SPIDER Release History

Current Release

SPIDER 0.0.37

Note: This release requires Eclipse 3.7, or later.

New Features

• A determinacy analyzer, similar in scope to the Derminacy Checker library and the spdet tool. Determinacy and non-determinacy are inferred on-the-fly and the information is used for generating problem markers and in the pop-up documentation for predicates.
• Warnings for incorrect use of meta arguments.

  Argument positions that have been declared as closures or meta arguments, using meta_predicate/1 directives, are now tracked. Potentially incorrect use, e.g. passing an incoming non-meta argument in as a meta argument to a called predicate, can generate warnings. Most warnings are turned off by default and must be enabled in the Errors/Warnings preferences.

• The syntax highlighter has been reworked and its behavior can now be changed from the preferences.
• When the cursor is in a variable, all occurences of the variable in the clause are highlighted. This new behavior is on by default but can be turned off from the preferences.
• Open Definition now works for variables and goes to the first occurrence of the variable in the clause.
• Several new warnings.

Bugs Fixed

SPIDER 0.0.33

Note: This release requires Eclipse 3.6.

New Features

See the New Features in 0.0.26, below, for information about the support for new SICStus Prolog 4.2 features like Profiling and Source Code Coverage.

SPIDER 0.0.27

Note: This release requires Eclipse 3.6.

This is a bug-fix release, fixing a single problem with the help system. No new features have been added.

Bugs Fixed

• The online help would report “Topic not found” when browsing the SICStus documentation from within Eclipse. This problem has only been observed on Windows.

SPIDER 0.0.26

Note: This release requires Eclipse 3.6.

New Features

• Support for profiling. A Profile view is available from the SICStus menu and the Prolog context menu. Use the refresh button to fetch and display the latest profile info from the Prolog process.

  Works with SICStus 4.1.3 and, with improved functionality, with SICStus 4.2 (currently in beta).

• The SPIDER prolog parser now uses the same character classification as SICStus, i.e. a large subset of Unicode now works. SPIDER also understands set_prolog_flag(legacy_char_classification,on) (and off) when used as a directive.
• SPIDER now undestands coding:CHARSET in the initial Emacs-style -*- ... -*- line.
• Most of the SICStus documentation, e.g. the SICStus Prolog Manual, are now picked up from the configured SICStus installation instead of being embedded in SPIDER.

New Features for SICStus 4.2

• Support for source code coverage. A Coverage view is available from the SICStus menu and the Prolog context menu. Use the refresh button to fetch and display the latest coverage info from the Prolog process.

  The left margin of the Prolog Editor shows coverage info by default. The margin annotations can be shown and hidden from the margin context menu. The coverage info in the editor is updated when the Coverage view is refreshed.

• The debugger shows more variable names for code compiled with source information.

Bugs Fixed

• The first argument of read_term/2 was incorrectly treated as a stream and generated warnings.
• A memory leak has been plugged. SPIDER should now be able to handle much larger source code trees using the standard Eclipse memory configuration. More memory still improves speed, though.
• Variable view in debugger sometimes did not update automatically.
• The Prolog Indexer would follow symbolic links in some cases when it should not. You still should avoid symbolic links in directory trees seen by SPIDER and by Eclipse in general.
• Closing the Toplevel View could cause a state where the Open Toplevel command had no effect.

SPIDER 0.0.23

Note: This is the last release to support Eclipse 3.5. The next release will require Eclipse 3.6.

New Features

• Call Hierarchy shows references to a selected predicate or file.

  Currently only works for Prolog files that are part of a project. See Known Issues.

• New key bindings:

  Binding	Function	Mac OS X Binding
  ALT-K	Compile Prolog Code	ALT-K
  CTRL-ALT-Q C	Open Prolog Toplevel	CMD-ALT-Q C
  CTRL-ALT-H	Call Hierarchy	CTRL-ALT-H

• Comments that contain the strings TODO, FIXME or XXX now generate tasks that are visible in the Tasks view.
• New warnings are generated, including
  • Warnings when incorrect arguments can be detected. This is done for a number of builtins, including format/[2,3], predicates that takes a stream argument and predicates that take a predicate indicator list or predicate specification.
  • Warn for foreign_resource/2 entries with no corresponding foreign/[2,3] and vice versa.
  • Warnings for unused module imports.
• The toplevel view shows the working directory of the SICStus process.
• SICStus is now started automatically, by default, for comands like Compile Prolog Code. This can be turned off in the preferences.

Bugs Fixed

• ?-/1 is now treated as a directive, just like :-/1.
• Sometimes the stack stopped being displayed in the debugger.
• Completion (CTRL-SPACE) did not complete names of builtin predicates.

SPIDER 0.0.20

This is mainly a bug fix release, fixing various issues in 0.0.19.

New Features

• Warn about predicates not reachable from module/2 or public/1 directives.
• Warn when re-defining built in predicates.
• Generate warnings for goals in directives.
• Some other new warnings.

Bugs Fixed

• Memory usage has been improved, making it less likely that Eclipse will run out of memory.
• Eclipse would hang when opening file with overlong lines.
• A deadlock issue.

SPIDER 0.0.19

New Features

• Source Code Indexer.

  The Indexer automatically process all prolog source code in prolog projects and builds a model of how all files fit together.

  Current Indexer-related functionality:

  • The Indexer knows when a module is made up from more than one file. This way SPIDER can know the module and module-local predicates when editing one of the constituent files.
  • The Indexer improves the way SPIDER detects undefined predicates and improves the Open Definition command and related functionality.
  • SPIDER will now parse and emit problem markers for all prolog source code in prolog projects, not only for the files open in an editor.
  The Indexer is an enabling feature for future functionality, like refactorings.
• File search paths, like those defined in Prolog with file_search_path/2 can now be defined in the preferences. The same mechanism is also used by SPIDER when a $VAR appears in a path.
• Setting a spy-point on a predicate where SPIDER does not know the module will now default to the user module.
• The Content Types preferences can now be used to associate arbitrary file name extensions with Prolog source code.
• The included documentation is for SICStus Prolog 4.1.2.

Bugs Fixed

• Nested conditional directives were not handled correctly.
• Tests in nexted conditionals now handles '\+'/1.
• Fixed problem with call/n in DCG.

SPIDER 0.0.15

New Features

• Spy-points.

  Setting a breakpoint on the first line of a predicate creates a spy-point instead of a line breakpoint. Spy-point icons have a small arrow to distinguish them from other kinds of breakpoints. Note: Spy-points require that the module of the predicate is known, e.g. when it is defined in a module file.

• The prompt for saving modified files now offers to do this automatically, without prompt. This behavior can be changed in the preferences.

Bugs Fixed

• Improvements in when variable bindings can be shown. Especially visible for variables deep in terms and for code in disjunctions and do/2 loops.
• Improvements in source debugging when no source info is available. Especially visible in disjunctions and do/2 loops.
• Now warns for undefined predicates passed to user-defined meta predicates.
• Files loaded into other files sometimes did not get warning annotations.
• Outline view sometimes got stuck in “Pending…”
• Adding a key-binding to the Compile or Consult commands did not work properly.
• The identity of breakpoints persisted between sessions could sometimes get confused with new breakpoints.
• The pause/interrupt button in the SICStus toplevel view sometimes did not have any effect.

SPIDER 0.0.14

Several bugs fixed.

SPIDER 0.0.10