Lua function call trace (debugging aid)

[eriatarka]

I just whipped this up because I needed it for debugging, and maybe someone else finds it useful too. Basically what it does is log every Lua function that gets called and write it to a text file.

Just drop this piece of code into your LuaUI/main.lua file at the top:

Code: Select all

function CreateStackTraceHook()
  local prefix = ""
  local fp = assert(io.open("luaui_log.txt", "w"))
  return function(event)
      local info = debug.getinfo(2, "S")
      if (info.what == "C") then return end				-- do not log C functions
      
      if (event == "call") then
        local info2 = debug.getinfo(2, "n")
        local src = info.short_src
        local name = info2.name or ""
        local line = info.linedefined
        fp:write(prefix .. src .. "(" .. line .. "): " .. name .. "\n")
        prefix = prefix .. "  "
      elseif (event == "return" or event == "tail return") then
        prefix = string.sub(prefix, 3)
      end
  end
end

debug.sethook(CreateStackTraceHook(), "cr")				-- hook call and return events

Then run Spring, and when you're done, view the luaui_log.txt file in your Spring directory. It logs a lot of calls, though, so make sure you only activate this when you need it because it's slow. Just comment out the last line by putting "--" in front of it to disable. Performance could probably be increased by writing it in C, but it's just a debugging aid, so what...

As an example of what this produces:

Code: Select all

[string "LuaUI/utils.lua"](49): include
  [string "LuaUI/setupdefs.lua"](0): 
[string "LuaUI/utils.lua"](49): include
  [string "LuaUI/savetable.lua"](0): 
[string "LuaUI/utils.lua"](49): include
  [string "LuaUI/debug.lua"](0): 
[string "LuaUI/utils.lua"](49): include
  [string "LuaUI/fonts.lua"](0): 
    [string "LuaUI/fonts.lua"](415): UseFont
      [string "LuaUI/fonts.lua"](362): LoadFont
        [string "LuaUI/fonts.lua"](70): print
        [string "LuaUI/fonts.lua"](80): HaveFontFiles
        [string "LuaUI/fonts.lua"](120): LoadFontSpecs
          [string "LuaUI/Fonts/FreeMonoBold_12.lua"](0): chunk
          [string "LuaUI/fonts.lua"](70): print
          [string "LuaUI/fonts.lua"](70): print
          [string "LuaUI/fonts.lua"](70): print
          [string "LuaUI/fonts.lua"](70): print
          [string "LuaUI/fonts.lua"](70): print
          [string "LuaUI/fonts.lua"](70): print
          [string "LuaUI/fonts.lua"](70): print
        [string "LuaUI/fonts.lua"](147): MakeDisplayLists
          [string "LuaUI/fonts.lua"](152): 
          [string "LuaUI/fonts.lua"](152): 
          [string "LuaUI/fonts.lua"](152): 
          [string "LuaUI/fonts.lua"](152): 
          [string "LuaUI/fonts.lua"](152): 
          [string "LuaUI/fonts.lua"](152): 
(....lots of stuff snipped...)

Pretty interesting to see what's going on in LuaUI, actually. I already found a bug in the widget handler that I wasn't even looking for just by inspecting these traces.

Theoretically this would also work for synced Lua code, but that runs in a different Lua context which has the necessary libraries (io and debug) disabled, so that would require a recompile of Spring.exe.

Anyway, this is just scratching the surface of the debug library; this stuff is really powerful. It would be possible to implement a full-blown Lua debugger within Spring so you could at any time break into your script, examine its variables, single-step through your code and so on. Someone just needs to take the time to write it

[LordMatt]

IceUI has some pretty extensive debugging capabilities. They aren't normally visible, but I've seen them sometimes when I've helped MelTraX debug stuffs.

[eriatarka]

Really? What does it do?