debugger live watch panel (like live expressions in STM32CubeIDE)

[alefminus]

Currently the debugger has a variables pane, showing the variables accessible to code in the current stack frame (locals) and registers.

I expect that a watch panel will be added in due course.

I want to mention a less common feature I've seen in ST: live expressions.

The idea is: you add several variables (that are translated to some memory locations, so this would need to be globals probably and not stack based, or in the top of the stack), and then do a continue.

The live expressions pane will be updated live (at an unspecified frame rate, in practice as-fast-as-possible), without having to pause / single step.

Instead of creating my own screencast I point you to a demo on youtube (I have personally used this feature, it is a huge help, since you can observe some form of correctness without any breakpoints / prints; for instance you can add a tick counter that increments in an interrupt, and just seeing it updates shows the interrupt is being called on time, at least up to some jitter you cannot observe like this):

• https://youtu.be/sPzQ5CniWtw?t=487
• https://youtu.be/jbVgIK9Jlgk?t=99
• https://youtu.be/Nyml66k_Ppk?t=306