dMZX Forums: Built-in Debug Log -> MegaZeux Feature Requests -> Tracker

(original poster: Lachesis)

A built-in debug log. Messages would be appended by . "!LEVEL! Debug text" and could be viewable in-game perhaps as a part of the F6 or F11 functionality (what does F5 do in-editor? That's another possibility). . "!ERROR!" condition stuff could even optionally have the log pop up automatically or whatever. Before some smart-ass idiot says something about using FWRITE, remember that you can only have one file open for reading OR writing at any time, which may already be used in the code I want to debug, and that adds the extra step of going to look at an external file when this would be much more convenient integrated directly into MZX itself. *"" and WAIT 20 that I have to go back and remove manually when I'm done is getting old.

Updating status to: Confirmed
Updating severity to: 1 - Low
Updating version to: GIT


There was some more discussion about this feature on the board thread that was lost in translation.

Anyway, I think I suggested just printing all comments to a second "debugging" window (or stderr for Linux/etc. systems) if MZX was started with a specific command line parameter. This way, we don't have to butcher comments with magic prefixes, and we don't have to break the world format.

OTOH, it does mean EVERY comment is printed, but hopefully people use comments sparingly in production robotic code, because as everybody knows, MZX consumes CPU cycles decoding them, which can slow your game down!

--ajs.

Updating status to: Approved
Updating version to: None

Updating version to: GIT


IPB knocked off the version when I Approved this and I didn't even notice... what a bother. Doubt this will make 2.84.

I'll look at it tomorrow, grumble grumble

Updating version to: 2.91

Updating version to: 2.92

(was actually supposed to be 2.92)

• console_log=
  
  • disable
    
  • stdout (all logging goes to stdout/stderr)
    
  • ui (separate log UI that can be displayed with `; INFO()/WARN()/etc macros redirect here)
    
  • overlay (write over MZX display- intended for console platforms; INFO()/WARN()/etc macros redirect here)
  
  
• console_ui_backlog=
  
  • 25..10000 (only for the ui setting; overlay would force to 25)
  
  
• console_log_comments= (log Robotic . comment commands during testing)
  
  • none
    
  • tagged (DEBUG:/INFO:/WARN:/ERROR:/etc; better name?)
    
  • all

console_log:

• Is a console platform?
  
  • -> Always `overlay`
  
  
• Is debug enabled?
  
  • -> Always `stdout`
  
  
• -> `ui`

Alternative: have a compile-time config option to enable graphical debug()/info()/warn() and enable it by default for console releases. For other platforms, try to open a console if there isn't already one. Getting the config file to these functions would be difficult or annoying.

This removes the need for the first two config file options in the previous post.