Ability to validate the .dfdl.xsd schema file before starting debug operation

[hdalsania]

Ability to validate the .dfdl.xsd schema file before starting debug operation.

Need to brainstorm the use case for this validation operation. It is okay to debug uncompleted schema during schema development but are there use cases where invalid or incomplete dfdl schema needs to be debugged?

[rthomas320]

The Apache daffodil command line version has built in schema validation. To invoke the validator -V argument and "full' as the mode. The debugger process currently calls daffodil in debug mode, It seems likely it would be possible to call daffodil in validate mode prior to calling it in debug mode to validate an existing schema.

[stevedlawrence]

The -V/--validate option only validates the infoset, it does not validate the .dfdl.xsd files.

The Compiler.withValidateDFDLSchemas(Boolean) function can be used to enable/disable DFDL schema validation during schema compilation. And DFDL Schema Validation defaults to true, so if the extension isn't explicitly disabling DFDL schemas, then you are probably already validating them during compilation.

Maybe what this extension needs is a separate button for compiling a schema vs debugging a schema? This is probably in line with most other language extensions (e.g. Java compile + debug). Compiling will run the normal compilation steps to create a DataProcessor (including schema validation) and then the debugging step can use the resulting DataProcessor to parse files and debug. This way if you want to debug multiple times you can detect if any schema files have changed and if not avoid that potentially costly recompilation. You could even make use of the DataProcessor.save() and Compiler.reload() functions to serialize a DataProcessor so it does not needed to be cached in memory.

This doesn't really help if you want to give live feedback while writing a file like many IDE's do. Daffodil can't really handle partial compilation, so if you want to validate individual files as they are being written you'll need a different solution.