A Certifiable Very Cool Trick

[Barry A. Warsaw]

>>>>> "DA" == David Arnold <arnold at dstc.edu.au> writes:

    DA> as i understood it, each interpreter presents a set of COM
    DA> APIs which provide an abstract view of stack frames, etc,
    DA> suitable for use by a symbolic script debugger.  you can thus
    DA> debug across scripting languages using a single tool, watching
    DA> calls between interpreters, etc etc.

Another thing that would be really cool, would be a debugging tool
that could cross the implementation language barrier.  E.g. stepping
through Python, I could then drop down into the C or Java at that
point.  Having the ability to move between even those two abstraction
levels would be pretty useful.  Really cool would be the ability to
also drop into the bytecode level (either under the Java source in the
case of JPython, or between the Python and C code in the case of
CPython).

    DA> all very cool, and so i started thinking about doing the same
    DA> thing for Unix via gdb (for C) and the Python interpreter
    DA> (what other languages are there?  oh -- ELisp, yeah -- we can
    DA> do that!)

Ah, so our dream of scripting XEmacs with Python isn't so far away...

    DA> ahhhhh.  now, where's that spare time again?

...or is it? :)  Fun to think about at least.

-Barry