[Lldb-commits] [lldb] 6c36bdb - [lldb] Add documentation for the max_children argument (#94192)

[via lldb-commits]

Author: Pavel Labath
Date: 2024-06-04T09:06:31+02:00
New Revision: 6c36bdb6eab1a3de3bce24ee0285c7745b17e407

URL: https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/commit/6c36bdb6eab1a3de3bce24ee0285c7745b17e407
DIFF: https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/commit/6c36bdb6eab1a3de3bce24ee0285c7745b17e407.diff

LOG: [lldb] Add documentation for the max_children argument (#94192)

Added: 
    

Modified: 
    lldb/docs/use/variable.rst
    lldb/include/lldb/API/SBValue.h

Removed: 
    


################################################################################
diff  --git a/lldb/docs/use/variable.rst b/lldb/docs/use/variable.rst
index e9175b25336ba..22c2bee73fa59 100644
--- a/lldb/docs/use/variable.rst
+++ b/lldb/docs/use/variable.rst
@@ -930,20 +930,27 @@ be implemented by the Python class):
 
    class SyntheticChildrenProvider:
       def __init__(self, valobj, internal_dict):
-         this call should initialize the Python object using valobj as the variable to provide synthetic children for
-      def num_children(self):
-         this call should return the number of children that you want your object to have
+         this call should initialize the Python object using valobj as the
+         variable to provide synthetic children for
+      def num_children(self, max_children):
+         this call should return the number of children that you want your
+         object to have[1]
       def get_child_index(self,name):
-         this call should return the index of the synthetic child whose name is given as argument
+         this call should return the index of the synthetic child whose name is
+         given as argument
       def get_child_at_index(self,index):
-         this call should return a new LLDB SBValue object representing the child at the index given as argument
+         this call should return a new LLDB SBValue object representing the
+         child at the index given as argument
       def update(self):
-         this call should be used to update the internal state of this Python object whenever the state of the variables in LLDB changes.[1]
+         this call should be used to update the internal state of this Python
+         object whenever the state of the variables in LLDB changes.[2]
          Also, this method is invoked before any other method in the interface.
       def has_children(self):
-         this call should return True if this object might have children, and False if this object can be guaranteed not to have children.[2]
+         this call should return True if this object might have children, and
+         False if this object can be guaranteed not to have children.[3]
       def get_value(self):
-         this call can return an SBValue to be presented as the value of the synthetic value under consideration.[3]
+         this call can return an SBValue to be presented as the value of the
+         synthetic value under consideration.[4]
 
 As a warning, exceptions that are thrown by python formatters are caught
 silently by LLDB and should be handled appropriately by the formatter itself.
@@ -951,7 +958,15 @@ Being more specific, in case of exceptions, LLDB might assume that the given
 object has no children or it might skip printing some children, as they are
 printed one by one.
 
-[1] This method is optional. Also, a boolean value must be returned (since lldb
+[1] The `max_children` argument is optional (since lldb 3.8.0) and indicates the
+maximum number of children that lldb is interested in (at this moment). If the
+computation of the number of children is expensive (for example, requires
+travesing a linked list to determine its size) your implementation may return
+`max_children` rather than the actual number. If the computation is cheap (e.g., the
+number is stored as a field of the object), then you can always return the true
+number of children (that is, ignore the `max_children` argument).
+
+[2] This method is optional. Also, a boolean value must be returned (since lldb
 3.1.0). If ``False`` is returned, then whenever the process reaches a new stop,
 this method will be invoked again to generate an updated list of the children
 for a given variable. Otherwise, if ``True`` is returned, then the value is
@@ -959,11 +974,11 @@ cached and this method won't be called again, effectively freezing the state of
 the value in subsequent stops. Beware that returning ``True`` incorrectly could
 show misleading information to the user.
 
-[2] This method is optional (since lldb 3.2.0). While implementing it in terms
+[3] This method is optional (since lldb 3.2.0). While implementing it in terms
 of num_children is acceptable, implementors are encouraged to look for
 optimized coding alternatives whenever reasonable.
 
-[3] This method is optional (since lldb 3.5.2). The `SBValue` you return here
+[4] This method is optional (since lldb 3.5.2). The `SBValue` you return here
 will most likely be a numeric type (int, float, ...) as its value bytes will be
 used as-if they were the value of the root `SBValue` proper.  As a shortcut for
 this, you can inherit from lldb.SBSyntheticValueProvider, and just define

diff  --git a/lldb/include/lldb/API/SBValue.h b/lldb/include/lldb/API/SBValue.h
index 8f4c4fd56dfb1..65920c76df7a8 100644
--- a/lldb/include/lldb/API/SBValue.h
+++ b/lldb/include/lldb/API/SBValue.h
@@ -281,8 +281,22 @@ class LLDB_API SBValue {
 
   bool IsRuntimeSupportValue();
 
+  /// Return the number of children of this variable. Note that for some
+  /// variables this operation can be expensive. If possible, prefer calling
+  /// GetNumChildren(max) with the maximum number of children you are interested
+  /// in.
   uint32_t GetNumChildren();
 
+  /// Return the numer of children of this variable, with a hint that the
+  /// caller is interested in at most \a max children. Use this function to
+  /// avoid expensive child computations in some cases. For example, if you know
+  /// you will only ever display 100 elements, calling GetNumChildren(100) can
+  /// avoid enumerating all the other children. If the returned value is smaller
+  /// than \a max, then it represents the true number of children, otherwise it
+  /// indicates that their number is at least \a max. Do not assume the returned
+  /// number will always be less than or equal to \a max, as the implementation
+  /// may choose to return a larger (but still smaller than the actual number of
+  /// children) value.
   uint32_t GetNumChildren(uint32_t max);
 
   LLDB_DEPRECATED("SBValue::GetOpaqueType() is deprecated.")