Debugging Objects

This article will show how to solve this and similar problems by letting you modify code and add breakpoints that affect only one specific object, rather than all objects in a given class. Our solution relies on the use of a new kind of class and on some small but powerful variations on CompiledMethods and Compilers. Besides being useful in their own right, we feel these extensions again illustrate (as in our previous article, [1, 2]) how powerful the reflective features of Smalltalk are, as they allow the programmer to adapt and extend the environment to suit his or her needs. The solution described is specific to Smalltalk-80, since it relies on Smalltalk-80's architecture for classes, metaclasses, the compiler, and compiled methods, and on the complete availability of source code for these system elements. As a result, our extensions may not apply to Smalltalk V environments, though something similar may be possible