Remote debug of projects developed locally

Visual COBOL enables you to debug local projects while running them on a remote machine, or while your local project interacts with applications running on a remote machine.

The following must be configured:

The remote machine can be a Windows or UNIX environment, with either Visual COBOL or COBOL Server installed. The two systems must be networked using TCP/IP.
The remote machine must have access to the debug symbol (.idy) files in your project, which are normally in the output directory of your project (a location specified in the build configuration).
To enable access to the debug symbol files for the remote machine:
- Set up the project subdirectory on the local machine as a network share with the remote machine.
- Alternatively, you can copy or FTP the .idy files to a directory on the remote machine. You then need to configure the directory paths that are used to search for the application's .idy files.

Remote debugging of local projects is handled by the cobdebugremote (Windows) or cobdebugremote32 (UNIX) process (or cobdebugremote64 for a 64-bit process), located in $COBDIR/bin of the remote machine.¹

Note: If you intend to remotely debug callable shared objects (.so), you must set the COBIDY environment variable to the location of the .idy file before you start cobdebugremote32 or cobdebugremote64.

You must start the process before communication can be established. This process terminates automatically when you terminate the debug session either by disconnecting from or stopping the debugged application. You can use the following options:

no options

Starts the process and opens a random port for remote connections. The port number is displayed in the console.

machine=name

Specify the machine that the process is running on. Only valid with the stop option.

port

port=nnnnn: Specify the port to use to listen for connection requests.
port=nnnnn-yyyyy: Specify the range of ports to use. If port nnnnn is in use, the next port is tried until a free port is found. If no free ports are found in the range, the utility returns an error.
Note: You must enter the same number you set as the port option in the cobdebugremote port field of your debug configuration.

repeat

After the debug session has been completed, start listening for another connection. If no option is specified, the process exits after the debug session has completed.

stop

Causes the process that is listening on the port to exit. Must be used with the port option. This is only valid when the process is waiting for a connection.

Tip: You need to start a cobdebugremote process for every debug session therefore it is recommended to use the repeat option. This ensures the process listens for another connection after the debug session has completed.