Time Machine Status Update 3

This is the first status update on the time-travel debugger in a while, and I do it in Huiqi's presence. I made a windowing system on top of a UI framework I call oui. I implemented a tree widget which is now able to display composite data structures like dictionaries and object with the expand and collapse feature.

Transcript

The following transcript was automatically generated by an algorithm.

00:00 : first i want to give like a status
00:01 : update on the debugger project
00:04 : so i'm making a new version of the
00:06 : debugger uh you're looking at it
00:09 : whoa um and um so
00:13 : this is actually the debugger debugging
00:15 : itself right now
00:17 : i figured out how to use python module
00:21 : modules correctly
00:23 : and this is a relatively recent thing
00:26 : there's this dash m flag in python to
00:29 : tell you
00:30 : i'm going to execute this module
00:33 : because normally you say you execute
00:35 : something.pi but if you execute a module
00:40 : it uses this
00:42 : module resolution to figure out which
00:45 : file is the entry point
00:47 : um
00:48 : so my my new version of the debugger is
00:52 : term db terminal debugger
00:55 : gui 2
00:57 : place of gui one
00:59 : i have to give to it a history file
01:03 : i'll do this one
01:07 : okay so this is the debug
01:10 : i have a windowing system
01:13 : okay
01:16 : yeah i made a windowing system
01:19 : and
01:20 : you can you can resize these windows and
01:23 : drag them and move them around um
01:28 : i probably will eventually end up
01:32 : choosing a either split
01:35 : panel kind of deal or like um or like a
01:38 : automatically
01:40 : tiling window system where it always
01:42 : keeps them side by side
01:45 : but um
01:46 : but i i still have a soft spot for
01:49 : windowing systems uh anyway
01:53 : so on the left is um
01:56 : well it's the
01:58 : the step debugger and then on the right
02:00 : is the variable panel
02:02 : and the reason we're looking at some
02:04 : internal python internal code here we're
02:07 : actually in the module loader and if i
02:09 : go into the exact function
02:12 : now i get into my code um
02:15 : i'm i'm planning to do some stuff
02:18 : to
02:19 : so you don't have to go through that and
02:20 : you just jump here immediately but for
02:23 : now you have to jump through some of the
02:25 : code the module loader to get here
02:28 : um
02:30 : so everything is
02:32 : more or less what
02:35 : used to happen um with the debugger you
02:38 : step through the code with the same keys
02:40 : i have a
02:41 : file menu
02:43 : nice you can say step over here as well
02:47 : so you can drill down like this with the
02:50 : left arrow
02:52 : down
02:53 : arrow to step over etc
02:56 : yeah this this is the
02:58 : sort of main body of the event loop
03:01 : basically
03:03 : when you talk about the event loop in
03:05 : javascript it's this it's this thing
03:08 : that exists but you never see it
03:11 : in this ui system the event loop is just
03:14 : this while loop over here so this is
03:17 : um
03:19 : and
03:20 : probably in javascript there is
03:22 : something like this i don't know but you
03:24 : just don't get to touch it or see it
03:26 : um
03:27 : but um
03:29 : over here the variables i finally made
03:32 : this tree system work
03:36 : nice you can expand
03:39 : you can expand and last night i just
03:43 : added code to keep these trees
03:47 : expanded state as they are as you
03:49 : navigate through step by step
03:52 : um
03:53 : because because each time you step
03:56 : actually regenerate the whole
03:58 : variable tree
04:00 : okay in order to keep the elements
04:02 : expanded i had to do some tricks to get
04:06 : that to happen
04:07 : oh gotcha
04:09 : yeah so this is working
04:11 : okay um
04:14 : and i can run this debugger
04:17 : in pi rewind
04:20 : the version of python that has the
04:22 : debugger and so this is
04:25 : so this is a bit slower when i run
04:28 : through
04:29 : pi rewind than the normal python
04:32 : so that so i'm seeing the effect of the
04:35 : overhead
04:36 : that i have introduced
04:40 : but it's still workable let's do a
04:42 : couple of things i expand this panel
04:45 : you can see some stuff oh
04:49 : okay now the panel exists
04:51 : i can expand some stuff okay
04:54 : and i quit out of it and then at the end
04:57 : at the end of running this command you
04:59 : get
05:00 : a that rewind file right there's this
05:03 : log
05:04 : and then what you do is
05:06 : recreate
05:09 : when i'm done with it
05:10 : i will make this more convenient but for
05:13 : now you manually recreate the sqlite
05:16 : database based on that rewind log file
05:21 : yeah by the way i really like how the ui
05:22 : is looking right now oh thank you
05:25 : oh yeah
05:26 : really good the tree looks really good
05:29 : it's like
05:30 : yeah really nice and i like you have
05:33 : like dot dot dot and also like the dot
05:35 : and the triangle
05:37 : i think that's nice
05:38 : oh thanks yeah so so now because i've
05:42 : generated the recreate
05:44 : function has created a
05:48 : term db
05:50 : term db.gui 2 dot sqlite
05:54 : so that exists now and i'm going to use
05:57 : the debugger to debug itself
06:00 : okay
06:01 : it's another it's another thing that i
06:03 : probably want to invest some time in how
06:05 : can i optimize the speed of pi rewind
06:08 : so that when people are using it it
06:10 : won't be slow
06:13 : um
06:14 : okay so here so this is the debugger gui
06:18 : and i can like step through the code of
06:21 : the debugger
06:23 : just just like any python program
06:26 : and i can actually look at the code
06:28 : that's
06:29 : handling the expanding and collapsing of
06:33 : the trees for example because that's in
06:35 : the stack pane
06:38 : and inside the stack pane
06:41 : um
06:43 : i actually have this on expand and on
06:46 : collapse functions that get called
06:50 : so if i click here that means i
06:52 : i skip to the state when some
06:56 : tree
06:58 : has gotten
07:00 : expanded oh i haven't implemented the um
07:04 : the ui printing in the background yet in
07:07 : the new version
07:08 : but uh but that should be very easy to
07:11 : do and then i i have an
07:13 : another window that has the what the
07:16 : debugger looked like at this point in
07:18 : time in the code
07:19 : it is kind of confusing like having the
07:22 : debugger debug itself like with what are
07:24 : you looking at
07:26 : looking at this or the previous version
07:29 : of the debugger
07:30 : um
07:31 : i have this key
07:34 : which represents a path into the tree
07:38 : and it's separated by this slash
07:41 : operator so this is the locals node
07:45 : and then panel equals v box
07:49 : so this is a key that i generated just
07:52 : by using the display values of each node
07:56 : along the path descending down
07:58 : and i added to this set called expanded
08:01 : path and then later on i restore
08:05 : the expanded path and so forth
08:08 : uh yeah
08:10 : that's where i am um
08:12 : next steps would be
08:15 : probably want to make
08:17 : um a view menu here that where
08:21 : where um if i
08:24 : like these windows i can maximize them
08:27 : go back to normal i can also close them
08:30 : um
08:32 : so maybe i have a view manual that can
08:34 : let you bring them back when you close
08:36 : them because for now if you close them
08:38 : you're done there's nothing more to do
08:42 : one reason i chose a windows system is i
08:45 : want to implement more windows
08:48 : the timeline is a big one right
08:51 : i want to have a timeline and when i
08:53 : implement search
08:55 : i want a separate window for the search
08:58 : results for example and then if you
09:00 : click on the a result in the search
09:02 : results
09:03 : list
09:05 : it it's usually gonna jump you to some
09:08 : point in time and then that's going to
09:10 : change the state of the other windows
09:12 : right
09:13 : so that's the plan