Issues and Workaround

Feedback

When you are testing SPIDER we are particularly interested in feedback about the following areas, listed in approximate order of priority:

1. Crashing problems.
   

   Any crashes or hangs in Eclipse or SICStus Prolog that occur when using SPIDER.

2. Installation problems.
   

   Any problems installing Eclipse or the SPIDER feature.

3. Performance issues.
   

   If SPIDER is slow or misbehaves for certain files or for large files etc.

   Note: The first thing to try if SPIDER is slow, is to increase the memory allocated to Eclipse. See memory issues, for more information.

4. Broken or incomplete functionality.
   If something does not work right. Note that there are several known incomplete features.
5. Missing features.
   If some must-have functionality is missing. Note that there are a number of known missing features that we intend to add.
6. Other suggestions.
   Any other feedback, including suggestions for new functionality, icon design and other eye candy, etc.

Known Issues

• Open Call Hierarchy does not work for files that are not part of a project. A workaround is to create a prolog project and add a link to your source directory, as described under Work With Existing Prolog Code.
• Avoid symbolic links. Symbolic links can lead to all kinds of trouble, especially when they create cycles. This is a problem with Eclipse and not easily fixed in SPIDER.

Incomplete Functionality

Debugger

• No support for conditional breakpoints. Only plain spypoints and line breakpoints are supported.
• The ^ command does not work in the debugger.

Top level

• The Top level should have many of the Prolog-centric features of the Prolog editor, like completion and documentation info-pops.

Other Issues

• If Eclipse complains Resource is out of sync with the file system or something similar then it is because files have changed in the file system unbeknownst to Eclipse. To fix this bring the Project Explorer view to the front, make sure no project is selected and then do Refresh from the File menu to update Eclipse's view of the world, and restart Eclipse.

  You can also change the Eclipse preferences so Eclipse refreshes once when started or automatically as needed.

Missing Functionality

• Preferences.
  The SPIDER Preferences should be improved and expanded.
• Documentation.
  The SICStus manuals etc. are already integrated with SPIDER but we need more SPIDER-specific tutorials etc.

Memory Issues

• The Source Indexer will make SPIDER process all source code in the project(s) by default. The default memory allocation for Eclipse can be insufficient. This can cause Eclipse to be unresponsive or to run out of memory.

  SPIDER relies heavily on a cache that automatically adjusts to available memory. If SPIDER runs slowly the best solution is, therefore, to increase the memory allocated to Eclipse, see for instance The Eclipse FAQ or search for "eclipse default memory" with your favorite search engine. Of course, the memory allocated to Eclipse should be well below the amount of physical RAM in the machine.

  As a last resort, it is possible to turn off the Indexer from the preferences. The need to turn off the indexer should be considered a bug in SPIDER so please report if you ever find it necessary to turn off the indexer.

Future Functionality

• Settings for the SICStus process.
  It should be possible to use SPIDER to change various prolog flags, debugger settings, working directory, etc.
• CLP debugger/visualizer.
  Tools for debugging and visualizing Constraint Logic Programs (CLP) written with library(clpfd).