From: Florian Gross <flgr@...>
Date: 2005-02-15T00:09:56+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby on Windows: debugger questions and comments

Tobias Luetke wrote:

>>3. Can anyone recommend another Ruby debugger?
> Rails ships with a breakpointer. This opens an IRB session on the spot
> when you put the method call "breakpoint" anywhere in your code.

And it works outside of Rails as well -- just copy the breakpoint*.rb 
and binding_of_caller.rb files over to somewhere where your application 
finds them, do require 'breakpoint' and place breakpoint() calls in your 
code to get an IRB session right there at that spot. Ruby's powerful 
introspection abilities will then easily let you examine variables, 
instance_variables, methods, call stack and much more.

By default those sessions will be inline, meaning they will happen via 
the application's regular STDIN/OUT which is usually okay for Ruby 
tools, but not for CGI applications, daemons etc. -- for those cases you 
should do a single Breakpoint.activate_drb call (you can do this right 
after the require) and the breakpoints will wait in server mode until 
you connect with breakpoint_client.rb. (ruby breakpoint_client.rb)

If there's any questions regarding this I'd be pleased to answer them.