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How to debug Perl applications with Eclipse

EPIC plug-in offers rich debugging environment

Martin Brown, Freelance Writer, Freelance Developer

Martin C. Brown has been a professional writer for more than eight years. He is the author of numerous books and articles across a range of topics. His expertise spans myriad development languages and platforms -- Perl, Python, Java, JavaScript, Basic, Pascal, Modula-2, C, C++, Rebol, Gawk, Shellscript, Windows, Solaris, Linux, BeOS, Mac OS/X, and more -- as well as Web programming, systems management and integration. Martin is a regular contributor to ServerWatch.com, LinuxToday.com, and IBM developerWorks, and a regular blogger at Computerworld, The Apple Blog, and other sites, as well as a Subject Matter Expert (SME) for Microsoft.

Summary: Debugging Perl applications can be a frustrating process. Many Perl programmers rely on print statements and so-called "postmortem debugging." Others use the built-in Perl debugger. Neither provides a coherent execution environment for monitoring the execution of a script, and neither supports the debugging of a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) script during execution. In this tutorial, we will look at the debugging functionality offered by the Eclipse Perl Integration (EPIC) plug-in for Eclipse, which offers a rich debugging environment available and integrated with the EPIC Perl development environment.

Date: 07 Feb 2006
Level: Intermediate
PDF: A4 and Letter (2328 KB | 34 pages)Get Adobe® Reader®

Activity: 52935 views
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Before you start

We look at the debugging functionality offered by the EPIC plug-in for Eclipse, which offers a rich debugging environment that is available and integrated with the EPIC Perl development environment. Readers are expected to understand the Eclipse environment and have experience with Perl.

About this tutorial

EPIC incorporates two systems that can aid the testing process for your Perl applications: RegExp and the debugger. RegExp is an interface for testing the Perl regular expression system. Regular expressions make up a major part of many Perl applications, but getting the expressions right can be complex. Using the EPIC RegExp view, you can test and modify regular expressions against known data and check the results.

A more traditional tool is the EPIC Perl debugger, which is fully integrated into the Eclipse environment. In addition to testing localized scripts, the EPIC debugger can be used to debug Web and remotely executing Perl scripts, making it ideal for a range of environments.

We will look at how to import and move around a large application, and how to simplify the view of that application to make it easier to understand the code and, therefore, debug it. We'll also look at the EPIC debugging environment, which provides a complete debugging environment for standard scripts, CGI scripts, and regular expressions, all within Eclipse.

Prerequisites

You will need the following before making use of EPIC:

Eclipse V3.1 or 3.0
Java™ technology V1.3, 1.4 or higher
Perl V5.8.6 or higher. Perl is included with most UNIX® and Linux® installations, as well as Mac OS X. On Windows®, use ActivePerl.
The EPIC plug-in for Eclipse
The PadWalker Perl module. ActiveState versions are also available.