DSDP/DD/Phone 22-Mar-2007

Documentation to help get familiar with Eclipse Debugging and DSF

Unfortunately there is a long and steep learning curve when starting to develop debuggers for Eclipse. On the upside there is a lot of excellent documentation to help with this task. I recommend looking at these materials in the order listed below.

http://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-Launch-Framework/launch.html

Article describing the Eclipse launch framework and a walk-through example of how to use it. Launch framework is a rather un-usual feature of Eclipse debugger, which causes some confusion to a lot of new Eclipse users and developers. Understanding the launch framework is essential in making sense of the overall debugger framework.

http://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-Debugger/how-to.html

This article walks through creating a simple debugger with basic features using the "standard" eclipse debug model. Although the provisional "flexible hierarchy" interfaces introduced in Eclipse 3.2 make it possible to by-pass the standard model and this is what DSF does, understanding the standard debug model is still essential for backward compatibility and interoperability with third party tools.

http://www.eclipsecon.org/2007/index.php?page=sub/&id=3701

Presentation from a tutorial on Eclipse debugging from EclipseCon 2007. It contains a presentation with a very broad overview (214 slides) of debugger features, as well as a few examples on general debugger features, memory view, and flexible hierarchy. This tutorial is a lot to digest at one time, but it's also a very valuable resource in learning to use the debug framework.