step? If you "set autoeval" then you can treat the
ruby-debug session just like an IRB session in addition to the other
regular debugging commands/tools.
-Ben
Demetrius Nunes
Oct 4, 2009, 10:47:56 PM10/4/09
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Ben, it's really not that different, besides the convenience of adding a tag (or a step) to the feature file, instead of messing up with the step definition code.--
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Demetrius Nunes
Oct 4, 2009, 10:59:00 PM10/4/09
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Also, ruby-debug support for JRuby is still flaky and requires quite a bit of trouble to get it working as seen here:
Demetrius Nunes
Oct 4, 2009, 11:17:10 PM10/4/09
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Ben, I've just tried the ruby-debug approach and it was quite troublesome to reach the correct scope by using the "debugger" method within a step definition. I found myself inside StepInvocation internals and it was quite difficult to get out.
Not sure if it was my lack of ability with ruby-debug but there is definitely a learning curve there, whereas a simple IRB session in the correct World scope binding is really easier to use.
This feature in its final form could even have a choice of using ruby-debug (if available) or going into a simple IRB session. What do you think?
Luke Melia
Oct 4, 2009, 11:27:40 PM10/4/09
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We have a step matcher defined "And I debug the test" that looks like this:
When /^I debug (?:the|this) test$/ do
require "rubygems"; require "ruby-debug"; debugger
1 #intentionally force debugger context in this method
end
Works a treat. I'm not clear of the advantage of what's proposed.
What would be cool would be to be able to have a command in the IRB debugger session to continue to the first line of the next step matcher that is executed. No idea how to go about that, but as long as we're on this topic.
Cheers,
Luke
Demetrius Nunes
Oct 4, 2009, 11:33:40 PM10/4/09
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Luke, that "1 #intentionally force debugger context in this method" trick is great. Worked like a charm.
But I believe my other arguments are still valid: built-in, easier to use simple IRB session support with no dependency on ruby-debug, which is requires some work to get it going on JRuby.
Ben Mabey
Oct 4, 2009, 11:55:56 PM10/4/09
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Luke Melia wrote:
> We have a step matcher defined "And I debug the test" that looks like
> this:
>
> When /^I debug (?:the|this) test$/ do
> require "rubygems"; require "ruby-debug"; debugger
> 1 #intentionally force debugger context in this method
> end
>
> Works a treat. I'm not clear of the advantage of what's proposed.
>
> What would be cool would be to be able to have a command in the IRB
> debugger session to continue to the first line of the next step
> matcher that is executed. No idea how to go about that, but as long as
> we're on this topic.
>
> Cheers,
> Luke
>
Yep, I do something similar. While we are on the topic of ruby-debug
> We have a step matcher defined "And I debug the test" that looks like
> this:
>
> When /^I debug (?:the|this) test$/ do
> require "rubygems"; require "ruby-debug"; debugger
> 1 #intentionally force debugger context in this method
> end
>
> Works a treat. I'm not clear of the advantage of what's proposed.
>
> What would be cool would be to be able to have a command in the IRB
> debugger session to continue to the first line of the next step
> matcher that is executed. No idea how to go about that, but as long as
> we're on this topic.
>
> Cheers,
> Luke
>
tips here is my ~/.rdebugrc file:
set autolist
set autoeval
set autoreload
Ruby debug will use these settings every time so you don't have to type
them in for each new session. :)
-Ben
> http://www.lukemelia.com/
>
>
> >
Demetrius Nunes
Oct 5, 2009, 12:07:58 AM10/5/09
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Added ruby-debug support in Swinger:
Now, with: "When debug!", I have "Debugger.start_session binding" and that tries to use ruby-debug if it's available.
Thanks for the good ideas guys. Still would like to see this built into Cucumber... ;)
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