CapeSoft.Com
Clarion Accessories
BreakIn
Documentation
CapeSoft Logo

CapeSoft BreakIn
Documentation

Download Latest Version FAQ History
Installed Version Latest Version 1.01

Introduction

Find the root of your Clarion program's non-responsiveness.

Is your Clarion program croaking on you for no reason? Don't you hate it when there is no gpf screen or error message, and nothing but a non-responsive program taking over your computer screen? Normally you would eventually be driven to open your task manager and kill the process in frustration, leaving you with no clue as to what might be causing your program to hang like that. CapeSoft BreakIn is designed to help you find out where your program is getting stuck quickly and easily. It's great for those multi-threaded programs where swimming through your application code in order to locate the problem may not only be a nightmare, but impossible. Note: Does not run on 64 bit operating systems.

The good news is that BreakIn allows you to inspect current source lines in the source files used by your program at runtime. In addition, it uses virtually no CPU time while sitting in the background monitoring your program.

Features

CapeSoft BreakIn Provides:

License and Copyright

This program is protected by copyright law and international treaties.

This program is copyright © 2000-2013 by CapeSoft Software. Each developer needs his own license to use CapeSoft BreakIn.

License Agreement

CapeSoft Software, employees of CapeSoft Software and Dealers of CapeSoft Software products explicitly accept no liability for any loss or damages which may occur from using this package. This package is used entirely at your own risk. Use of this package constitutes agreement with this license. Please contact should you have any queries.

Free Upgrade Policy

Downloads

Click here to Download CapeSoft BreakIn.



Note: You must have downloaded CapeSoft Safe Reader 2.19 or later to unlock this product.

Once you have downloaded the file, please unlock it using CapeSoft Safe Reader, run the executable file, and the install program will guide you through the installation.
For further information please consult the Installation section in this documentation.

The same setup program installs the full version and upgrades older installations to the latest version.

Free Upgrades Policy
CapeSoft products have always had a free upgrade policy. i.e. You pay for the product once and then all the new upgrades and features are free. At the moment this is policy for CapeSoft BreakIn. It could change in future, but this has been the case for the past 10 years.

Screenshots

Loading your Program

Loading your program is a quick and easy process:

Source Directories

Next, you specify your Source Directories, and with this done, you can launch your program!

The Main Window

The main BreakIn window, from where you monitor your program, is shown below. It hangs around in the background while your program runs normally.

Breaking In

When you want to see what exactly your program is doing at a given point in time, press the break button, and the details appear on your BreakIn window!

Installation

System Requirements

Installation Instructions

Once you have downloaded the file, please run the executable file and the install program will guide you through the installation.

First-time Installation Subsequent Upgrades

Operation

Loading your Application

Application Details

When starting up CapeSoft BreakIn, the first window you are confronted with asks you to enter the details of the Clarion program you want to monitor. It looks like this:

BreakIn Program Monitor screeenshot

You are expected to provide the following information:
When you have entered all of these details, click next. You will be taken to the Source Details window.

Source Details

You will encounter this window after filling in the Application Details. The main goal here is to fill in the path to your Clarion directory. The window looks like this:



You are required to provide the following information:
Upon completing the above field(s), you can choose to press one of the following two buttons:
When you press the Launch button, the Loading Source Files window will appear.

Loading Source Files

When pressing the Launch Button on the Source Details window, you will be confronted with the following window:



You can sit back and relax for a second or two - the loading happens automatically, and when it is done you will be taken to the Monitor window.

Breaking In

Monitoring your Program

After pressing the Launch Button, and after your source files have finished loading, the main BreakIn window appears on your screen along with the application you told it to launch:



BreakIn runs your Clarion application as a child process and does not slow your application down in any way. It hovers in the background while monitoring your program. On the BreakIn window you will see two list boxes with the following information:
Besides the list boxes, you will also see the following buttons on this window: Your program will run normally until it hangs, gets stuck in an infinite loop or does something else inexplicable. Whereas before you may have been tempted to pull your hair out by the roots or throw your keyboard at the dog, this has now become a perfect opportunity to hit the Break button. At this point you will be Breaking In to your program - click on the link for more.

Breaking In

This is where the real magic happens. After pressing the Break button when your program hangs (or for any other reason), your BreakIn window will change slightly and will look as follows:



You will see that once you have pressed the Break button, your application is rendered entirely non-responsive and non-active. It in fact stops your program dead in mid-operation. But now there is more information available in the list boxes: There have been some changes to the buttons on the window as well: Note that the two list boxes on this window can be resized by clicking and dragging on the gap between them, for your convenience.

Closing your Program

You can close your program at any time in the normal fashion (except when you have pressed the Break button and not Resumed, in which case you will not be able to do anything with it). If you do, BreakIn looks like this:



Now you only really have three choices:

FAQ

Note: You should compile your application in stand-alone mode when using Break-In to get useful information from the BreakIn window.

  1. Question: Why am I getting *** Source not found *** and *** Next failed, Compiler added line? *** errors in the Stack Trace and Procedure Source boxes when BreakIn to my program?

    Answer: More than likely it is because the source of the DLL that is being executed is not available. There are at least two possible reasons for this:
    • Your Clarion program was not compiled in debug mode, and therefore BreakIn cannot extract the information needed to locate the source modules from your application.
    • The source files of this particular DLL do not reside in your Clarion directory. If this is the case, you need to specify the location of these files using the Extra Source entry on the Source Details window.
  2. Question: My EXE locks up when running in the BreakIn environment. What am I doing wrong?

    Answer: Check that you are not running another program (using the RUN() command or a 3rdparty tool like PowerRun). BreakIn is not able to run other programs from within it's own environment.
  3. Question: I get a Stop: "LoadStackQ Error, ReadProcessMemory failed: Only part of a ReadProcessMemory or WriteProcessMemory request was completed"

    Answer: That message is indicative that there's a section of memory that BreakIn does not have access to (and so it cannot continue running the application). Generally this is as a result of your program running external components (like OCXs or COM objects) - that BreakIn does not have permitted access to the stack for the memory required to continue running you application.

    The only way around this is to avoid running those parts of your application (from within BreakIn) that will force BreakIn to attempt to access those memory slices on the stack.

Purchase and Support

CapeSoft Support
Email
Telephone +27 87 828 0123
Fax +27 21 715 2535
Post PO Box 511, Plumstead, 7801, Cape Town, South Africa
CapeSoft BreakIn may be purchased from:
CapeSoft Sales
Web www.capesoft.com
Email sales at capesoft dot com
Telephone +27 87 828 0123
Fax +27 21 715 2535
Post PO Box 511, Plumstead, 7801, Cape Town, South Africa
Buy Online
Web Buy now at ClarionShop
www.clarionshop.com

Download

Click here to Download CapeSoft BreakIn



Note: You must have downloaded CapeSoft Safe Reader 2.19 or later to unlock this product.

Once you have downloaded the file, please unlock it using CapeSoft Safe Reader, run the executable file, and the install program will guide you through the installation. For further information please consult the Installation section in this documentation.

The same setup program installs the full version and upgrades older installations to the latest version.

Installation Instructions

Once you have downloaded the file, please run the executable file and the install program will guide you through the installation.

First-time Installation

Subsequent Upgrades

Version History

Think something is missing from CapeSoft BreakIn? Can't live without a feature? Need to report a bug? Just email !

Version 1.02 (18 August 2012) Version 1.01 (January 2006)
Version BreakIn 1.00 (December 2005)