Re: Debugging a CLP program within STRSRVJOB

There are (IIRC) three debuggers that are (basically) nothing more than different user interfaces to the underlying debugger support in i5/OS. They are:

** The green screen one "STRDBG"

** The iSeries System Debugger (which can also be invoked via
the STRDBG CL command -- but is a GUI java program. It
can alternately be invoked from a PC command. It runs very
fast, and even works on other OSes like Mac, Linux, BSD...)

** The debugger in WDSC (I don't remember what the official name is)
this one is the most feature rich, but is slower than the
iSeries System Debugger, and AFIAK, doesn't work on any OS
besides Windows.

These all use the same underlying support in the operating system, and that support requires OPTION(*SRCDBG)/OPTION(*LSTDBG) for OPM programs, or DBGVIEW(*SOURCE)/DBGVIEW(*LIST) for ILE programs.

These debuggers also support Java debugging.


Aside from these tools, there's the old ISDB (STRISDB) debugger. Not sure why IBM has kept this old thing around... I guess it's useful when debugging programs where you forgot to specify a debugging view.

Originally it only worked with OPM RPG, but eventually they added support for OPM COBOL and CL as well. Shortly after that, they added OPM support to the ILE debugger, making this tool pretty much obsolete, but IBM still includes it with ADTS, not sure why.


Jerry Adams wrote:

There's also the iSeries Graphical Debugger, but it too requires that the CL or CLLE be compiled with the *SRCDBG or DBGVIEW( ) options, respectively. Much nicer than STRDBG. Sharon Hoffman wrote a good starter article on it in the September, 2007, issue of SystemiNews, in which she references a tip from Scott Klement on how to set it up. One of the neat things about it is that it runs on non-Windows platforms, such as Linux.

The WDSc debugger probably requires the same compile options, but I am not very familiar with it at this point.

* Jerry C. Adams
*IBM System i Programmer/Analyst
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Rory Hewitt wrote:

Alan,

As others have pointed out, STRDBG will work fine as an interactive debugger
for CLP's, as long as you specified OPTION(*SRCDBG) when you compiled the
CLP.

However, if you have to use ISDB, you should be able to run your STRSRVJOB
and then invoke ISDB as you suggested. However, it's only when the program
is actually called in the serviced job that you will get your ISDB display
where you can enter breakpoints etc.

Does that make sense?

Rory