[erlang-questions] Tracing and debugging

[Fred Hebert]

On 01/13, Vlad Dumitrescu wrote:
> So, I thought, what if, instead of interpreting a module in order to debug
> it, we compile it with a special parse transform that inserts tracing calls
> after each expression in the code, automatically keeping track of the
> variables visible in the scope and their values?
> 
> The output can be via io:format, et:report_event, or something else
> (configurable).
> 
> Could this "trogging" or "logtracing" be useful, or am I delusional? Maybe
> there already is such a thing, the Erlang ecosystem is getting difficult to
> keep in the working memory :-)
> 

How would this be different from tracing BIFs and the libraries built on
top? These even let you specify things if you want to look at values put
in a function, and returned from it.

I'm guessing the part that's too annoying could be selecting the
functions that require tracing, maybe? Or that adding debug id functions
(`trace(X) -> X.', then trace on ?MODULE:trace/1) is too cumbersome?

You could probably use stuff like xref to find all calls that take place
in a module, and then fill the input into trace BIFs to get an
equivalent result, though there's probably no great scaffolding in place
for this today.