Eclipse: The icons in "Display View" are all greyed out

Question

The discussion here describes the "display view" in eclipse which allows one to to quickly evaluate java expressions. The thing is, when I open the display view the icons remain greyed out and I can't execute anything. The only icon that isn't is "clear console". The odd thing is, alot of the screenshots on the web show the same behaviour but the people posting about the feature don't mentioned it. There aren't any options in the context sensitive menu either. I'm trying it on a java project. I've tried it in the debug view and I get the same issue.

I'll provide a screenshot once my hosting is sorted.

I'm using eclipse 3.4.

Answer 1

As I understand, the purpose of the 'Display' view is to allow to evaluate expression during debug sessions. Are you trying to evaluate some expressions statically (i.e. with no running application in debug mode)?

Answer 2

To be able to use it, you're supposed to be in debug mode (set a breakpoint to freeze execution). That gives you a context, a stack frame to work in.

Once you're there, you select expressions in the display view and only then can you execute them, evaluate etc. If no text in the view is selected, none of the actions will be available.