Troubles writing an IDE debugger plugin

[lloiser]

I'm currently trying to write a atom-ide-ui debugger.
As mentioned in the README of atom-ide-ui

Debugger integrations should be modeled after atom-ide-debugger-node.

Which uses nuclide-debugger-common/AutoGenLaunchAttachProvider.

So I started a new project and added flow-bin (0.70.0) and nuclide-debugger-common (0.7.0) to my dependencies.

Now flow status reports 52 errors when I import nuclide-debugger-common/AutoGenLaunchAttachProvider.
Here is the flow status output: errors-52.txt

Once I added https://github.com/facebook/nuclide/blob/master/flow-libs/atom.js.flow to my flow-libs folder (and add it in the flowconfig too) the number dropped to 38: errors-38.txt

After adding

type IDisposable = {
  dispose(): mixed
};

to atom.js.flow the number of errors dropped to 29: errors-29.txt

I just want to build a new debugger... 😭

Here is a minimal project to reproduce it
my-debugger.zip

Am I missing something?
Or is the npm package nuclide-debugger-common faulty (and maybe others too)?

[lloiser]

Beside these dependencies errors in nuclide-debugger-common, there are also some issues with the types:

https://github.com/facebook/nuclide/blob/6046ad2ab91b9f77d14470dedd7a1d3b8ef965b0/modules/atom-ide-debugger-node/main.js#L42

In getNodeConfig in the node debugger atom-ide-debugger-node a AutoGenConfig is returned.
Unfortunately the returned value is actually incompatible with the type...
e.g. the property args has a defaultValue: [] but the AutoGenProperty only allows defaultValue?: string | number | boolean

https://github.com/facebook/nuclide/blob/6046ad2ab91b9f77d14470dedd7a1d3b8ef965b0/modules/nuclide-debugger-common/types.js#L114

Pls note that I have to use the published npm package nuclide-debugger-common (currently v0.7.0).
Compared to the current master commit this has already changed. Nice, but unfortunate that it has not been published to npm...

https://github.com/facebook/nuclide/blob/17dbd6ef9dda4c9afa31af601422cb1d0a9b18bc/modules/nuclide-debugger-common/types.js#L115

I have a feeling that the whole ecosystem around developing a debugger plugin for atom-ide-ui is not ready yet...

[lloiser]

Also leaving aside these problem, I now have another problem.

As suggested I tried to model my debugger based on the atom-ide-debugger-node. It uses the AutoGenLaunchAttachProvider to create the config UI and start the debugger.

Unfortunately there is no way to provide my own adaperExecutable. Which (I assume) is the actual debug adapter.

https://github.com/facebook/nuclide/blob/5aa45d09ea3caa0cd88215bbdd2e1fbe92c0ab27/modules/nuclide-debugger-common/AutoGenLaunchAttachUiComponent.js#L445

So I cannot use the AutoGen stuff and in the end have to create my own UI and start the debugger myself.

TBH this does not seem right...

https://github.com/facebook/nuclide/blob/5aa45d09ea3caa0cd88215bbdd2e1fbe92c0ab27/modules/nuclide-debugger-common/AutoGenLaunchAttachUiComponent.js#L441-L452

IMO options like adapterExecutable, capabilities and threadsComponentTitle should be configurable from the outside (and maybe have a meaningful default if none is provided).

[pelmers]

@Goom11 sounds reasonable to add a way to provide an adapterExecutable.

it looks like currently the only supported ones are hardcoded in debugger-registry.js

[vertexclique]

@pelmers yes, moreover it checks against the existing keys which are not visible from the point of debugger plugin developer. also if there is a way to supply type information to existing adapters like NATIVE_LLDB and NATIVE_GDB would be cool for other languages. So we can override them and use lldb scripting for example.