Re: [Caml-list] Do you use a debugger with OCaml? If not, why not?

[Maverick Woo <maverick@cs.cmu.edu>]

Hi,

The first moment I detect I need a printf in a program for debugging, I put in a
logging framework instead because I find it saves me time in the long run. This
is true regardless of the language I am using. I essentially never use an
interactive debugger for normal programming projects, even if I am using C++ on
Windows, which has an excellent debugger in Visual Studio.

For OCaml projects, I use Lwt_log even if the program itself does not use Lwt.
Previously I have also tried Bolt (and Volt), but I switched to Lwt_log because
some of my programs do use Lwt and I like uniformity across my projects.

Maverick

On 11/25/15 07:49, John Whitington wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Like, I suspect, many people, my method has always been to insert Printfs, and
> stare at code until I find the problem. In fact, the ocaml.org page on
> ocamldebug says:
> 
> "In fact, for complex programs, it is likely the case that the programmer will
> use explicit printing to find the bugs, since this methodology allows the
> reduction of the trace material: only useful data are printed and special
> purpose formats are more suited to get the relevant information, than what can
> be output automatically by the generic pretty-printer used by the trace mechanism."
> 
> So, I ask: What do you use for debugging small and large OCaml programs? If not
> a debugger, why not? What problems prevent it? How does your debugging process
> differ when writing OCaml compared with other languages you use?
> 
> John
>