Over the years a collection of IDE components have been developed,
each with its own interface. In addition, some of these components
require each other, and loading IDE components must be on demand to
avoid the IDE being part of a saved state (see qsave_program/2).
For this reason, access to the IDE is concentrated on a single interface
called prolog_ide/1:
- prolog_ide(+Action)
- This predicate ensures the IDE-enabling XPCE component is loaded,
creates the XPCE class prolog_ide and sends Action to
its one and only instance
@prolog_ide. Action is
one of the following:
- open_navigator
- open_navigator(+Directory)
- Open the Prolog Navigator (see section
3.6), rooted at
Directory or, without argument, at the common directory of
the loaded source files.
- open_debug_status
- Open a window to edit spy and trace points.
- open_query_window
- Open a little window to run Prolog queries from a GUI component.
- thread_monitor
- Open a graphical window indicating existing threads and their status.
The diagram of a thread shows its stacks, private tables and CPU usage
and, while it has incomplete tables, their number and the number of
strongly connected components (SCCs) per incomplete table in percent. A
few percent hints at badly structured rules, more than 30% that keeps
growing at recursion over growing terms. The popup of a thread shows its
incomplete tables (see
sdg_viewer).
- memory_viewer
- Open a window that shows how Prolog uses its memory: per module and
predicate, per thread (stacks, thread-local data and private tables),
the tables, the objects of xpce per class and an overview of the
process. The memory is shown as rings or as a treemap, in which a part
can be zoomed into.
- idg_viewer
- Open a window that shows the incremental dependency graph (IDG) of a
thread: which incremental dynamic predicates and incremental tables
affect which tables. As the profiler, it has a browser of the predicates
involved with a filter and shows the graph around the current predicate:
what affects it on the left and what it affects on the right. Clicking a
node makes it the current predicate; clicking the current predicate
shows its call patterns, e.g.,
p(+,-), as a box holding
them; the popup of any predicate does so as well. A node
... N more stands for relatives that are not shown; its popup
shows them all. The popup of a predicate or call pattern can show its
variants with their number of answers in a pane of their own, ten at a
time, filtered on their text and on having answers. Selecting a variant
shows its answers, where undefined answers are marked as such; they have
a filter of their own. This pane is reused for the next predicate unless
it is pinned. The Overview tab shows the graph by module and, for
the non-modular code in user, by file; clicking a group
shows it as a box holding its parts. Predicates and nodes that hold
invalid tables are shown in red. The browser shows the incremental
dynamic predicates in italics. Requires Graphviz.
- sdg_viewer
- sdg_viewer(+Thread)
- Open a window that shows the incomplete tables of a thread (default
main): the subgoal dependency graph (SDG) that tells why a
tabled computation does not complete. At the level of variants the
tables are shown in boxes for their strongly connected components
(SCCs), nested as the SCCs are; at the level of predicates, used by
default for more than 60 tables, clicking a predicate shows its tables.
An edge from a table to another says that the first waits for answers of
the second; edges of tnot/1
are red and dashed. Tables grow with their number of answers, the leader
of an SCC has a double outline, a table with work left a thick one and
one with conditional answers is yellow. The thread is interrupted using call_in_thread/3
to read its tables. The viewer is in the Tabling submenu of the
Debug menu and in the popup of the thread monitor. It also opens
if a break starts while the thread has incomplete tables, such as a
break of a tripwire (see section
7.11) with action
suspend, unless the setting prolog_ide.tables_on_break
is false. Requires Graphviz.
- debug_monitor
- Open a graphical front-end for the
library(debug) library
that provides an overview of the topics and catches messages.
- xref
- Open a graphical front-end for the cross-referencer that provides an
overview of predicates and their callers.
