MCL VS debug-adapter-protocol

The descendant of CCL runs on modern Intel Macs. (It also runs on Linux and Windows but without the IDE.) The modern IDE is quite a bit different from the original. In particular, it no longer has the interface builder. But it's still pretty good. It is now called Clozure Common Lisp (so the acronym is still CCL) and you can find it here:

https://ccl.clozure.com/

If you want to run the original that is a bit of a challenge, but still possible. The original was never ported directly to OS X so you have to run it either on old hardware or an emulator running some version of the original MacOS, or on an older Mac running Rosetta 1. In the latter case you will want to look for something called RMCL. Also be aware that Coral Common Lisp was renamed Macintosh Common Lisp (i.e. MCL) before it became Clozure Common Lisp (CCL again).

This looks like it might be a promising place to start:

https://github.com/binghe/mcl

If you need more help try this mailing list:

https://lists.clozure.com/mailman/listinfo/openmcl-devel

> There's a strange dance of IDEs coming and going, with their idiosyncracies and partial plugins.

The Language Server Protocol [1] is the best thing to happen to text editors. Any editor that speaks it gets IDE features. Now if only they'd adopt the Debug Adapter Protocol [2]...

[1] https://microsoft.github.io/language-server-protocol/

[2] https://microsoft.github.io/debug-adapter-protocol/

Wonder if they've got support for Debug Adapter Protocol? https://microsoft.github.io/debug-adapter-protocol/

> Debuggers need to do more things

It's true that coming up with an interface for an abstract debugger is harder, but it's not impossible. Microsoft create Debug Adapter Protocol (https://microsoft.github.io/debug-adapter-protocol/), which is conceptually similar for LSP. It's not perfect, but covers most basic operations pretty well, while leaving to the debugger to deal with the implementation details.

Most languages also include support for the Debug Adapter Protocol, and Haskell is no exception, so if you are so inclined, you can hook up your favorite editor/IDE and go to town.

They're working on the Debug Adapter Protocol but it doesn't have critical mass/adoption yet. And yeah, I end up having a fair share of dbg!(foo). It's not so bad since dbg!() also returns its value, so you don't have to mess with your code too much.

TL;DR: What would it take to implement a Debug Adapter Protocol (DAP)-based step debugger?

RDP is the Windows Remote Desktop Protocol that was in use for decades before VSCode; VSCode's own remoting doesn't use it.

I'd say that, in addition to LSP, the other big thing that came out of VSCode is DAP: https://microsoft.github.io/debug-adapter-protocol.

The most important part is the JDT Languag Server, it will give you the Java tooling for writing code. I think it has DAP support as well, so with a DAP client like nvim-dap you should be able to debug as well.