Accessing SKILL runtime error locations outside the IDE (Vim workflow)

Trevor,

There are APIs to cover much of the same functionality - you can put breakpoints on function entry and exit (breakpt()), you can trace functions (trace()), trace variables (tracev), you can continue (continue()), step() and next() and you can check info as to where you are: where(), dump(), stacktrace() etc. There's a manual that covers this... 

The one thing you can't do is set line breakpoints or find info on the line you're currently on (it reports the line it breaks at but not the line you are on after a step or next).

However, given that it takes the same license to use the API to perform debug, why not use the IDE for this? I don't use the IDE for writing code, but I do use it for debugging - so I don't really see the point in "emulating" this...

Andrew

Hi Andrew,

I saw those functions and read the general error-handling docs but couldn't find anything that fit this quite niche case. I do actually use the IDE for debugging in most cases, but I wanted to perform less vim->IDE transitions thus wanted to see if I could find a generic errorHandler that didn't require me to do debugger functions like trace, or breakpoints. 

With the IDE I don't need to set breakpoints, it just magically finds the line throwing an error and positions towards it. I was just wondering if there was a way to grab this position, as to avoid having to avoid developing and debugging for minor issues on two windows. I apologize if my above post was unclear on that.

Thanks for the response, I think Aurel B's below response probably is more what I'm looking for?
Trevor

Hi Andrew,

I saw those functions and read the general error-handling docs but couldn't find anything that fit this quite niche case. I do actually use the IDE for debugging in most cases, but I wanted to perform less vim->IDE transitions thus wanted to see if I could find a generic errorHandler that didn't require me to do debugger functions like trace, or breakpoints. 

With the IDE I don't need to set breakpoints, it just magically finds the line throwing an error and positions towards it. I was just wondering if there was a way to grab this position, as to avoid having to avoid developing and debugging for minor issues on two windows. I apologize if my above post was unclear on that.

Thanks for the response, I think Aurel B's below response probably is more what I'm looking for?
Trevor

Hi Trevor,

Understood. In fact there was a recent discussion about setting line breakpoints outside of the IDE (see this post); I recognise you are not asking about setting breakpoints, but the same problem exists about retrieving line number information when the error occurs remains. I don't think defining your own errorHandler helps with that (this only works if you are not using the debugger, since that supersedes the error handler registered with ilAddTopLevelErrorHandler).

I also use the IDE for debugging in this scenario when it stops at the line with the error - I just need to refresh the code in the IDE (and I stop it asking me each time to save the contents); yes it means I need to edit in vi/vim and refresh in the IDE, but the ability to see the line in the code, hover over variables (rather than typing them in the CIW) is still worth the (slight) pain...

Now what I'd like is proper language server protocol support for SKILL and then you'd be able to use vim or neovim with an extension or VS Code, or Jetbrains etc etc. Sadly we've not done this yet...

Andrew