Hi all. I set up this page as a guide to curiosities of the internals of our compiler projects. Unlike the manuals, this is more for getting people up to speed on internal hacking and sharing information once we all start publishing.
Ideally, this will function better than manually searching the e-mail archive as a condensed FAQ-type document for project members. It may also free us to discuss more substantive and in-depth matters at code reviews.
Please add new lore as you learn more about the compiler framework. If you're too lazy to HTML-ize it, toss it between a pair of <xmp> tags, e.g.:
-Keunwoo
Short answer: use app.warning_msg or
app.error_print.
Long answer: in case you're wondering what the app
object is, it's part of the standard library (see
app.cecil). The code for the Vortex/Whirlwind
methods that add printing is in these files:
There is also a helper method warning_msg for
printing a collection of messages in
See the sources for usage.
basic_print is defined on all objects and prints a
low-level snapshot of the receiver.
basic_print_string does the same thing, except it
returns a string instead of printing it to standard output.
print_string is the idiomatic method for more
high-level status messages (more like Java's toString()
method).
These methods are all found in general.cecil of the standard library.
To set a breakpoint on a line, the easiest thing to do is
insert a call to the standard library procedure
breakpoint(). You can also hit Control-C during
program execution (handy for breaking out of the Vortex command
loop to do some debugging).
Once you've entered the debugger, you can evaluate any Cecil
expression for the current scope by simply entering it at the
debugger command line (i.e., the interactive debugger is also a
read-eval-print loop). This includes expressions with side
effects (e.g. calling basic_print_string()) and
declarations that (re)define objects and methods.
When debugging, I often copy-and-paste many versions of a troublesome method from my Emacs buffer into the Cecil debugger until I get it right. Then I do a real rebuild from the source files.
Vortex does not currently provide a "step over" instruction. The best way to simulate that would be to add a breakpoint after every line and use "cont(inue)", but of course that's not convenient.
Get Cecil mode for Emacs in
vortex/Cecil/bin/shell/cecil-mode.el.
If you have cecil-mode.el on your Emacs autoload list,
C-c C-C is bound to "cecil-comment-region" by
default. C-c C-u is bound to
"cecil-uncomment-region".
Text here. Code here.