Remote Development Features
Once you have your remote project set up, you should be able to edit, debug, test, and otherwise work with Wing in the same way as you in the local case.
Editing
Editing on a remote host is no different than editing on a local host, except that in some cases the contents of a file may take a bit longer to appear when it is first opened.
Debugging
Debugging also works the same way as for local files. Wing will initiate the debug connection automatically through its SSH tunnels to the remote host. File names will be shown in the form hostid:filename but otherwise debugging works the same way as on the local host.
To debug on several different remote hosts, use Launch Configurations in the Project menu to create debug configurations on each host. This is done in the same way as for Project Properties, by setting Python Executable under the Python tab to Remote. Then set up a Named Entry Point that pairs a file on that remote host with a launch configuration for the same remote host.
Whether you use the Project-wide settings or a launch configuration, the file you debug needs to be stored on the selected remote host. You cannot debug a file from one host on another host using this style of remote debug configuration.
When debugging on a remote host, the Debugger > I/O > Use External Console preference is ignored and I/O always appears in the Debug I/O tool. If a remote process needs to run in a different console, start it there and initiate debug from your code as described in Debugging Externally Launched Remote Code.
The Debugger > Diagnostics preferences are also not used when debugging on a remote host. The following environment variables can be used instead to collect debugger diagnostics. These should only be used at the request of Wingware Technical Support, and the resulting log file can be emailed along with your bug report to support@wingware.com:
WINGDB_LOGFILE can be used to set up a diagnostics log file when trouble-shooting problems with the debugger. The environment variable should be set to the full path of the log file on the remote host.
WINGDB_LOGVERYVERBOSE selects whether to print extremely verbose low-level logging. This is almost never needed and will drastically slow down debugging.
Debugging Externally Launched Code
If you need to start your debug processes from outside Wing, as for services running on a remote host, you can debug those processes by importing wingdbstub. When you install the remote agent, Wing writes a correctly configured copy of wingdbstub.py into the remote agent's installation directory. To use it, follow the instructions in Debugging Externally Launched Remote Code.
Python Shell
Once you have set Python Executable in Project Properties to a remote host, you can restart the Python Shell from its Options menu to launch a shell that is running on the remote host.
Testing Remotely
If remote files have been added to the Testing tool the unit tests can be run or debugged as if they are on the same host as the IDE.
Version Control
If remote files are checked into a version control system, Wing should identify this as it does for local files and include the appropriate tools in the Tools menu. Version control features work the same way for remote files as for local files. However, it may be necessary to configure version control for the remote host using the VCS tab in Project Properties.
Operations that access the version control repository (such as push and pull) may not work due to lack of access to the necessary SSH keys. There are two possible solutions for this:
- If the remote VCS command tries to display a password collection dialog, you can turn on the Forward X11 option in your remote host configuration, so that the dialog will appear on the machine where Wing is running. On Windows and macOS this requires installing an X11 server on the local machine.
- You can forward the local host's SSH agent credentials to the remote host by adding ForwardAgent yes to your .ssh/config on the machine where Wing is running. It's best to limit this to the hosts that require it and you should do it only if you understand the security implications.
OS Commands
The OS Commands tool also supports working remotely with the Hostname property under the Environment tab of Command Line style commands. For Python File and Named Entry Point style OS Commands, the host name is inferred from the location of the file being executed.
