Notes on Hacking dswank

• Build with deft update; deft build dswank

• When dswank runs the compiler it needs the Jam build scripts. When dswank is built as part of an Open Dylan release it finds the scripts in INSTALL-DIR/share/opendylan/build-scripts. When building and running your own dswank you must copy those files to your _build directory. For example, cp -rp /opt/opendylan/share /path/to/dylan-emacs-support/_build/.

• Configure DIME so that it uses your dswank executable and so it can find whatever project you're using for testing DIME (I usually use dswank itself). Example:

  (require 'dime)
  (dime-setup '(dime-repl dime-note-tree))
  (setq dime-dylan-implementations
        `((opendylan ("/home/me/dylan/workspaces/dylan-emacs-support/_build/bin/dswank"
                      "--debug")
                     ;; The registry setting should be found dynamically but for now
                     ;; must be set specifically for the code I'm working on at the
                     ;; moment.
                     :env ("OPEN_DYLAN_USER_REGISTRIES=/home/me/dylan/workspaces/dylan-emacs-support/registry"
                           "OPEN_DYLAN_USER_ROOT=/home/me/dylan/workspaces/dylan-emacs-support/_build"))))

  Notice the --debug flag so that output from debug-to-repl is shown, and that it is (currently) important to specify both the ...REGISTRIES and ...ROOT environment variables.

• The easiest way to add debug output to the dswank Dylan code is to call debug-to-repl. The output shows up in the *dime-repl nil* buffer.