IDEDBG Emitter Properties

Set the IDEDBG emitter properties to output trace information to a debugger that is attached to a running process.

The IDEDBG emitter is provided to allow trace records to be output by a debugger, such as your COBOL development system, Visual Studio, or Eclipse at the point which they occur in the application being debugged.

To enable the IDEDBG emitter, specify the following statement in the Consolidated Tracing Facility configuration file:

mftrace.dest = IDEDBG

To use this emitter with your COBOL development system IDE, you must set the MFTRACE_CONFIG environment variable on the Environment Variables tab of the Configure IDE Environment dialog box. Trace events appear in the Debug messages tab when the application is debugged.

To use this emitter with a third-party debugger such as Visual Studio, you must set the MFTRACE_CONFIG environment variable in the environment before the debugger process is started. Trace events appear in the debugger‘s window where other system debug events would normally be displayed. For example, under Visual Studio 6, debug messages are displayed in the Debug tab.

The following list shows the properties you can set to control the behavior of the IDEDBG emitter:

Property Description Default
DELIMCHAR The character used in the output file to delimit trace data parts for a trace event. SPACE
FORMAT The format to be used for each trace data record written to the file. You can use the following pseudo-variables in the format specification:
$(COMPONENT)
The name of the component outputting the trace event.
$(DATA)
The trace data specified by the component to be output for the trace event. Each trace part will be delimited by the character specified by the DELIMCHAR property.
$(DATE)
The current date, output as yyyy/mm/dd
$(EVENT)
The event identifier as specified by the component outputting the trace event.
$(LEVEL)
The tracing level:
  • 0: debug
  • 1: info
  • 2: warning
  • 3: error
  • 4: fatal
$(THREAD)
The current operating system thread identifier.
$(TIME)
The current time, output as hh:mm:ss
$(TIME) $(COMPONENT) $(EVENT) $(LEVEL) $(DATA)
HEXBLOCKSIZE The number of hexadecimal bytes to be output in each block when outputting binary trace data. Each block of hexadecimal characters will be separated by a '-' character. For example, if HEXBLOCKSIZE is set to 4, and some binary trace data with the value 3132333435363738393A3B3C3D3E3F is specified for output, it would be formatted as follows:
31323334-35363738-393A3B3C-3D3E3F
8
LEVEL The trace level below which this emitter will not output trace records:
  • 0 = debug
  • 1 = info
  • 2 = warning
  • 3 = error
  • 4 = fatal
  • >4 = no trace records are output
3
QUOTESTRING Whether or not string trace data is to be output enclosed in double-quote characters. . TRUE