suggestion for auto breakpoints

[jbb]

On Wed, 02 Feb 2000, you wrote:
> A useful way to debug new programs is to place a break point
> inside each function and even inside each if/else and switch
> statement.  This can create quite a few break points but with
> awesome development tools like kdevelop, tracing through each
> path of an entire program becomes a reasonable task - AND it
> allows for some of the best code verification testing we've
> ever had.
> 
> What is great is that (once the breakpoint/line number tracking
> problem is fixed) the breakpoints will tend to linger around
> until the developer specifically turns each one off allowing
> the tools to track which lines of code have not been executed
> and checked.
> 
> How about an option per function, file, or project that would
> add breakpoints in such a fashion? (configurable as to stopping
> for branch statements of course)  Imo, a menu item "Set multiple
> breakpoints" could go right above "Clear all breakpoints" (which
> btw is immediately useful!) and provide a sub menu for function,
> file, or project.
> 
> comments?
> 
> duane

Hi,

This would be too much work, and I doubt that you'll use this feature,
especially as the complexity of your app increases. Finding all the places to
set breakpoints would require parsing your source, and I don't want the
debugger to be involved in that. In a medium size app, written by a team of
people, you could easily be looking at a few thousand breakpoints. A
daunting task for a single person to check every path. I've also never felt the
need for this type of functionality, and I've been debugging programs for too
many years now, but I could be wrong :-)

There is a way for you to do this now, but it involves you writing some code.
Add a debug function which calls another function that is called only once
per run and set the breakpoint on this. Then sprinkle the debug calls throughout
your program. Not exactly the same, but it'll give you a better idea as to
whether this would be really useful or not.

If, after "prototyping" this functionality in your app, you still feel it's
valuable then perhaps I could be persuaded. Now if you create a patch that does
this, well...

There are some other features a bit along these lines that I'd like to do
though.
set breakpoints matching a regular expression.
set catch points.

not to mention the very basic
set breakpoint on function name
set breakpoint on address

-- 
Regards,

jbb
http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~jbb
ICQ: 60412209