Eclipse debugging options
Start Eclipse in debugging mode
To start Eclipse with all tracing messages enabled, add -debug <file> to the command line:
.../Eclipse.app/Contents/MacOS/eclipse -debug https://github.com/gnu-mcu-eclipse/eclipse-plugins/raw/develop/debug.options
Alternatively, you can copy the file locally, edit it and point Eclipse to it:
.../Eclipse.app/Contents/MacOS/eclipse -debug ${HOME}/tmp/debug.options
For convenience, you can also copy into the file as .options Eclipse folder (for example as Eclipse.app/Contents/MacOS/.options) and start Eclipse without the file name:
.../Eclipse.app/Contents/MacOS/eclipse -debug
How Eclipse tracing works?
Individual Eclipse plug-ins check various properties to display debugging trace messages.
Default debug values
The properties not defined in the file given to -debug (or in Eclipse .options) default to the values defined in .options files located in each plug-in folder (generally set to false).
org.eclipse.cdt.core/debug=false
# ASTCache debugging
org.eclipse.cdt.core/debug/ASTCache=false
Programatic access
The actual values of the debug options are programatically available via:
String Platform.getDebugOption(String name);
Example:
private static final boolean DEBUG = "true".equalsIgnoreCase(Platform.getDebugOption("org.eclipse.cdt.core/debug/ASTCache"));
...
if (DEBUG) {
System.out.println("message");
}
A more elaborated solution is to derive the Activator class from ilg.gnumcueclipse.core.AbstractUIActivator and use the isDebugging() method:
if (Activator.getInstance().isDebugging()) {
System.out.println("message");
}
