Customizing the Debugger
You can customize the Debugger in several ways, such as controlling what type of information is displayed in the panes.
Resizing the panes
To change the proportions of the various panes of the Debugger window, click and drag the border separating two panes.
Splitting a single pane into two panes
If you see only one large pane on the left side of a Debug page, position your pointer over the bottom of that pane, so that the pointer changes to a split pointer. Drag the split bar up to create two panes.
Controlling what is displayed in the panes
You can control what type of information is displayed in the left part of the Debugger window and in the Debugger Context Browser window. You can set any pane to display data watches or any combination of the following:
- Threads
- Methods on the call stack
- Data
The default settings for the Debugger panes are as follows:
- The top pane of the Debug tab shows threads and methods. This is the Threads and stack pane.
- The bottom pane of the Debug tab shows data. This view is called the Data pane.
- The Watch tab shows a single large pane, which is configured to show data watches. This is the Watch pane.
- The bottom pane of the Watch tab is minimized or reduced; when you slide the split bar up from the bottom of the pane, another pane appears, also configured to show data watches.
To select what is displayed in a pane:
- In the Debugger window, click the Debug or Watch tab.
- Right-click in a pane and select Properties.
The Context Tree Properties dialog box is displayed.
- Select the type of data to display.
You can also open and configure multiple Debugger Context Browser windows. A Debugger Context Browser is like a floating pane for debugging, and is useful for showing Watch information while the Debug tab is selected.
Setting the grouping within the Structure pane
Items in the Data and Watch panes are grouped according to the type of object - protected, public, or private.
To change the grouping of data:
- Select Tools|IDE Options.
The Environment Options dialog box appears.
- Click the AppBrowser tab to open the AppBrowser page.
- Set the Grouping and Sorting options, and click OK.
These settings affect the Structure pane in the lower left of all AppBrowser windows, as well as the Data pane and Watch pane of the Debugger.
Customizing the Debugger colors
You can customize the colors used to indicate the execution point and the enabled, disabled, and invalid breakpoint lines.
To set execution point and breakpoint colors:
- Select Tools|IDE Options.
The Environment Options dialog box appears.
- Select the Colors tab to display the Colors page.
- In the Element list, select an element related to debugging, then select the background and foreground colors for the element.
Elements related to debugging are:
- Execution Point
- Enabled Break
- Disabled Break
- Invalid Break