ADT Basics: Debugging ABAP applications in Eclipse

Do you want to debug your ABAP applications directly within the ABAP Development Tools (ADT) for Eclipse?

There’s good news: Since the availability of the new SAP Kernel 7.21 in combination with SAP Basis 7.31 SP4 (prerequisite for using ADT) it’s possible to use the latest ABAP debugger, which is completely integrated in the Eclipse debug framework. Thus, it behaves like all other debuggers in Eclipse you might be familiar with. In other words, you can now debug your reports, transactions, classes and also Web Dynpro applications natively in Eclipse.

For a quick introduction to ABAP debugging in Eclipse you may watch this video:

Of course, we support all the standard debugging features also in Eclipse:

• Monitoring the call stack
• Setting breakpoints
• Stepping through the code
• Displaying and changing variable values
• Viewing internal tables

A big advantage compared to the GUI-based debugger is that the ABAP source code editor which is used to display the source code in the debug session is exactly the same as in the default ABAP perspective. This means that all editor features like navigation or element info are also available during your debug session. Moreover, you can also use the editor to edit your source code during debugging.

For more information about the ABAP debugger in Eclipse please refer to the detailed documentation within the ABAP Development Tools (Help menu -> Help Contents -> ABAP Development User Guide).