Developer Information

This page contains useful information for those interested in either developing new plugins for CRDebug or modifying the existing codebase. Project TODO List is also located in here.

Software Used

We have used following software to develop and test CRDebug:

• MS Visual Studio .NET 7.0
• PerfMon.exe
• MySQL
• MySQL-Front

Plugins

CRDebug plugins are written in C# language and compiled into a C# Class Library DLL. When CRDebug starts up, it scans plugins directory, located under CRDebug main directory, for DLL files that contain a class implementing interface called IModule:

public interface IModule
{
    Panel Create(DataTable ds, VariableDefCollection vars);
    void Start();
    void Stop();
    void ProcessMessage(PluginMessage msg, object param);
    string GetHelpText();
}

To create a plugin for CRDebug in Visual Studio .NET, follow these steps:

• Create a new project: for Project Type, select Class Library from Visual C# Projects category.
• Once the Project is created, add IModule.dll from plugins folder to project's References (right click References in Solution Explorer and select "Add Reference..."). You should also add certain .NET system libraries that are most likely not included by default, e.g. System.Windows.Forms and System.Drawing.
• Create a public class that implements IModule interface. Most important method is Create, in which the graphical user interface for the plugin is constructed. GUI controls must be laid out on a TabPage type panel, and the instance is then returned to the host application.
• When laying out controls on the panel, the default width and height of TabPage (200 x 100) should be used as a reference. CRDebug scales the panel when needed.

Sample plugin:

// TestPlugin.cs
using System;
using System.Data;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Windows.Forms;

namespace CRDebug
{
	/// 

	/// Sample plugin
	/// 
	public class TestPlugin : IModule
	{
		private DataTable			  dataTable;
		private VariableDefCollection varDefs;

		public TestPlugin()
		{
		}

		#region Implementation of IModule
		public void Start()
		{
		}

		public string GetHelpText()
		{
			return "This is a sample plugin.";
		}

		public void ProcessMessage(PluginMessage msg, object param)
		{
		}

		public Panel Create(DataTable ds, VariableDefCollection vars)
		{
			TabPage panel = new TabPage("TestPlugin");
			Label   label = new Label();

			this.dataTable = ds;
			this.varDefs = vars;

			label.BackColor = Color.AliceBlue;
			label.Text = "Click me!";
			label.Location = new Point(0, 0);
			label.Size = new Size(panel.Size.Width, panel.Size.Height);
			label.Click += new EventHandler(OnLabelClicked);

			panel.Controls.Add(label);
			return panel;
		}

		public void Stop()
		{
		}
		#endregion

		/* Event handlers */
		public void OnLabelClicked(object sender, EventArgs ev)
		{
			MessageBox.Show("Hello world!", "Hello");
		}
	}
}

CRDebug TODO

	Description	Module
	gamut for the 2D view	PlotterPlugin
	draw positive direction arrows for the X/Y axis lines near the edges	PlotterPlugin
	basic curve fitting functionality	PlotterPlugin
	implement ODBC support to allow for captured data to be stored in/retrieved from a database	DebuggerCore
	display help text for the currently selected plugin in a dialog accessible from Help menu	Main GUI
	store user configuration in a disk file (ODBC connection strings, TCP/IP settings, capture buffer size etc.)	DebuggerCore
	when tables are manually deleted (dropped) from database, CRDTableInfo contents must be synchronized somehow	DebuggerCore
	display selected item frame number next to the item itself rather than in the status text on the top	PlotterPlugin

Legend:
  TODO item
  working on it
  finished item