Debug a study

Questions about MultiCharts and user contributed studies.
epepping

Debug a study

Postby epepping » 19 Oct 2006

is there any way to debug a study ?

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Alex Kramer
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Postby Alex Kramer » 19 Oct 2006

When you're compiling a study in PLEditor and something is wrong, the bottom log panel lists the errors and their location in the code, so you can look up and reference EasyLanguage sources to fix the error.

damageboy
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Postby damageboy » 19 Oct 2006

@Alex: I'm assuming he's referring to runtime debugging.

For that you have to go the ugly way: There's no debugger or such, however you can use a print statement.

Code: Select all

Print("Hello World, This is bar ", CurrentBar);
should in theory appear in the debug pane however I find it very inconvenient and sometimes BUGGY (in the last 2 betas at least).

The one thing that DOES work for me is writing to file... I use this construct:

Code: Select all

Inputs:
Debug(true), // Or false
LogFile("c:\XXX.log"); // Can be empty if debugging is turned off

if (Debug) then Print(File(LogFile), "Hello World, This is bar ", CurrentBar);
It is important to have the ability to turn debugging output off as having many debugging statements can extremely slow down indicators...

This way (my way) I can also redirect multiple "instances" of a running indicator to different files...

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Alex Kramer
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Postby Alex Kramer » 20 Oct 2006

First, now we improved the print output window, it used to work improperly.
Second, the future versions will have a breakpoint window like in TS for debugging.

damageboy
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Postby damageboy » 20 Oct 2006

From my experience, the output bar was indeed improved (i.e. it started working;)) in the latest beta,
but if you start "pounding" it with lots of debugs it will lose information.

RS
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Postby RS » 20 Oct 2007

I'm now working extensively with MC during the last weeks and I really miss debug functionality.

It's difficult to find out what kind of debugging MC supports. For example the reserved word "breakpoint" is NOT in the list of NOT supported reserved words so you can asume that it must working. The PL Editor don't make the statement red so you can asume that it must working. But it don't! It seems that only the print statement can help us. It looks like we are back to the 80's.

I think that a professional strategy development environment MUST have debugging functionality. You can't seriously develop a strategy without (regression) testing it completely. But you can't test it without proper debugging support.

Can you please give your opinion on this topic and some sort of ETA when this very hard needed functionality will come.

For the other MC users: please comment this topic!

Thanks,
Rob.

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Marina Pashkova
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Postby Marina Pashkova » 22 Oct 2007

Dear Rob,

You're absolutely right. We do think that this functionality is necessary. Moreover, we developed it and it used to be part of MC. However, it wasn't popular with our customers so we stopped supporting it.

To bring this functionality back considerable efforts will be required. We have a tight work schedule until the end of 2007. We will try to implement the feature in Q1 2008. However, this is a rough estimate. The ETA depends on the amount of tasks we'll have to complete.

denizen2
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Postby denizen2 » 22 Oct 2007

Dear Rob,

You're absolutely right. We do think that this functionality is necessary. Moreover, we developed it and it used to be part of MC. However, it wasn't popular with our customers so we stopped supporting it.To bring this functionality back considerable efforts will be required. We have a tight work schedule until the end of 2007. We will try to implement the feature in Q1 2008. However, this is a rough estimate. The ETA depends on the amount of tasks we'll have to complete.
I can NOT even imajine a 'debug' facility being 'unpopular' to customers. What are you talking about :? ? Maybe you mean to say that it was not working very well, and therefore it was 'unpopular' in its current form?

I personally am not happy with the fact that the current 'debuging' facility does little except (maybe) point to a line that has some kind of problem (somewhere in the function-calling-stack). There seems to be no feedback about whether problem really is in current compile file, and what kind of problem (e.g., function parameters not matching, or no declaration given, etc).

So, I will add my 'vote' or 'request' for better 'debug' facility, sometime in the 'near' future.

In the meantime, I would like to acknowledge that you guys have done a VERY admirable job of developing the only (and best) alternative to the TS software 8) . Keep up the good work! I depend on your software everyday now as 'my' trading-system platform of choice for the forseable future.

Cheers,
denizen2

RS
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Postby RS » 23 Oct 2007

@marina: Thanks for your answer. I hope that this functionality will be top priority.

@denizen2: Thanks for your comment. And your right, it's easy to 'complain' about the things MC cannot do but sometimes we forgot to tell that we like the way the product is going: After 1 month of extensivelly testing I bought the lifetime license instead of using my TS2000i. I like this product :-).

With regards,
Rob.

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ABC
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Postby ABC » 23 Oct 2007

I really fell in love with the MC compiler a couple of month ago. Before I was only using the TS compiler for development, but the speed of compiling and the visible informations (color, showing the correct "end" for every "begin" etc.) are helping a lot in MC, so I switched.
A better debugging functionality would give another boost to the great compiler.
Please make this a top development priority if possible.

Thank you,
ABC

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Marina Pashkova
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Postby Marina Pashkova » 23 Oct 2007

I can NOT even imajine a 'debug' facility being 'unpopular' to customers. What are you talking about :? ? Maybe you mean to say that it was not working very well, and therefore it was 'unpopular' in its current form?

I personally am not happy with the fact that the current 'debuging' facility does little except (maybe) point to a line that has some kind of problem (somewhere in the function-calling-stack). There seems to be no feedback about whether problem really is in current compile file, and what kind of problem (e.g., function parameters not matching, or no declaration given, etc).

So, I will add my 'vote' or 'request' for better 'debug' facility, sometime in the 'near' future.

In the meantime, I would like to acknowledge that you guys have done a VERY admirable job of developing the only (and best) alternative to the TS software 8) . Keep up the good work! I depend on your software everyday now as 'my' trading-system platform of choice for the forseable future.

Cheers,
denizen2
Hi denizen 2,

At the time when breakpoint word was supported and the window was called up showing the values the customers never ever asked any questions about that. So we decided they simply weren't using the feature.

However, now that we see that this feature is in demand, we will add it in future MC versions.

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Marina Pashkova
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Postby Marina Pashkova » 24 Oct 2007

@marina: Thanks for your answer. I hope that this functionality will be top priority.

@denizen2: Thanks for your comment. And your right, it's easy to 'complain' about the things MC cannot do but sometimes we forgot to tell that we like the way the product is going: After 1 month of extensivelly testing I bought the lifetime license instead of using my TS2000i. I like this product :-).

With regards,
Rob.
Dear Rob and ABC,

Thank you for the positive comments about MultiCharts. It's really nice to hear every now and then that we're not in fact all that horrible.

I guess it's only natural for people to contact us or to post on forums only when something goes wrong. However, this results in a really bad publicity for MultiCharts. If you go to, say, Elitetrader and read posts there you'll get the impression that MultiCharts is all bugs and nothing else ...which scares potential customers away. This results in decreased profits and hence in less funds to invest in the product development. Which in its turn slows down the progress and in the end of the day affects existing customers.

What I'm driving at is: if you guys ever have something good to say about MultiCharts we would really appreciate if you did it on Elitetrader or similar public forums.

Thank you.

2haerim
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I absolutely vote for the debug feature

Postby 2haerim » 26 Oct 2007

I was expecting so badly, and never known that TSS decided not to implement it.

Plz add the good debugging and replaying features.

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Marina Pashkova
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Postby Marina Pashkova » 29 Oct 2007

Dear HaeRim,

In fact we are considering bringing the debugging feature back (please see the previous posts). A built-in playback feauture will also be added in future MC versions.

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Postby Nick » 06 Nov 2007

For any heavyweight stuff some sort of run time environment is a huge plus. I would settle for breakpoints and some sort of watchlist. I'm surprised you would remove something that works

MC is starting to deserve good reviews and it is starting to get them! Support always gets a 5/5 anyway Marina!


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