On Monday, July 9, 2012 3:24:19 PM UTC+2, [email protected] wrote: > > Hello, > > I recently found this topic about Super Dev Mode appearing in GWT 2.5. > I am happy that new way of debugging is coming to the GWT development > process. > But I am not happy that there are plans to discard current DevMode in the > future. At least, each official mentioning of SuperDevMode means that it > will replace current DevMode. > > If this is true, then I am not happy at all. > > Debugging in the IDE of choice was always top feature of GWT for me. > Ability to freely navigate code, use typesafe autocompletion in evaluate > expression boxes, drop stack frame feature and all other hundreds of > java-specific little features is great joy. Forcing developers to discard > all this and be tied to browser is at least major regress. > > I could not find any discussion on this topic, if there's any, PLEASE > direct me to the page where it all was discussed and decision was made, i > want to see the arguments. I found only "browser plugins are instable" > topic. But people, concept is already working satisfactory for several > years and I don't want to lose it in future because it is not 100% perfect > and crashes sometimes. > > Telling "source code maps are being implemented in browsers at the moment" > and at the same time arguing that SuperDevMode will make us > browser-independent seems like lame joke. At least, not all browsers will. > But even if all major browsers (Chrome, FF, Safari, IE) will, source maps > is only part of the picture. The debugging in all browsers has its own > interface, keymaps etc, and, as I wrote above it never compares to the > IDE/Native java debugging. In other words, it does not compare! > > TLDR: questions: > 1) Is it true that SuperDevMode will replace DevMode >
Who knows? More seriously, you can be assured DevMode will stay for quite some time. > 2) If yes, then for the sake of God, why such regress? > Browser plugins are a nightmare to maintain. The plugin for Chrome is known to be buggy and unstable. Every 6 weeks, the plugin for Firefox has to be updated (we could choose to only support Firefox ESR, but I doubt you'd be happy; I wouldn't be). I've heard there had been issues with the Safari plugin on OS X at some point, due to a browser upgrade. The only stable plugin for now is the one for IE, and even that one required some work to make it compatible with IE9 and the newer versions of Windows. Generally, browser vendors don't help us maintain plugins. Due to this fact, no new plugin is being developed, so debugging in Opera, or Safari on Windows, won't ever be possible (OK, that's rhetoric anyway, as nobody minds ;-) ). But now we also have to support mobile development: iOS, Chrome for Android, Firefox Mobile, Windows 8, etc. and those browsers don't even allow us to use plugins! And that's where SuperDevMode shines with its plugin-free approach: it brings DevMode to any single browser out there, at the expense of using the browser's own dev tools. So, what the future is? Honestly, to me, the future is in wire protocols for JS debuggers. Opera has had one for long, Chrome too. Mozilla is building one. I can't tell for IE but at least you can debug a local IE instance so it's better than nothing, and we can have hopes that DevMode as we know it will be supported for quite a long time (compared to other browsers). With such protocols, your IDE could connect to your browser and use SourceMaps to give you (almost) the same debugging experience as if you were running your code "natively" (technically, I believe it could also be made so; based on an experiment I made a few years back to bring DevMode to Adobe AIR through the Flash debugger). This, to me, is the way forward. It would however require a tremendous amount of work, so it's not going to happen any time soon. http://code.google.com/p/chromedevtools/ could help here I guess, but it's still a very tiny part of what's needed to bring the same level of debugging as with the current DevMode. 10 years after the Internet Bubble, web dev is only starting to make its revolution towards "professionalization" (MVC was seen as a thing of the past until Backbone et al. revived it). GWT is ahead of its time here with leveraging Java dev tools, but web dev is still for the most part the same as 10 years ago. console.log replaced window.alert, but it hasn't really changed. I believe, DevMode (as we know it) will fade away, either replaced by SuperDevMode or something based on it (better integrated in the IDE), or rewritten atop wire debugging protocols instead of plugins. It will take time though, and in the mean time DevMode won't change, and SuperDevMode helps us support new browsers at virtually no cost. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google Web Toolkit" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/google-web-toolkit/-/sFfm9FdF0_cJ. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-web-toolkit?hl=en.
