Eclipse breakpoints

[Lord0]

Hi there,

Usually when using the Eclipse debugger when I add a breakpoint a blue
"dot" icon with a tick appears in the gutter of the source code.
Sometimes though all I get is a blue dot with no tick and the code
does not suspend execution at the breakpoint. Why is this? No warnings
are reported etc. When I examine the properties of the breakpoints
which do not work they appear identical to the breakpoints which work.

I am using, Eclipse 3.2, myEclipse 5.1 with OC4J10g but I have also
had this issue with previous versions of Eclipse, Webtools and
different Appservers.

Cheers

Lord0

 

[Robert Klemme]

Hi there,

Usually when using the Eclipse debugger when I add a breakpoint a blue
"dot" icon with a tick appears in the gutter of the source code.
Sometimes though all I get is a blue dot with no tick and the code
does not suspend execution at the breakpoint. Why is this? No warnings
are reported etc. When I examine the properties of the breakpoints
which do not work they appear identical to the breakpoints which work.

I am using, Eclipse 3.2, myEclipse 5.1 with OC4J10g but I have also
had this issue with previous versions of Eclipse, Webtools and
different Appservers.

Maybe you set the breakpoint in the wrong source file, i.e. not a source
file attached with your current execution. This happens sometimes if
classes are not loaded from the project's standard classpath but through
some appserver class loader.

HTH

robert

 

[Lew]

Maybe you set the breakpoint in the wrong source file, i.e. not a source
file attached with your current execution. This happens sometimes if
classes are not loaded from the project's standard classpath but through
some appserver class loader.

A similar thing happens to JSPs - you might set breakpoints in both the
deployment directory and the source directory, and Eclipse will try its best
to set both - but if your source version differs from the debug version you
will find it confusing.

Also, some artifacts, especially JSPs and the like, don't map their source
lines all that well to the generated .java file source lines. So what looks
like a source line in your real source isn't actually executable in the
generated source, so it can't actually sustain a breakpoint.

Apropos of Robert's advice, I have sometimes messed up Eclipse's project
properties wherein it loses track of the source or build directories. That can
be by deletion of a directory reference from the build properties, or the
inclusion of more than one. Either way it means that my source files become
"not ... attached with [the] current execution". I am also queasy about
Eclipse's management of inter-project dependencies, so I usually avoid having any.

If you modify source from outside Eclipse's (Web)sphere of influence, make
sure you tell Eclipse to refresh all its files and rebuild before you attempt
to debug again. You may need to restart the test server. On occasion, I've had
to dig into the generated .java-file directory, i.e., where the .java
equivalents of JSPs reside, and manually delete the Eclipse-generated code.

Another possibility may lurk in the project properties. I seem to recall a
checkbox that directs Eclipse to include debugging information, and if that
does exist it could be unchecked.

Sorry to be so vague; it's been a few weeks since I last used Eclipse (or
IBM's commercialized version, WSAD).

- Lew