Debugger not stopping at breakpoints: Websphere in Eclipse

Question

I've recently had my app moved from Websphere Application Server 6.1 to WAS 7.5, due to end-of-life for 6.1. Consequently, I needed to update my debugging server. I found this to be an opportune time to move my application from an IBM RAD IDE to Eclipse (already had Indigo installed). Or so I thought.

Anyway, the powers that be, here, have recommended taking my debugger all the way to WAS 8.5, since I'm only using it to debug.

But the issue that I'm encountering is that I cannot get the debugger to stop on my breakpoints. I've got approx. 10 breakpoints in my opening page, all in JSP/Java code.

I'm running Java 1.6.0_32 and Java SE Runtime Environment build 1.6.0_32-b05. I really don't know how to check which JDK I've got loaded. I've seen recommendations to "go back" to JDK 1.5, but I can't be certain that's not what I'm running.

And to cover a few other bases, I have JUST started my system for the day, opened the IDE, started the server in debug (says "Debugging, Synchronized"), put focus on the opening page of the application and clicked "Debug on server". The front page opens without stopping at any of the breakpoints.

Does anyone have ideas or suggestions?

EDIT: As noted below, I never got this resolved. I just went on to use another tool (Jetty) to do my debugging. There are a few very good suggestions here so they are worth reading if you encounter an issue of this type.

EDIT: I have changed employers twice and preferred tools many times since posting this question. As noted above, I never got it to work but there are a lot of good suggestions below.

Answer 1

I was having a similiar issue and turned out to be really simple to fix.

If you double click the server name in the "servers" window it will open a server configuration page. In this page be sure to check "Run aplications directly from workspace".

Turns out if you "switch" a branch while the server is running, it will turn that option off and then the debugging stops works.

Answer 2

I'd like to say I found the answer to this, but I never did. I ended up dropping RAD and moving to debugging on Jetty. My local testing isn't EXACTLY as it would be on the test server, but it works. Not sure if this should be flagged as "answered" or not.

UPDATE: I have left this project but before I did, the entire development platform was moved to IDEA and debugging was no longer an issue. I don't know if I should find a way to mark this question as inactive or closed or whatever so that it's not just sitting out here getting views and responses when it's no longer an issue for me.

Answer 3

Well, I had recently faced this problem, where the code did not use to stop at breakpoints while I was in debugging mode and was sure that the particular piece of code is executing. In order to solve the problem, I did a clean-build-republish but it did not work, recreated the profile and readded the server with new profile, still did not work then finally re-installed RAD and web-sphere but It still did not work. Then I found the below article https://www-304.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21240896

and realized it could be a problem due to some other OS process interfering with debug process/port so I performed a system restore. After restore when I deployed the application, debugger started working properly.

Answer 4

If you use eclipse's debugger and running the application outside eclipse environment , we have to configure it as remote java application. Also check if the code deployed in server is in sync with the one present in workspace.

Answer 5

anything wrong of the ecplise's site.

Run->Skip all breakpoints