Hi everyone,
Having browsed the TODO list, one of the items that I would be interested
on working on is a debugger for stored procedures. Having searched on this
topic in the archives, I'm still short of some answers that would allow me
to come up with a complete proposal that I can use to start coding.
The most important question to answer in my mind is how should the
debugger communicate with the server? I can see 3 ways in which this could
happen: 1) Use the existing FE/BE protocol to allow the user to control the debugging session using stored
procedures/pseudo-tables,e.g. SELECT pg_debug_enable('myfunction'); INSERT INTO pg_debug_breakpoints
(function,line) VALUES ('myfunction', 2); SELECT pg_debug_step('myfunction'); 2) Spawn a separate
debuggerprocess listening on another port to allow OOB communication with the server. This would involve the
design and implementation of a debug FE/BE protocol, unless there is a standard that already exists. 3) Extend
theexisting FE/BE protocol to allow transmission of an
OOB debug channel.
My current thoughts are leaning towards 2 or 3, with the advantage of
approach 3 being that once you can connect to the database using a client,
the debugging functionality automatically becomes available without having
to worry about additional security checks on the debugger port (like
another version of pg_hba.conf just for the debugger) and firewalls
blocking debugger connections.
Thoughts?
Mark.
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