Build 172 and some debug facilities proposals

[Andrea V. <and...@gm...>]

Hello Chris!!

I managed to compile Pipmak build 172 using Lua 5.0.3.

Now "really" all works fine without "any" source modification 
(including the function "checkinstanceof" that in the past give me 
some problem - remember it when you pass to Lua 5.1) 

Is there a method or a trick to set something like a "breakpoint" in 
the Lua code to put in pause Pipmak, so I can inspect tables in that
position? 

At the moment I cannot inspect value inside functions
(correct me if I am in wrong)
but only at the end of execution of node.lua or in case of error.

I think it could be very useful a function like "pipmak.pause(key)"
that stops running  until the pressing of the key "key" and show message 
"Press <key> to continue", or better show a little overlayed window
with the button "continue", 
so I could examine tables also inside function, or execute some code 
from a breakpoint to another breakpoint, in this manner, 
with a very little waste of coding efforts, we could have a minimal,
but useful debugging tool,
waiting a complete debug protocol for connecting to an external debug tool,
that you have mentioned in the past.

Off course pipmak.pause() will have no meaning in a finished game.

In this case, also another function could be useful:

pipmak.ignorepause(true|false)

to put at the beginning of the code, 
or better in main.lua should permit to ignore all breakpoint the I have
insert with pipmak.pause(), so I haven't to physically remove all 
pipmak.pause() in my code to run my code without interruption.
(but I will remove before game release of-course...)

What you think about?  

Now error traceback work fine in my build, but sometimes I didn't manage 
to read all the information reported quickly before the infos vanish away....
(I already mentioned to you a similar problem about stdout...)

A good solution could be to put error messages in a window like the new
Lua command line or the table inspector, 
so I could read with all calm, check files, line numbers, function names,...

The window could have also some buttons:

* continue
* open lua command line (for inspecting values)
* open node.lua (or the file/s involved in the errors)

Well, I think this is good only for error message that involve in a
stop of the node execution, but not for all other messages written
in the pipmak terminal (in this case is better have a copy of stdout on
file as discussed before)
  

I think these things (with little efforts, I think) could do better
highlight your work on traceback and table inspector.

Bye 

Andrea