Prior to running the Debugger on an OpenEdge installation that contains an ABL Virtual Machine (AVM), you must enable the system for debugging. Attempts to run the Debugger without first enabling debugging result in an error message.

Debugging is initially disabled because it opens a potential security hole. When running the Debugger, you can examine and modify internal variables and database fields. In a production environment, this means that someone could access sensitive business data while in the Debugger. For this reason, Progress Software Corporation strongly recommends that you avoid using the Debugger on a production system.

During application development, however, you can choose whether to selectively enable and disable debugging or enable it after installation and leave it enabled for the duration of the development cycle.

To enable debugging, use the proDebugEnable command.

This is the syntax for the command:


proDebugEnable {-disable-all|-enable-all}
disable-all
Disables all AVM instances that are part of the installation from which you are executing the command. Specify this parameter to disable debugging on an installation where it was previously enabled.
enable-all
Enables all AVM instances that are part of the installation from which you are executing the command

To further secure the debugging facility, you must have the right privileges to execute this command: root privileges on UNIX and administrator privileges in Windows.

Note the following about enabling debugging:

  • The proDebugEnable command controls debugging of AVM instances running on the machine where you execute it. It does not affect running of the Debugger user interface. So, for example, if you want to run the Debugger on one machine to debug an AVM instance that is on another machine (across a LAN), you must run proDebugEnable on the machine where the AVM instance is running.
  • If you install OpenEdge on machine 1 and do a network install onto machine 2, you must run proDebugEnable on machine 2 to debug an AVM instance that is running on machine 2.
  • If you install multiple instances of OpenEdge on the same machine, each instance will have its own copy of proDebugEnable, and each copy will affect only the debugging capability in its instance.

    Thus, you can run an application system and a production system on the same machine, and control debugging separately for each system.

  • If you anticipate that you might want to use the Debugger, execute proDebugEnable before starting the AVM. If you decide you want to debug after starting the AVM, you will have to shut down the AVM, enable debugging, and then restart the AVM.