bugGNU Octave - Bugs: bug #48299, Highlight changed items in...

 
 

bug #48299: Highlight changed items in Workspace view

Submitter:  Ruslan <l0110111>
Submitted:  Thu 23 Jun 2016 02:00:12 PM UTC
   
 
Category:  GUI Severity:  1 - Wish
Priority:  3 - Low Item Group:  Feature Request
Status:  None Assigned to:  None
Originator Name:  Open/Closed:  * Open
Release:  * 4.0.0 Operating System:  * Any
Fixed Release:  None Planned Release:  None
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Fri 24 Jun 2016 04:47:00 AM UTC, comment #6: 

Well I'm not quite sure about this. When they are non-displayed, I know I have to print them myself anyway, so the workspace view of them is actually useless. But when they are displayed, I take it as a shortcut to avoid extra printing commands. But if I know that at current step I need the value which just changed the highlight will guide my eye when I look at the workspace view.

Of course, if the non-displayed values are highlighted in workspace view, this would make it somehow useful for such values though. But if it's 1G variable... indeed, this looks horrifying.

I suppose the GUI might ask the user if they want to save current state before resuming, when the state exceeds some (configurable) storage size threshold.

Ruslan <l0110111>
Fri 24 Jun 2016 04:23:01 AM UTC, comment #5: 

I would think that it was misleading to highlight some of the variables that have changed and leave others unhighlighted.  It is the ones that have non-displayed changes that most need highlighting, isn't it?

Lachlan Andrew <lachlan>
Fri 24 Jun 2016 04:18:48 AM UTC, comment #4: 

But currently Workspace view doesn't e.g. list all the values of matrices (see bug #47496), doesn't list elements of structures etc. This makes it much more lightweight to save values in it.

Ruslan <l0110111>
Fri 24 Jun 2016 03:00:08 AM UTC, comment #3: 

Saving all registers is certainly feasible, because registers are small.

I don't know QtCreator well enough.  Can it have a 1GB variable like Octave can?  I assume not.

The Octave workspace doesn't have "expanded" variables AFAIK.  Perhaps this functionality would be suitable for the variable-editor patch #8656.

A agree that roll-back would be extremely heavy, and certainly should only be enabled for short sections of code.  It probably shouldn't be implemented at all.  I just often wish I could use it :)

Lachlan Andrew <lachlan>
Thu 23 Jun 2016 02:39:34 PM UTC, comment #2: 

The way I've seen in QtCreator and EDB is saving the whole state (all registers in EDB, only expanded variables in QtCreator) before resuming execution and comparing it with new one on breakpoint.

In Octave this may be hard given that it updates the Workspace view even in non-debug mode. But I think such highlighting is only useful in debug mode and only between breakpoints/steps, not on every assignment, so I think the same approach as in QtCreator and EDB would be OK.

Roll-back feature would be extremely heavy, not only in terms of performance, but also in terms of memory usage. I think it should only be like "start recording", "stop recording" actions, not always active.

Ruslan <l0110111>
Thu 23 Jun 2016 02:28:21 PM UTC, comment #1: 

That is a nice idea.  However, I'm making it "severity: wish" and "priority: low", since there are many more urgent usability issues with the gui.

Do you have any suggestions how this could be achieved?  The only ideas I have are quite resource intensive, like adding and updating a flag on every single variable for every single assignment.

If we allow very heavy operations, I'll love to have a "roll-back" feature, where previous values of variables are kept, allowing the user to step backward through the code once a breakpoint is hit.

Lachlan Andrew <lachlan>
Thu 23 Jun 2016 02:00:12 PM UTC, original submission:  

A useful feature of most GUI debuggers (like e.g. QtCreator, OllyDbg, EDB) is that variables which are changed after last stop (i.e. after step in/over/out, after any breakpoint hit, etc.) are highlighted (usually by changing their text color to red). It would be great if Octave GUI also had such a feature in its Workspace view.

Ruslan <l0110111>

 

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    Date Changed by Updated Field Previous Value => Replaced by
    2016-06-23 lachlan Severity3 - Normal 1 - Wish
        Priority5 - Normal 3 - Low

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