On Fri, Jan 6, 2017 at 3:24 AM, Siemen Baader <siemenbaa...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi All, > > I may be missing the obvious, but what are good strategies to understand the > structure of existing code? Specifically, I'm trying to understand more of > PharoJS to solve my own problems and eventually also to contribute back - > but this is a general question. > > There is this one MOOC exercise: > http://rmod-pharo-mooc.lille.inria.fr/MOOC/Exercises/Exercises-Pillar/Pillar-Questions.pdf > that helps, and reading tests and comments helps if they exist. But I often > get trapped in drilling down a long call stack and opening many, many > browser windows, a new one for every message send to a new class. > > While writing this it occured to me that I can use the debugger to follow a > call stack by putting a breakpoint in the top level method, then stepping > down using the debugger. There is also a MOOC lecture on that that I will > look at again, > http://rmod-pharo-mooc.lille.inria.fr/MOOC/Videos/W5/C019-W2S-VideosDebugger1-UsingTheDebugger-V2-HD_720p_4Mbs.m4v. > > Any tips? I think I don't see the forest for the trees here I'm afraid :)
This one I just thought of, so YMMV. Try... World menu > Tools > Time Profiler Evaluate code for some point of interest (you may need to wrap it in a loop) then browse the static call tree to * view the common execution paths as an overview of code structure * provide a reading order for class comments * suggest places to insert breakpoints to watch what live is happening. In some cases you might need... World menu > System > Start profiling all processes Another way I often to learn what happens behind Pharo tools if opening halos on a button-of-interest (make sure you click cycling through to the PluggableButtonMorph) then "Inspect Morph" and determine the method called when the button is pressed and drop a halt in that method. This might not be applicable to PharoJS. cheers -ben
