How to use pry-byebug in an example script for a gem?

Question

I'm working on making my first gem, which is not a Rails app, is a tic-tac-toe library with some AI in it, so I can play a computer opponent that will never lose and force a win if possible.

Right now I am trying to debug the attack strategy in the AI, but I can't seem to figure out how to get pry-byebug working in my test script, specfically, have the debugging commands like step, next, etc. work upon hitting a binding.pry.

The gem, named smart-tac-toe, has the following directory structure:

$ ls smart-tac-toe
example  Gemfile  Gemfile.lock  Guardfile  lib  LICENSE.txt  Rakefile  README.md  smart_tac_toe.gemspec  spec  tmp

As you can see above, there is an 'example' directory in my gem which contains "example.rb", where I use the classes I've made.

However, when I use binding.pry and try to use step and next, the Pry session just exits and the script keeps running.

In my smart_tac_toe.gemspec file, I clearly have pry-byebug:

spec.add_development_dependency "pry-byebug", '~>2.0.0'

and at the top of my example.rb file, I have tried requiring the proper gems:

require 'pry'
require 'pry-byebug'
require "../lib/smart_tac_toe.rb"

I am using Ruby 2.1.1p76 , the repo for this gem is located at https://github.com/discotroll65/smart_tac_toe

Also, though putting binding.pry into my example script does throw me into a debugging session, initially it is in a reading mode, and I have to press q to exit that before I can start doing repl stuff. Any thoughts as to why this may be?

Answer 1

Ok, looking into this more I realized (I think...still kind of new to the game) a couple things --

1.) If you want to if have

require 'pry'

at the top of your ruby file and have it work in general, it would help to install it in your development environment using your terminal:

user@machine/currentdirectory/$ gem install pry 

likewise with pry-byebug:

user@machine/currentdirectory/$ gem install pry-byebug

2.) The real answer to my initial question is to use

byebug

in my script as the debugging hook, instead of

binding.pry

(thanks @mtm for the suggestion!)

when I do use byebug though, while step and next work properly, the REPL it throws me into doesn't have any color, and isn't as nice in general...anyway to fix that?