debugging-the-debugger.md

Debugging the Debugger

Debugging the Debugger is one of the highest levels of inception. Before you begin, prepare yourself for a mind-bending trip of self discovery.

Playing with the debugger

Setup the Debugger so that your environment looks like this gif.

If you have any questions, go back to the getting setup instructions.

Design a new theme ❄️

Lets design a new theme for the debugger, it's not too hard! Our goal here is to style the source tree, editor, and other UI components.

Share your a screenshot of your theme here! Here's an example camo theme that I designed the other day.

Make breakpoints dance 👯

Adding a breakpoint is a critical piece in the inception game... Lets make the debugger do something special when a breakpoint is added.

diff --git a/src/components/Editor.js b/src/components/Editor.js
index ae71d2d..66e0c04 100644
--- a/src/components/Editor.js
+++ b/src/components/Editor.js
@@ -78,11 +78,14 @@ const Editor = React.createClass({
       return this.closeConditionalPanel(line);
     }

+    // => hamster dance
+
     this.toggleBreakpoint(line);
   },

We currently don't have anything awesome as a demo. If you come up with something cool, feel free to share it here and we can add it to the doc!

Pausing FTW 🔴

When the debugger pauses, the fun begins. Here's a gif of what the debugger does normally when it pauses. Your mission if you choose to accept it, is to make it do something truly weird.

Here's a patch to get you started where we check in the Editor to see if we're paused in a re-render.

diff --git a/src/components/Editor.js b/src/components/Editor.js
index ae71d2d..6690d05 100644
--- a/src/components/Editor.js
+++ b/src/components/Editor.js
@@ -78,11 +78,14 @@ const Editor = React.createClass({
       return this.closeConditionalPanel(line);
     }

     const line = this.editor.codeMirror.lineAtHeight(event.clientY);
     const bp = breakpointAtLine(this.props.breakpoints, line);
     this.showGutterMenu(event, line, bp);
@@ -329,6 +332,11 @@ const Editor = React.createClass({
       this.showSourceText(sourceText, selectedLocation);
     }

+    // the debugger is paused
+    if (nextProps.selectedFrame) {
+      // do something really cool here
+    }

Debugger Philosophy

Here's the debugger philosophy in a nutshell.

1. When you inspect the running debugger app, you're debugging a web app
2. The Debugger like other applications has an API to communicate with the browser
3. There's no magic here. If you can build a web app, you can hack on the debugger!
4. You are the debugger's principal customer. Remember, the customer is always right!

Please let us know if we're missing something zen here.

Next Steps

Now that you've internalized the debugger philosophy, it's time to start putting this wisdom to use.

Share what you know Give a talk in school, work, or a local meetup. I'm willing to bet your audience will not know the debugger is a web app! Write a blog post. We'd be happy to link to it here and it could go a really long way towards helping a newcomer grok the philosophy.

• here are @amitzur's slides from his talk

Contribute back take a look at how you can contributing. We would love the help!