Re: Debugging a CLP program within STRSRVJOB

[Scott Klement <rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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
> B&W Wholesale Distributors, Inc.* *
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> 	615.995.7024
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> 	jerry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:jerry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
>
>
> 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
> >