How to start SKILL IDE from APD or Allegro in Linux?

The debugger environment is not so convenient for APD / Allegro debug. It is more oriented for SKILL DFII development. SKILL Debugger is incapable to debug the axlSKILL (Allegro specific) functions.

There is no graphical debugger for axlSKILL, but you can set the telskill environment variable to open a SKILL development window.

If you are looking for line debugger with Allegro, there are some command line debugging options available to you:

• installDebugger() and axlDebug() are functions you can use to set debug mode.

• The following is an extract from the axlIsDebug() function description in cdnshelp, which describes what axlDebug enables:

When this mode is set, AXL may print additional AXL API argument warnings when arguments to AXL functions are incorrect. Many warnings do not obey this variable because they are considered serious or edge conditions. Warnings supported are less serious and are known from user feedback to be troublesome to program around.

Typically, when an AXL API function encounters an argument error, it will print a warning and return nil.
When unset, the code runs in development mode and eliminates many of these warnings. You should have this mode enabled when developing SKILL code.

• Another function available to you is sstatus. Refer to the online documentation to get the full list of the internal variable names and switch values available to you through this command.

sstatus(
s_name
g_switchValue
)
=> g_switchValue

Description: Sets the internal system variable named to a given value. This is a syntax form. Internal variables are typically Boolean switches that accept only the Boolean values of t and nil. Efficiency and security are the reasons why these system variables are stored as internal variables, which can only be set by sstatus, rather than as SKILL variables you can set directly.

• Other things you can do are set breakpoints with breakpt and then progress through your code with step and continue etc.

Note: The online document, SKILL Development Functions Reference, is helpful for describing the functions. However, you must be aware that any reference to a graphical interface for debugging does not apply to axlSKILL. As with any programming language, you can set a debug variable and then make conditional checks for it. If set, you can have your code print values of variables from your code.

• The other way to check the code before delivery is to launch the SKLINT tool and to try to solve all warnings, errors given by this tool. 
  
  Steps to use SKLINT on UNIX:

1. Run setenv TELSKILL in your local env file.
2. Run Allegro and then keep Allegro iconified.
3. In the current shell window, the prompt becomes SKILL>. Launch SKILL> sklint ?file "filetodebug.il".
   filetodebug.il is the file name you want to debug.