Interactive debugging with physical robot/RoboRio

[sirfifer]

Being able to do real interactive debugging with the running rubot is a huge deal.

This primarily means break points, stepping through the code, and seeing data in context (variables and such) in real time while stepping through.

While there are all kinds of things you can do with print statements, logging, and other tricks, even commenting out code to isolate an issue, nothing is more effective than interactive debugging.

This discussion is to nail down exactly what IS possible with our current setup, in the context of the robot and python.

The first Item I found is this:
https://docs.wpilib.org/en/stable/docs/software/vscode-overview/debugging-robot-program.html
The key takeaway from this page is this statement: " Type Debug and select the Debug Robot Code menu item to start debugging. The code will download to the roboRIO and begin debugging."

While it does not directly reference python in the positive or negative, it does not rule it out.

There are some references to java and c++ but that is not in the context of interactive, but just showing code for print statements.

I'll continue to research, including figuring out the best place to simply ask the community, and report back to this thread regularly.

Please feel free to explore yourself, but not looking to distract you from higher priority tasks.

[ManicManiac64]

Hey Mr. Amerman,

I'll be sure to take a look at that. Thanks for the resource!

-James

[ManicManiac64]

Hey Mr. Amerman,

Upon using the Debugger Tool, it looks like it only debugs C++ and Java.

However, we can install a Python Debugger extension regardless in VSCode.