GHCi debugger status

[Peter Hercek]

Daniil Elovkov wrote:
> I'd like to know, how do ghc developers and users feel about the debugger?

Sometimes it is better/quicker than "printf debugging" :)

> Now I see it mess up the list of bindings in a funny way. For example, 
> in a previous trace session I had a variable, say, prev. It was bound 
> during pattern matching in a function, say, prevFunc. Now I'm having 
> another trace session, actually stepping from the very beginning. A 
> couple of steps after the beginning, prev suddenly appears in the 
> bindings where prevFunc absolutely has not yet been invoked. It's 
> completely unrelated. In 'show bindings' prev has a wrong type - 
> SomeType (it's ADT). Its real type (when in scope) is [t]. I ask 'length 
> prev' and get 0 :)

It is supposed to show only free variables in the selected expression.
  I'm sure I had cases when I was able to access variables which were
  not free in the selected expression but which would have been in
  scope if used in the selected expression. The values available seemed
  correct (contrary to your case). I thought it was a step to get all
  the variables in scope to be visible but later I learned it is not
  feasible and my lucky experience was probably a bug. If I encounter
  it again should I fill a bug report? I mean: is it really a bug?

Peter.