Re: lua-l Digest, Vol 91, Issue 1

[Paige DePol <lual@...>]

daveaceinc@aol.com wrote:

> The engine was written in C++ and is a custom engine used in our company
> for many years. There are no debug facilities in the C++ code per say. And
> they don't let us mess with it.
> 
> I think you got my problem exactly! lua debuggers don't work because
> without the source the lua scripts are meaningless. There is a disconnect
> between the source code in engine and the lua scripts.
> 
> If I were to somehow magically get a hold of the engine's c+ source code.
> Then what do I use to debug? I want to be able to have break points and
> step in my lua scripts as its running in debug mode.
> 
> Lua editors such as Zerobrane for instance don't run C++ code. And vice
> versa C++ editors such as Visual Studio don't run Lua. Or do they? If so
> what would be the setup?

Dave, when replying to the list from the digest format please, please
do not leave the entire digest message quoted in the reply. Delete all
but the specific portions of messages you are replying to.

So, the game engine you are using has no facilities for debugging
in any way at all as part of the game engine? That seems... bad! :(

Can you use sockets or read/write arbitrary files? As others have
mentioned, if you can use sockets or even just read/write to files
you could have some basic debugging capabilities.

When you have issues with your Lua scripts they are crashing the
game engine itself, without any diagnostic messages being emitted?

If you had access to the C++ source you would also have access to
the Lua engine, this would allow you to add any sort of debugger
that you would like. Or at least trap Lua script errors and prevent
the game engine from crashing outright. I do believe there are some
plugins for Visual Studio for Lua debugging, however, as Windows is
not the operating system I use for development I am not the best
person to answer that particular question.

So the creator of the game engine is the company you work for?
I guess I don't understand why those developers are unable to help
with debugging then. If the game engine has been in use for years
how have previous developers dealt with debugging their Lua scripts?
It really seems odd to me that there would be no facility for any
sort of debugging... I mean bugs are a normal part of development.

I wish I had some magic solution to assist you with debugging your
Lua scripts for your game engine... but really, the developers of
the game engine are the ones that should have these answers.

Best of luck to you in getting debugging working!

~Paige