In a Java debugger, how to ignore exceptions never passing through my code

Question

I'm currently using IntelliJ IDEA for Java development, but I'm also interested in answers targeting other IDEs or general concepts for debugging Java code. Because this is a feature I've missed in a number of IDEs, I'm unsure if I've missed a workflow concept when transferring my debug habits from other languages.

Let's say I'm writing some code in myapp.* while using framework classes from somelib.*. A typical stack trace may start in either package and may switch several times between them. Let's also say I'm debugging under the assumption that there are bugs in my code and that there aren't any in the library code. An example stack trace (showing only class names):

somelib.D (current stack frame)
somelib.C
myapp.Y
myapp.X
somelib.B
somelib.A

Normally, I'm not interested in the following types of exceptions and do not want the debugger to break on them:

• Thrown in somelib.B and caught in somelib.A. Either the library code is throwing exceptions to handle problematic state inside the library or to stop the application. In the latter case, I'm only interested in the exception message which hopefully tells me what's wrong.

• Thrown in somelib.D and caught in somelib.C. The library code may use exceptions as a form of logic where a certain action is tried and an alternative route is taken in the case of a problem or where my code is notified by the problem by other means (e.g. returning a null reference where appropriate).

Types of exceptions I am interested in:

• Thrown in somelib.C or somelib.D and not caught in somelib.C or somelib.D. Here I want the debugger to break on the line in myapp.Y where I call the code from somelib.C.

• Thrown in myapp.X or myapp.Y, either caught or uncaught. Here I want the debugger to break on the line the exception is thrown.

IntelliJ IDEA gives me the options to select wether I want to break on caught or uncaught exceptions, or both and to restrict the location where the exception is thrown to a set of classes. These options don't help much as I normally want to break on any exception, wether caught or uncaught, as long as code I've written is between the place it's thrown and the place it's caught, eventually.

Answer 1

You can create two exception breakpionts:

1. An Exception breakpoint that hit whenever there is an exception in myapp.* (caught or uncaught). Use Class Filter for this purpose (look at here for class filters).
2. An Exception breakpoint that hit whenever there is an uncaught exception in either 'somelib.C1orsomelib.B`. Again use class filters to restrict the breakpoint.

Answer 2

In IntelliJ you can define a condition on an exception break point. The condition is just Java code executed at the time the breakpoint is hit, so the exception object would be in-scope during the condition check. You could call getStackTrace() on the exception and decide if it is an exception that you are interested in by looking at each frame on the stack. If you aren't interested, then your condition fails, and the breakpoint is skipped.