[I am filing within the context of widget tests but I believe this is useful in general for debugging Dart code.]
Certain Widget tests use runAsync to run code in real async zone. These tests are often flaky and developers have a hard time understanding why. Most often the culprit is some Timer or Microtask that causes a side-effect that the test depends on. If this task does not run in time, it hangs the test.
When I was debugging an issue like this, I had to instrument ZoneSpecification to figure out what was creating the timers and microtasks. This is advanced debugging for a regular user who often does not understand zones.
The request here is to be able to see active timers and the microtask queue of the current zone when the code is paused at a breakpoint. It would also be helpful to see all Timers and microtasks but this might be more confusing than helpful. When the user taps on a timer it would be useful to see where the timer was originally created and what its current state is.
[I am filing within the context of widget tests but I believe this is useful in general for debugging Dart code.]
Certain Widget tests use
runAsyncto run code in real async zone. These tests are often flaky and developers have a hard time understanding why. Most often the culprit is some Timer or Microtask that causes a side-effect that the test depends on. If this task does not run in time, it hangs the test.When I was debugging an issue like this, I had to instrument
ZoneSpecificationto figure out what was creating the timers and microtasks. This is advanced debugging for a regular user who often does not understand zones.The request here is to be able to see active timers and the microtask queue of the current zone when the code is paused at a breakpoint. It would also be helpful to see all Timers and microtasks but this might be more confusing than helpful. When the user taps on a timer it would be useful to see where the timer was originally created and what its current state is.