Debugging plugins

[TengenJulian]

When something goes wrong in a plugin, the code silently fails. No messages appear in the Web Console, Browser Console, terminal or message buffer.

How can you debug plugins?

I'm using Firefox 48 and Pentadactyl 7296.

[eboth]

I do see plugin error messages both in the Browser console and in the message buffer. There may be silent errors as well though – in those cases you could use console.log() or dactyl.echomsg() to output signs of life to the Browser console or the Pentadactyl message buffer, respectively.

You can even set breakpoints and debug Pentadactyl plugins in the Browser Debugger (not the window-specific Web Debugger). See here:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Debugging/Debugging_JavaScript