Your application must be packaged to use the interactive debugger. There are different packaging specifications to use when packaging your application. See Packaging a Smalltalk image. You can also force the interactive debugger to open by specifying the halt message, either in the launch code supplied during packaging or in your application code.

You must already have created a passive image to use the interactive debugger.

When enabling the interactive debugger, you will be prompted to specify the protocol you want to use. If you want to change the protocol, select Change Transport from the XD menu of the XD Transcript. In the dialog that opens, select a transport and then OK. The transport names that begin with EsSCI support TCP/IP; the names that begin with EsCPIP support CPI-C.

When an error occurs in the application running on the target system, the connection between the target system and the workstation is activated. Your Smalltalk session is unaware of the connection until you select Enable Remote Debug from the XD menu. This selection "listens" for an incoming connection. Then, when an interactive debug session becomes active, the XD Debugger opens automatically. For each session, you need to enable the remote debugger listening selection only once.

You can close an XD Debugger window without disconnecting the interactive debugging session. With the connection still active, select Open XD Debugger from the XD menu to re-open the XD Debugger window in that Smalltalk session.