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NAME

Vim::Debug::Manual - Integrate the Perl debugger with Vim

What is VimDebug?

VimDebug integrates the Perl debugger with Vim, allowing developers to visually step through their code, examine variables, set or clear breakpoints, etc.

VimDebug is known to work under Unix/Ubuntu/OSX. It requires Perl 5.FIXME or later and some CPAN modules may need to be installed. It also requires Vim 7.FIXME or later that was built with the +signs and +perl extensions.

How do I install VimDebug?

VimDebug has a Perl component and a Vim component. The Vim component happens to be supplied with the Perl component.

The Perl component, Vim::Debug, can be obtained from CPAN. A simple way to install it is to use cpanminus's cpanm program. First, install cpanminus:

    curl -L http://cpanmin.us | perl - --sudo App::cpanminus

Then, install VimDebug's Perl files:

    cpanm Vim::Debug

To install the Vim component, execute the following program, which was installed with the Perl component:

    vimdebug-install -d ~/.vim

You may want to replace ~/.vim by some other directory that your Vim recognizes as a runtimepath directory. See Vim's :help 'runtimepath' for more information.

Finally, launch Vim and install and read the Vim help file, which describes how to use VimDebug:

    :helptags ~/.vim/doc
    :help VimDebug

Make sure that the directory where that doc directory resides is in your Vim runtimepath, else Vim won't find its help information even if it manages to build the help index.

Improving VimDebug

VimDebug is on github: https://github.com/kablamo/VimDebug.git

To do development work on VimDebug, clone its git repo and read ./documentation/DEVELOPER.

In principle, the VimDebug code can be extended to handle other debuggers, like the one for Ruby or Python, but that remains to be done.

Please note that this code is in beta.

AUTHOR

Eric Johnson <kablamo at iijo dot nospamthanks dot org>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This software is copyright (c) 2013 by Eric Johnson.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.