Preventing the Eclipse debugger from stepping into utility code

From: Chemi
Newsgroups: ibm.software.websphere.studio.application-site-developer

An interesting tip from: http://www.eclipsenews.com

When stepping through your code in the Eclipse debugger, it's very frustrating when you inadvertently step into utility code. Normally what happens in that situation is that the Java editor opens with an error telling you that Eclipse can't find the source. This can really mess up your debug session, so it's important to be able to keep the debugger out of utility code.

Eclipse has a preference setting called Step Filtering. You invoke it with Window => Preferences => Java => Debug => Step Filtering. The Step Filtering panel will have the following default list:

• com.ibm.*
• com.sun.*
• java.*
• javax.*
• org.omg.*
• sun.*
• sunw.*
• java.lang.ClassLoader

To disable stepping into a package's code, click its check box. You can click the Add Class or Add Packages button if you want to add a package or class to the list.

The last and most important part of this tech tip is that to enable step filtering, you need to toggle the Use Step Filters/Step Debug icon. That icon is at the top of the Debug view. It is a yellow arrow that goes right and then forks (visualizing a step into) down.

Thanks, Chemi!