Customizing the debugger
You can customize the colors used to indicate the execution point and enabled, disabled, and invalid breakpoint lines, as well as how the debugger Smart Step feature works and how breakpoints in classes with tracing disabled are displayed.
Customizing the debugger display
To set execution point and breakpoint colors,
- Select Tools|Editor Options.
The Editor Options dialog box is displayed.
- Select the Color tab to display the Color page.
- In the Screen Element list, select an element related to debugging, then select the background and foreground colors for the element.
Screen elements related to debugging are:
- Default breakpoint
- Disabled breakpoint
- Execution backtrace
- Execution point
- Invalid breakpoint
- Verified breakpoint
Customizing debugger settings
To customize debugger settings,
- Choose Project|Properties.
The Project Properties dialog box is displayed.
- Select the Debug tab.
- To enable Smart Step, choose the Enable Smart Step option or click the Smart Step icon
on the debugger toolbar. (Smart Step is on by default.) Smart Step is a feature of JBuilder Professional and Enterprise.
- To configure the Smart Step toggle, set the following options:
- Skip synthetic methods
- Skips synthetic methods when stepping into classes.
- Skip constructors
- Skips constructors when stepping into classes.
- Skip static initializers
- Skips static (class) initializers when stepping into classes.
- Warn if break in class with tracing disabled
- Displays a warning message if there is a breakpoint in a class that has tracing disabled. See the topic called "Breakpoints and tracing disabled settings" for more information.
For information on remote debugging options, see the "Debugging distributed applications" chapter in the Distributed Application Developer's Guide. Remote debugging is a feature of JBuilder Enterprise.
Setting update intervals
You can also specify the frequency of the intervals that control when console/process state changes are polled. If the intervals are small, the debugger/runtime responses for output and other events, like stepping, will be faster, but JBuilder will be using most of the CPU time.
In general, you can make these settings small, unless you are running other applications along with JBuilder, or the program you are debugging requires a lot of CPU time. If this is the case, you should make the intervals larger.
To change the update intervals,
- Choose Tools|IDE Options.
The IDE Options dialog box is displayed.
- Select the Run/Debug tab to display the Run/Debug page.
- To set the interval for console output for runtime processes, move the Console Output slider bar at the top of the dialog box.
- To set the interval for console output for debug processes, move the Console Output slider bar in the middle of the dialog box.
- To set the interval for debug process state updates, move the Process State slider bar.
Creating debugger configurations
This is a feature of JBuilder Professional and Enterprise.
Debugger configurations are preset debugger settings. Using a preset setting allows you to save debugger settings, along with runtime settings, in a single configuration. This allows you to easily debug multiple processes in one project without having to change your project settings each time.
For information on creating a runtime configurations, see the topic called "Setting runtime configurations."
To create a debugger configuration,
- Choose Run|Configurations.
The Runtime Configurations dialog box is displayed.
- Click the New button to create a new configuration.
- The Run page of the Runtime Properties dialog box is displayed.
- Click the Debug tab.
- The Debug page is displayed.
- Choose the debugger settings you want for the selected configuration. For more information on settings, see the topic called "Customizing debugger settings" for more information.
- Click OK to close the Runtime Properties dialog box, then click OK again to close the Runtime Configurations dialog box.
To change an existing configuration, select the configuration you want to change in Runtime Configurations dialog box. Then, choose Edit. To delete a configuration, select the configuration and press Remove.