Debugging via IEx

Hey!

I always find it a bit cumbersome to type require IEx; IEx.pry() whenever I need to debug something. Especially because of the lower and uppercase letters it is harder to type than for example binding.pry or byebug in Ruby.

So I figured I would create a helper function, like MyApp.pry():

defmodule MyApp do
  def pry() do
    require IEx
    IEx.pry()
  end
end

But obviously that won’t work since it will run IE.pry() inside the helper function instead of in the caller context.

So then I created this macro:

defmodule MyApp do
  defmacro pry() do
    quote do
      require IEx
      IEx.pry()
    end
  end
end

Unfortunately, now we’re back to square one though, since I’d still need to require MyApp; MyApp.pry().

So I finally settled on the following solution:

defmodule MyApp.Debugger do
  defmacro __using__(_opts \\ []) do
    quote do
      require IEx
      IEx.pry()
    end
  end
end

Which allows me to set a breakpoint anywhere using use MyApp.Debugger. Could even rename it to just use Debugger.

What do you think of this approach?