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The documentation for Eclipse states that a blue circle icon represents an

enabled line breakpoint

and that a checkmark is an

adornment that marks a line breakpoints as installed

What's the difference between active, installed and enabled, when referring to breakpoints? Is installed -- in this case -- an Eclipse-specific definition?

Pops
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3 Answers3

17

This thread (2002!) has a good explanation for installed breakpoints

Blue breakpoints mean that the breakpoint is not installed.
In older builds, a green icon means that the breakpoint was successfully installed.
An installed breakpoint means that the class has been loaded in the target VM and a breakpoint request has been successfully created at the desired location (for a line breakpoint) for the current debug target.

In the current builds, an installed breakpoint is indicated with a small checkmark overlay icon on top of the blue "base" icon. http://help.eclipse.org/indigo/topic/org.eclipse.jdt.doc.user/images/org.eclipse.jdt.debug.ui/ovr16/installed_ovr.png

A breakpoint may not been installed:

  • when the class is not loaded (or not yet loaded)
  • our breakpoint location verifier fails to identify a non-executable line of code and lets you place a breakpoint on that line.
  • when you run instead of debug.

As mentioned in jdt documentation:

  • An enabled breakpoint causes a thread to suspend whenever the breakpoint is encountered. Enabled breakpoints are drawn with a blue circle http://help.eclipse.org/indigo/topic/org.eclipse.jdt.doc.user/images/org.eclipse.debug.ui/obj16/brkp_obj.png and have a checkmark overlay once successfully installed. A breakpoint can only be installed when the class the breakpoint is located in has been loaded by the VM.
  • A disabled breakpoint will not cause threads to suspend. Disabled breakpoints are drawn with a white circle http://help.eclipse.org/indigo/topic/org.eclipse.jdt.doc.user/images/org.eclipse.debug.ui/obj16/brkpd_obj.png.
VonC
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    "Surely our users will understand the semantics of an 8 by 8 icon overlay on the breakpoint icon." - Eclipse UI team – Conrad.Dean Mar 08 '12 at 17:09
1

I think it's a breakpoint that's been compiled and is available next time you run.

danpker
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0

Installed means that the program will indeed hit that break point when debugging.

Jay
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