Community
Participate
Working Groups
Build Identifier: 20120216-1857 Features request to Improve Variables and Expression user interraction and view : 1) Make the Expression view contextual as the Variable view : Expression out of context are not seen instead of appearing in red. 2) Make it possible to move Up & Down variables & expressions. 3) Add a checkbox in front of each variable & expression. Add a view, say named "Focus" or "Focussed" or "Selected" where selected variables & expressions are shown together, movable Up & Down, and contextual to each function or method in a tree way, where a view inherits from the view of the caller and can be delta customised. 4) "Focus" views may be saved/loaded in each function or method context. Motivations : a) A lot of variable or expressions are not of interrest for a specific debug session where one focus on one perticaliar issue. b) Different bug tracking involve different sets of variables or expressions c) Being able to organize them in the view would be a great productivity improvement. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: unrelevant
(In reply to comment #0) Thanks for the feedback. Overall, everything you mention makes sense. Some of it we are already trying to address. See below. > 1) Make the Expression view contextual as the Variable view: > Expression out of context are not seen instead of appearing in red. Check out Bug 372181 which aims to provide working sets for expressions. You could then choose a set of expressions you want to work with, without having to delete the others. This is a work in progress. Bug 372181 comment 27 suggest another way to achieve this which has just been committed. > 2) Make it possible to move Up & Down variables & expressions. This is possible in the Expressions view. As for the Variables view we would like to allow for sorting (see Bug 197278) but no one has taken the time to do it. But if you want to move things around it is probably that you want to focus on a group of variables right? In that case, you can use the Expressions view to display those variables, in the order you want. Typing each expression is a pain, so instead you can drag&drop those variables from the Variables view to the Expressions view. > 3) Add a checkbox in front of each variable & expression. Add a view, say named > "Focus" or "Focussed" or "Selected" where selected variables & expressions are > shown together, movable Up & Down, and contextual to each function or method in > a tree way, where a view inherits from the view of the caller and can be delta > customised. The Expressions view allows to focus on the variables you care about, and if we have Working Sets, it would give the contextual aspect. I'm not sure what you mean by "delta customized". I'm also not sure a new "Focus" view is needed. We should be able to address you use-cases with the Expressions view. > 4) "Focus" views may be saved/loaded in each function or method context. Not sure we need a "Focus" view just yet. You may not be aware of the Pin&Clone feature which could help achieve what you need: http://wiki.eclipse.org/CDT/User/NewIn80#Pin_.26_Clone Also, there is a very recent new feature called "Enhanced Expression view" which allows you to create groups of expressions in the Expressions view. You could achieve context using that, by creating different groups for the different contexts, and opening the ones that are relevant at the time. http://wiki.eclipse.org/CDT/User/NewIn82 There was also talk of support a type of regular expression to define expressions in the expressions view. This would speed up the definition of expressions. See Bug 381754 comment 4.
