Scheme Debugging

I've been using Scheme recently, and have been complaining to everybody about the lack of any good visual debugger for the language. Dr. Scheme has some debugging features, but they seem very primitive and awkward to me. Maybe they are exploring new ways to debug (e.g. drawing arrows all over the code to illustrate the calls stack), but I just want a good conventional debugger. Gambit Scheme has a command-line debugger, but its a pain to use for long periods of time and complex code.

Eclipse has a plugin architecture and lots of dynamic languages are gettting IDEs based on it. SchemeWay is a plugin for Scheme, but it does not support debugging. Recently I disovered the Dynamic Languages Toolkit (DLTK). Its supports the Xdebug DBGp protocol.

So I decided to make an Eclipse-based debugger for Scheme. Its called Schemeide and the alpha version is available for download now.

Any Scheme interpreter could work: all it has to do is implement the runtime side of DBGp. I implemented it, and it requires Gambit 4.2.9. Right now I include a patched version of 4.2.8 with builds for MacOS X, Win32, and Linux. The IDE also includes a indenter/reformatter for Scheme/Lisp. Other features are TBD.