Regarding Steps Towards ABCL STEP Functionality

[Blake McBride]

Just to throw my two cents into the ring...  I worked on an Interlisp
system many years ago.  It had a break and trace package written in Lisp.
It's at https://github.com/blakemcbride/LISPF4 in case it is helpful.

--blake


On Sun, Aug 2, 2020 at 6:50 PM Alan Ruttenberg <alanruttenberg at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I've wanted this too for a while, but it hasn't reached the top, so I'm
> very happy to hear you are interested in this. I believe I thought the
> starting point should be in src/org/armedbear/Lisp.java which hosts what
> looks like an evaluator. Look for
>
>   public static final LispObject eval(final LispObject obj,
>                                       final Environment env,
>                                       final LispThread thread)
>
> For instance at "else if (obj instanceof Cons)"  it is handling evaluation
> of a cons, with the first section handling the case where the  first
> element is a symbol and checking for whether it names a  function, macro,
> or special form. Below that it handles the case where there's a lambda in
> the function position. There's a hook for profiling that counts function
> calls - presumably that would be one place to hook. You'll need to follow
> it to see how special forms are processed, etc.
>
> If, in slime you execute e.g.  (defun foo (a b &optional c) (and c (+ a
> b)))
> and (inspect #'foo), you'll see how ABCL represents evaluated functions.
>
> Alan
>
> On Sun, Aug 2, 2020 at 8:35 AM loveleague <loveleague at protonmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> While reading through the release manual, I came across the realization
>> -- from section 1.1.2 -- that ABCL still needs an implementation of the
>> STEP function.
>>
>> I would like to look into the details of the hurdles one might need to
>> overcome to bring STEP functionality to ABCL. I imagine there may be some
>> additional challenges from dealing with the JVM, but I'm not well versed as
>> of yet on the topic of debuggers or JVM internals.
>>
>> If it would be possible to share some details on where one would get
>> started in trying to approach this, that would be appreciated.
>>
>> - Luke
>>
>>
>>
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