# Breakpoints completely fail to work

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/breakpoints-completely-fail-to-work/53893>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [February 16, 2006, 3:43am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/breakpoints-completely-fail-to-work/53893 "2006-02-16T03:43:25Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![jyurek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/c2a13f/32.png) [@jyurek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jyurek)\
**Post date:** [February 16, 2006, 3:43am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/breakpoints-completely-fail-to-work/53893/1 "2006-02-16T03:43:25Z")

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I did as I was told: add “breakpoint” to an action, start script/server,  
start script/breakpointer, then go to the action in the browser.  
Absolutely nothing happens, on either side. I’ve tried every variation  
of starting what when I can think of, I’ve specified ports, I’ve done  
all I can think of, but never once have I gotten the fabled irb prompt  
that should let me debug. Not only that, but webrick completely hangs. I  
have to kill -9 it.

It’s Rails 1.0, Ruby 1.8.2, Fedore Core 3, irb is installed. I’d really  
like to be able to use this, so if anyone has any ideas, I’d love to  
hear them.

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**Author:** ![jyurek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/c2a13f/32.png) [@jyurek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jyurek)\
**Post date:** [February 16, 2006, 4:29am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/breakpoints-completely-fail-to-work/53893/2 "2006-02-16T04:29:17Z")

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Are you absolutely certain that the breakpoint is getting executed?

I know that’s a basic question…but I have a hard time believing  
that nothing is happening on either side if it is.

–  
– Tom M.

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**Author:** ![jyurek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/c2a13f/32.png) [@jyurek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jyurek)\
**Post date:** [February 16, 2006, 4:59am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/breakpoints-completely-fail-to-work/53893/3 "2006-02-16T04:59:25Z")

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- Jon Yurek (removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid) [060215 21:45]:

> hear them.

1. Which environment {development, testing, production, [other] … }  
are you running under? Sounds like development, but just wanted to make  
sure.

2. Can you get this to work on a pristine Rails application (i.e,. run a  
new “rails foo” and from within foo run “script/breakpointer” and  
“script/server”)?

3. Following along the line the other poster pointed, can you put a  
marker on the line above your “breakpoint” like:

[…]

STDERR.puts “I should be hitting the breakpoint NOW!”  
breakpoint

[…]

and see if you see the marker text printing out?

## Rick

[http://www.rickbradley.com](http://www.rickbradley.com) MUPRN: 560  
| af6159707ab83edefa35d8cc2f0c5f34  
random email haiku | Status: RO Hi, I had  
| a great spring break.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jyurek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/c2a13f/32.png) [@jyurek](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jyurek)\
**Post date:** [February 16, 2006, 5:11pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/breakpoints-completely-fail-to-work/53893/4 "2006-02-16T17:11:14Z")

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Rick B. wrote:

> 1. Which environment are you running under?

Development.

> 1. Can you get this to work on a pristine Rails application?

No, the behavior is the same.

> 1. Following along the line the other poster pointed, can you put a  
> marker on the line above your “breakpoint”

The marker does print.

…

Upon further investigation, it seems that it’s a DRb problem. I changed  
the fresh controller to the following:

class TestController \< ApplicationController  
def index  
STDERR.puts “I should be hitting the breakpoint now.”  
Breakpoint.deactivate\_drb  
breakpoint  
end  
end

Webrick gave me the irb prompt. I was able to inspect the environment,  
and it worked like it should. This seems odd, since I don’t recall  
having a problem with DRb in other situations. I’ll just stick  
Breakpoint.deactivate\_drb into my ApplicationController for now (I tried  
putting it in environment.rb and it didn’t work, in case you were  
wondering).