| [jdt-debug-dev] Enhancement request for debugging classes without source code and/or debug info |
Dear Developers,
Currently when debugging a class with no source code available, eclipse gives very little support beyond "step over" or "step return". Also, when source code is available, but the debug info has been stripped from the class files (eg, the core JDK runtime classes), then you can step over the lines, but you can't examine local variables, and even the method param names are generic (not matching the actual source code names).
It would be nice to be able to make use of something like BCEL (http://jakarta.apache.org/bcel/) to extract a bit more info about the class, and perhaps to step-over and evaluate at a "java bytecode" / assembler level.
Alternatively, use a java decompiler to re-generate a version of source code for the file (although I don’t think any of the decompilers are 100% reliable for all possible classes).
I don't see this anywhere in the current debug platform dev plan, but assume it would have to be beyond 3.2 anyway. Is there a list of longer term enhancement requests somewhere? If no one else is working on this, I might take a look to see how much effort there is in writing an Eclipse debugger for "java bytecode language". The "how to write an Eclipse debugger" article seems to be a good starting point, but if anyone else has any hints/suggestions/reason why this won't work, etc, then please let me know.
Regards,
Tony