A GUI for the Perl Debugger

  What is it?

Well, its pretty much the same perl debugger that gets distributed with Perl 5, but a GUI sits on top of it.  The GUI runs in a separate process, the IPC mechanism they use depends on POSIX, so it will probably only work on a POSIX compliant system.  The GUI consists of two windows: one is a TTY dialog like the regular debugger, the other window shows where in the source file you are.  It is in that second window where all the GUI stuff is.   From it you can:

• set breakpoints, print expressions, or use just about any other debugger command through a combination of mouse settings and buttons or keyboard shortcuts.
• see breakpoints and the current line through color coding.
• visit various other source files in your program.  The File menu contains all the loaded modules.
• position the window at various subroutines through the window on the right.
• search through your source using Perl regular expressions or literals.
• edit your sources.  But be sure to save your changes before invoking another debugger command, else your changes will be lost.  While this isn't a full featured editor suitable for all of your editing, its OK for quick and dirty changes.

Note that this software is in a pre-alpha state.  While I find it useful as is, my primary motivation for releasing it is so you can make it better.  See a little bit later on how to join the development team.

Show me

A screenshot is available here.  It consists of two images that total about 38K.

Download it

The current version is DR-1.  You might want to look at the README first, it has installation instructions and other stuff.

Join the development team

I don't have time to do much more with this, so I would like some help.  Look at the TODO and BUGS file in the distribution to get some ideas of things you could do, or let me know of any other ideas you have.  Either way, contact me.  There's no sense in you and someone else doing the same thing, so I'll act as coordinator to help prevent that.

Send your feedback

Bug reports or enhancement ideas are welcome, even if you aren't on the development team.  Again, just send me some email.  Also, if you get it to work on anything other than Solaris or Linux I would like to know.