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From: Maverick Woo <maverick@cs.cmu.edu>
To: "caml-list@inria.fr" <caml-list@inria.fr>
Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Do you use a debugger with OCaml? If not, why not?
Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2015 11:06:30 -0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <5655DC86.10205@cs.cmu.edu> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <5655AE66.6000307@coherentgraphics.co.uk>

Hi,

The first moment I detect I need a printf in a program for debugging, I put in a
logging framework instead because I find it saves me time in the long run. This
is true regardless of the language I am using. I essentially never use an
interactive debugger for normal programming projects, even if I am using C++ on
Windows, which has an excellent debugger in Visual Studio.

For OCaml projects, I use Lwt_log even if the program itself does not use Lwt.
Previously I have also tried Bolt (and Volt), but I switched to Lwt_log because
some of my programs do use Lwt and I like uniformity across my projects.

Maverick

On 11/25/15 07:49, John Whitington wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Like, I suspect, many people, my method has always been to insert Printfs, and
> stare at code until I find the problem. In fact, the ocaml.org page on
> ocamldebug says:
> 
> "In fact, for complex programs, it is likely the case that the programmer will
> use explicit printing to find the bugs, since this methodology allows the
> reduction of the trace material: only useful data are printed and special
> purpose formats are more suited to get the relevant information, than what can
> be output automatically by the generic pretty-printer used by the trace mechanism."
> 
> So, I ask: What do you use for debugging small and large OCaml programs? If not
> a debugger, why not? What problems prevent it? How does your debugging process
> differ when writing OCaml compared with other languages you use?
> 
> John
> 

  parent reply	other threads:[~2015-11-25 16:06 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 21+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2015-11-25 12:49 John Whitington
2015-11-25 13:12 ` Francois Berenger
2015-11-25 13:23 ` Ivan Gotovchits
2015-11-25 15:27   ` Gerd Stolpmann
2015-11-25 16:04     ` Chan Ngo
2015-11-25 13:26 ` Matthieu Dubuget
2015-12-01 12:06   ` Matthieu Dubuget
2015-11-25 14:02 ` Markus Weißmann
2015-11-25 14:05 ` Nils Becker
2015-11-25 15:55 ` Daniel Bünzli
2015-11-26  9:14   ` Leonardo Laguna Ruiz
2015-11-26 10:59     ` Tom Ridge
2015-11-30 17:56       ` Xavier Van de Woestyne
2015-11-25 16:06 ` Maverick Woo [this message]
2015-11-25 16:16 ` Anton Bachin
2015-11-25 16:52   ` Michael Grünewald
2015-11-25 18:23     ` Török Edwin
2015-11-25 20:23 ` David MENTRÉ
2015-11-26 10:11 ` Malcolm Matalka
2015-11-26 10:57 ` Romain Bardou
2015-12-11 18:58 ` Richard W.M. Jones

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