Question

NEWBIE logger question here:

What’s the best way to log output to a development log for debugging purposes? How do you do it in a way that’s quick, simple, effective?

Answer 1

One option that I prefer over logging is using ruby debug. It allows you to put a break point anywhere in your code and inspect all local variables at that point in time. I find it more useful for tracking down bugs in cases where you have no friggin’ idea what’s going on and just want to look at everything.

Say you had a method like this and the behavior was not what you expected:

def my_method(arg)
  # do something with argument
end

You could stick a debugger line in there:

def my_method(arg)
  debugger
  # do something with argument
end

You’ll be able to then do things like this to get a better idea of what is going on:

p arg
p arg.method
p arg.another_method
p local_var
p local_var.method