Package "ddebug"

Title:	Declarative Debugger
Rating:	Not rated. Create the first rating!
Latest version:	0.1
SHA1 sum:	38a3a8452ceb86135db832a7143c8b02186bc895
Author:	Jan Wielemaker Liang <jan@swi-prolog.org>
Maintainer:	Jan Wielemaker Liang <jan@swi-prolog.org>
Packager:	Jan Wielemaker Liang <jan@swi-prolog.org>
Home page:	https://github.com/JanWielemaker/ddebug
Download URL:	https://github.com/JanWielemaker/ddebug.git

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Details by download location

Version	SHA1	#Downloads	URL
0.1	25696077abb07cd55bc2945e51c528585068663a	2	https://github.com/JanWielemaker/ddebug.git
	38a3a8452ceb86135db832a7143c8b02186bc895	23	https://github.com/JanWielemaker/ddebug.git

Declarative Debugger

This package implements half of the ideas from Włodzimierz Drabent described in On Feasibility of Declarative Diagnosis, presented at ICLP2023 as a poster.

With half, we mean it only implements the part for debugging wrong answers, not the scenario where no answer is produced.

I implemented this to access the feasibility to record the proof tree without program transformation by exploiting the hooks into the SWI-Prolog debugger. This requires the current GIT version or SWI-Prolog 9.1.12 or later.

The other question is whether this really produces a more productive debugging experience to find the root of wrong answers than classical debugging, i.e.,

• Hierarchical decent using the normal debugger ("skip", when wrong "retry", "creep" and skip the sub-goals one by one).
• Formulate hypothesis and use spy/1 or break points to inspect the execution at this point.
• Formulate hypothesis and validate these using assertion/1.

Installation

If git is installed on your machine, the following should work:

?- pack_install(ddebug).

Else, download the code from https://github.com/JanWielemaker/ddebug.git, either using git or download as an archive and unpack. Next, enter the directory using Prolog and run

?- pack_install(.).

Usage

First, load the pack using

?- [library(ddebug)].

Now, to debug a goal, run e.g.,

?- ddebug(mygoal(X,Y)).

This runs mygoal(X,Y) while collecting the proof tree. On success it displays the answer and provides an interactive browser for the proof tree. Use ? to display help on the navigation command.

The proof tree is a nested tree of answers to (sub)goals that resulted in the current answer. A node is displayed as

1. Path from the root to the current node
2. The goal itself
3. Its sub-goals

It is presented as a clause, but without any control structure. I.e., if the original clauses uses an (if->then;else) it will either show if,then or else depending on which branch was used to create this answer.

Future

Possibly this is notably useful in the context of SWISH or the WASM based online version. The availability of HTML should make navigation, fold/unfold and showing details using tooltips much more intuitive.

Second, we must deal with incompleteness, notably lack of any answer. This requires a different approach to collecting the explored tree rather than the proof tree. This is described in the paper cited above.

Feedback

Please discuss at the SWI-Prolog forum

Contents of pack "ddebug"

Pack contains 6 files holding a total of 25.0K bytes.