Release notes for EiffelStudio 6.0 related to the debugger

Graphical environment

• Added auto expressions on watch tools, it suffices to toggle the auto button in any of the watch tool's toolbar.
• Enhanced breakpoint mechanism by adding print message, hit count (condition), and provide Is True and Has Changed condition.
• Improved the debugging options dialog with the ability to define the environment variables passed down to the debugged application.
• Added some configuration of the Objects tool grid. It is now possible to change the order of 'Current, arguments, locals, ...'.
• Added start workbench and finalized system on Debugging option dialogs.
• Added a new way to look at objects with the object viewer.
• Added a rescue clause indicator in call stack tool's grid.
• One can decide to stay in debugging mode even when compiling.
• Added possibility to continue on conditional breakpoint evaluation failure.
• Removed useless Attributes row in debugger's objects tree.
• The once routines node now shows states of once procedures in addition of the state of once functions.
• Improved cosmetic of debugger's exception handling dialog.

Debugger engine

• Added support for creation of instance of class (including generic).
• Added support for manifest TUPLE, and manifest ARRAY.
• Added support for static routine evaluation.
• Added ability to disable/restore assertion checking during debugging.
• Added evaluation of instructions with the debugger (i.e: procedure call).
• Fixed bug#12934 where the debugger would cause a memory corruption in a running multithreaded program.
• Fixed bug#12750 where the stack overflow detection was not working on Linux.
• Fixed bug#11755 where empty strings with a large capacity were slow to be displayed.

Current restrictions and known issues

General limitations:

• Watch expression: Agent are not supported (for instance "agent my_function" is not supported".
• You cannot yet create an instance of SPECIAL.
• The debugger is not very helpful when the execution is stopped in an invariant.

Limitations or known bugs for the Classic debugger:

• Evaluate Precursor will result the current feature's result (not the precursor)
• If you use any of the previous non supported expression in a breakpoint condition, the condition will always return True, and the debugger will stop on such condition breakpoint

Limitations or known bugs for the .Net debugger:

• When stepping through disabled assertions or disabled debug clauses, the debugger may show incorrect current line.
• When stepping through an inspect code, the debugger may show incorrect current line (especially if the inspect is not ordered)
• Under dotnet v2.0 beta, the debugger may have difficulties to fetch the stack values, especially during first chance exception events

Various known bugs for classic system :

• Wrong assertion tag shown in debugger for precondition violation if violated during an exception rescue, indeed the tag remains the one from the exception
• "Disable Assertion Handling" may be cancel if used in an exception rescue context