[Python-Dev] Cython for cPickle?

[Brian Curtin]

On Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 17:21, Stefan Behnel <stefan_ml at behnel.de> wrote:
> Brian Curtin, 19.04.2012 23:19:
>> On Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 16:08, Stefan Behnel
>>>> While code generation alleviates the burden of tedious languages, it's also
>>>> infinitely more complex, makes debugging very difficult and adds to
>>>> prerequisite knowledge, among other drawbacks.
>>>
>>> You can use gdb for source level debugging of Cython code and cProfile to
>>> profile it. Try that with C-API code.
>>
>> I know I'm in the minority of committers being on Windows, but we do
>> receive a good amount of reports and contributions from Windows users
>> who dive into the C code.
>
> Doesn't match my experience at all - different software target audiences, I
> guess.

I'm don't know what this means. I work on CPython, which is the target
audience at hand, and I come across reports and contributions from
Windows users for C extensions.

>> Visual Studio by itself makes debugging unbelievably easy, and with
>> the Python Tools for VS plugin it even allows Visual Studio's built-in
>> profiler to work. I know Windows is not on most people's maps, but if
>> we have to scrap the debugger, that's another learning curve
>> attachment to evaluate.
>
> What I meant was that there's pdb for debugging Python code (which doesn't
> know about the C code it executes) and gdb (or VS) for debugging C code,
> from which you can barely infer the Python code it executes. For Cython
> code, you can use gdb for both Cython and C, and within limits also for
> Python code. Here's a quick intro to see what I mean:
>
> http://docs.cython.org/src/userguide/debugging.html

I know what you meant. What I meant is "easy debugging on Windows goes
away, now I have to setup and learn GDB on Windows". *I* can do that.
Does the rest of the community want to have to do that as well? We
should also take into consideration how something like this affects
the third-party IDEs and their debugger support.