Description Luc Bourlier 2007-11-20 06:02:45 EST

Step filtering is very useful but can be a bit tricky to configure. The user has to add the list of packages/classes he doesn't want to step in/through. But when using 3rd party libraries or framework, the user does not know beforehand what packages/classes to add. The configuration has to be done using 'try and error': step in some code, stop at a useless location, add a filter for this location and restart the debug sequence.
A good example of this is when trying to skip over dynamic proxies inserted by Spring aop. The spring aop package has to be filtered, as has to be the reflect packages (java.lang.reflect.*, sun.reflect.*). But this is not enought, has calls are done to standard Java classes (String, ArrayList, ...), and the filters have to be broadened.
And the same as to be done for the next library that the code to debug uses.
At end, ones filter out everything but the code of it's own project.

In this case, having the possibility to defined a white list instead of a black list would make more sense. The user would just have to define one filter for it's own code (org.mycompany.*), and will always stay inside this code.