875034 - (dbg-blackbox) [meta] Debugger blackboxing

Status: NEW

(DevTools :: Debugger, task, P5)

Description

[Rob Campbell [:rc] (:robcee)]

When debugging, it can be useful to "Step Around" library code. I.e., treat libraries as "Black Boxes" for the purposes of debugging.

Use case:
you want to debug your own code that calls into a library at various points and don't want to step through that alien code. The bug is in your stuff (you hope).

Possible Implementation:
It should be possible to implement this in the Debug Server by providing scripts that are known to be libraries. 

(UI could be a context menu on the sources to indicate that this is a library script)

When running in Debug mode, when entering a frame, the Debug Server can check to see if this script url is one of the libraries and continue stepping until the current frame is in a different source url.

Comment 1

[Girish Sharma [:Optimizer]]

plus one that.
I have been recently playing with jQuery a lot and debugging custom functions built around jQuery is a hell. Up to 10 stack frames on line 2 of jquery.min.js and then you finally press the step over button and miss the frame which you were actually looking into.

Comment 2

[Sebastian Zartner [:sebo]]

Is this bug restricted to blackboxing within the Debugger panel? If not, bug 1102797 should be blocking it.

Sebastian

Comment 3

[Sebastian Zartner [:sebo]]

Sorry, wrong bug. The correct one is bug 905978.

Sebastian

Comment 4

[Eddy Bruel [:ejpbruel]]

(In reply to Sebastian Zartner from comment #3)
> Sorry, wrong bug. The correct one is bug 905978.
> 
> Sebastian

Yeah, this bug is restricted to blackboxing within the Debugger panel. But thank you very much for bringing that bug to my attention!

Comment 5

[Nick Fitzgerald [:fitzgen] [⏰PST; UTC-8]]

I mean, it seems like it makes sense to add that bug as a blocker just to keep it tracked, unless we want to add another meta meta blackboxing bug and start getting super bureaucratic and all that...

Eddy?

Comment 6

[Eddy Bruel [:ejpbruel]]

(In reply to Nick Fitzgerald [:fitzgen] from comment #5)
> I mean, it seems like it makes sense to add that bug as a blocker just to
> keep it tracked, unless we want to add another meta meta blackboxing bug and
> start getting super bureaucratic and all that...
> 
> Eddy?

I agree that we shouldn't be overly bureaucratic about these things, but I'm a bit worried that I'll lose overview of what bugs belong to the debugger if we also start tracking non-debugger stuff under these meta bugs.

On the other hand, blackboxing is a feature that primarily belongs to the debugger. The fact that we sometimes need to make changes in closely related components doesn't really change that, so I guess it wouldn't hurt to add this bug as a blocker.

If we run into more of these 'related' bugs in the future, let's decide on a case by case basis whether to add them to one of these meta bugs or not. Does that sound reasonable for now?