19.2 RTrace versus RDebug

The rtrace package is a modification (by FJW) of the rdebug package (written by HM, and included in the rtrace source directory). The modifications are as follows. The procedure-tracing facilities in rdebug rely upon the low-level tracing facilities in PSL; in rtrace these low-level facilities have been (partly) re-implemented portably. The names of the tracing commands that have been re-implemented portably have been changed to avoid conflicting with those provided by the underlying Lisp system by preceding them with the letter “r”, and they provide a generalized interface that supports algebraic mode better. An additional set of rule tracing facilities for inactive rules has been provided. Beware that the rtrace package is still experimental!

This package is intended to be portable, and has been tested with both CSL- and PSL-based REDUCE. However, it is intended not as a replacement for rdebug but as a partial re-implementation of rdebug that works with CSL-REDUCE, and it is assumed that PSL users will continue to use rdebug. It should, in principle, be possible to use both. Any rtrace functions with the same names as rdebug functions should either be identical or compatible; rtrace should be loaded after rdebug in order to retain any enhancements provided by rtrace. Perhaps at some future time the two packages should be merged. However, note that rtrace currently provides only tracing (hence the name) and does not support break points. (The current version also does not support conditional tracing.)

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