On Sunday 10 May 2009 01:48:08 Simon wrote:
> but I'd appreciate some suggestions of advice on the tools you use to debug
> and develop PmWiki recipes and core.
>
> There are a couple of recipes I'd like to fix.
> What sort of environment do you develop in,
> IDE, debugger (I'd like to step through the code as it executes),
> and any tips on debugging it given it is a server/web application.
Hi. I am working on Kubuntu GNU/Linux and I use mostly KDE applications:
* Krusader - file manager
* Kate - text editor (great features: all encodings, syntax highlighting,
sessions)
One great thing in KDE is that you can "mount" virtual filesystems, so you can
browse/compare/edit files on remote servers via FTP or SSH protocols, like if
they were on your local hard disk. So I mostly edit files that are live on my
wikis. This way I also am required to fix or revert anything that is broken,
immediately.
For PHP step by step debugging, I have used some functions for many years
(very basic, but work for me). These are in my farmconfig.php:
/// Debug functions
function xmp($stuff, $die=0){
echo "<xmp>";
if(is_array($stuff)) print_r($stuff);
else echo $stuff;
echo "</xmp>";
if($die) die();
}
function xmps($x, $d=0){ # "safer" xmps
if(! $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']=='my.own.ip.address') return false;
xmp($x, $d);
}
When I want to check a variable in the middle of some function, I write one of
those:
xmp($var); # prints the variable on top of the page
xmp($var, 1); # ... and exits
xmps($var, 1); # only print and exit for me (my ip address)
A pmwiki-specific function that doesn't mess with http headers is "sms" from:
http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/DebuggingForCookbookAuthors
I also have bookmarks in Firefox that are shortcuts to important searches.
http://php.net/search.php?lang=en&show=quickref&pattern=%s
with keyword 'php'
When I type in the address bar of the browser, for example "php array merge"
it searches the php.net reference for the function (array_merge) and opens
the page if the function exists, or shows suggestions.
I have similar shortcut-searches for Wikipedia, Google and PmWiki.org.
Firefox has also a great extension for inspecting webpages : Web Developer.
I mostly don't do programming on Windows except when I need to test skins/css
on various browsers. And it's a pain. KDE4 can be installed on Windows, and
Kate works, but I wasn't able (yet) to directly edit remote files.
Among other free software text editors for Windows, I have used SciTE and
Notepad++. The latter, I found lately, has a remote-sync plugin that should
make it easier to edit remote files. (I haven't used it much).
I don't use non-free software unless there is absolutely no way around, so I
haven't tested text editors that others suggested (ultraedit, editplus, ...).
Thanks,
Petko
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