[Openmcl-devel] Debugging Carbon applications

[David Steuber]

I made a serendipitous discovery that I haven't found mentioned in the 
documentation and haven't seen mentioned in this mailing list (which is 
not to say that it hasn't been).  People who remember my posts know 
that I have been working on learning how to use OpenMCL to build a 
Carbon application.  In order to make my work easier, I created some 
functions and a macro to do old fashioned printf (using format) style 
debug logging to a file:

(defparameter *debug-log-file* nil)

(defun enable-debug-log (log-file-spec)
   (when (member :debug *features*)
     (when *debug-log-file*
       (close *debug-log-file*))
     (setf *debug-log-file*
           (open log-file-spec :direction :output
                 :if-exists :supersede))))
(export 'enable-debug-log)

(defun disable-debug-log ()
   (when *debug-log-file*
     (close *debug-log-file*))
   (setf *debug-log-file* nil))
(export 'disable-debug-log)

(defun enable-debugging ()
   (pushnew :debug *features*))
(export 'enable-debugging)

(defun disable-debugging ()
   (setf *features* (delete :debug *features*)))
(export 'disable-debugging)

(defun write-debug-log (cs &rest args)
   (when *debug-log-file*
     (format *debug-log-file* cs args)
     (force-output *debug-log-file*)))

(defmacro debug-log (format-control-string &rest format-args)
   (if (member :debug *features*)
       `(carbon::write-debug-log ,format-control-string ,format-args)
       (values)))
(export 'debug-log)

(enable-debugging)

Early on when the app bundle is started, this code is called:

(defmethod initialize-application ((app application))
   (enable-debug-log "/Users/david/usr/src/OpenGL-Lisp/bin/debug.log")
   (debug-log "Initializing Carbon application -- primary method 
initialize-application called~%"))

The idea is that when I don't have debugging enabled, the DEBUG-LOG 
form expands into nothing.

The discovery I made is when I opened debug.log in finder.  An 
application called console opened up.  In it is not just the window for 
debug.log but also a console window that of all things shows OpenMCL 
output from when something I goofed calls up the debugger.  There is 
error information there!  Also Carbon API calls that fail end up 
spewing useful information there.

I'm still rather inexperienced with Lisp in general and OS X 
development in particular.  If anyone has any tips on how I can improve 
my process or has other information I may have missed that would make 
trouble shooting easier, I would love to hear about it.