vcDebug {BuildSys}

Debug the Shared Library

Description

Calling vcDebug will initiate a debug enabled Microsoft Visual Code instance that can be use as a GUI debugger of your C/C++ code.

Usage

  ## S4 method for signature 'BSysProject'
vcDebug(.Object, LaunchEditor=TRUE)

Arguments

.Object

BSysProject object instance defining the library to be debugged. See BuildSys-package for more information.

LaunchEditor

LaunchEditor is a reserved argument that should not be used by the user. A call to it with LaunchEditor=FALSE is used in the .Rprofile file for the debug R session to do the necessary tasks to initialise the R session state.

Details

vcDebug creates the necessary c_cpp_properties.json and launch.json files needed for Microsoft Visual Code to effectively debug the project dynamic library and launches an instance of Visual Code. It is assumed that the dynamic library has already been compiled with make and Debug support enabled. R needs to be configured to be able to build C/C++ libraries (RTools installed on Windows) and it is assumed that Microsoft Visual Code is installed. These requirements are discussed at length in BuildSys-package.

Within Visual Code you can open the source file/s of your library, set breakpoints and run a debug session. To run a debug session select the run/Start Debugging menu item. Doing so will result in a new instance of R being launched which contains the same environment (including loaded packages and loaded dynamic libraries) as the parent R session where vcDebug was first called. This R session is your sandbox to safely debug your library in and leaves the parent R session safe from loss should your code crash R completely.

Debugging a new library will typically require some R setup code to be executed before using and/or testing it. With BuildSys you should perform this initial setup of R in the parent R session before calling vcDebug so that you never have to initialise R in your debug session. The debug R session will inherit the state of the parent R session at the time that vcDebug was called.

Value

this method returns no value.

Note

see BuildSys-package for examples of use.

If the absolute path to source and dynamic library files contains spaces then debugging in Visual Code fails to function correctly. To ensure code is debuggable users will need to avoid putting code in folders with whitespace in the folder names.

Author(s)

Paavo Jumppanen [aut, cre]

Maintainer: Paavo Jumppanen <[e-mail]>

See Also

initProjectFromFolder make BuildSys-package