In Delphi: How to skip sections of code while debugging?

Question

I often accidently step into code that I'm not interested in while debugging in Delphi.

Let's start by saying that I know that you can step over with F8, and that you can run to a certain line with f4.

Example:

function TMyClass.DoStuff():Integer;
begin
  // do some stuff
  bla();
end;

procedure TMyClass.Foo()
begin
  if DoStuff()=0 then // press F7 when entering this line
    beep;
end;

Example: I want to step into method DoStuff() by pressing F7, but instead of going there, I first end up in FastMM4.FastGetMem(), which is a massive blob of assembly code that obviously I'm not interested in at the moment.

There are several ways to go about this, and I don't like any of them:

• Add a breakpoint on "bla" (almost useless if you only want to step into DoStuff on special occasions, like iteration 23498938);

• Instead of pressing F7, manually move the cursor to "bla", and press F4 (Works for this simple example. In practice, it doesn't);

• In case of FastMM: temporarily disable fastmm;

Is there any way to hint the IDE that I'm never interested into stepping into a certain block of code, or do I always have to set extra breakpoints or use F4 to try to avoid this?

I'm hoping for some magic compiler directive like {$NODEBUG BEGIN/END} or something like that.

In most cases being able to exclude entire units would be fine-grained enough for me, but being able to avoid certain methods or even lines of code would be even better.

Update: Maybe codegear should introduce something like skip-points (as opposed to break-points) :-)

Answer 1

There is a "magic nodebug switch". {$D-} will disable the generation of debug code. Place that at the top of your FastMM unit and you won't end up tracing into it. And if you do end up in a function you don't want to be in, SHIFT-F8 will get you out very quickly. (WARNING: Don't use SHIFT-F8 from inside an assembly-code routine that plays around with the stack. Unpredictable behavior can result. F4 to the bottom of it instead.)