ocamldebug and abstract record types

[Frederick Akalin <akalin@akalin.cx>]

At the risk of starting another flamewar, I have another question.  I  
notice that if I have a record type that's defined in an .mli file, I  
am able to print objects of that type and see its contents in the  
debugger.  However, if I make that type abstract (only defining it in  
the .ml file), I am unable to do so, instead seeing "<abstr>", unless  
I am in the .ml file where the type is defined.

Surely this information is available to the debugger from anywhere in  
the program?  Currently I make most of my types non-abstract simply  
because it is impossible to debug my programs without being able to  
check record contents, a practice which I would like to avoid having  
to do.  I am used to gdb, which prints out all a struct's contents  
regardless of protected/private modifiers, or Perl, which provides a  
similar facility with the Data::Dumper module.

I am aware that the debugger lets you load printing functions, a  
facility which I am now exploring.  Although my first impression is  
that it requires a non-trivial amount of work, both on the coding and  
debugging side.

Incidentally, how sophisticated is the debugger planned to be?  Is it  
only supposed to be used for quick-and-dirty debugging and not as a  
replacement for the toplevel?

Frederick Akalin