Any good debuggers for Python? (was Re: using python debugger (pdb) inside emacs debugger mode ...)

Ovidiu Predescu ovidiu at cup.hp.com
Tue Sep 21 11:41:33 EDT 1999


On Mon, 20 Sep 1999 08:18:16 -0400, Randall Hopper <aa8vb at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Ovidiu Predescu:
>  |I didn't figure out exactly all the details, but the basic idea is to use
>  |GDB to handle all the interaction with the user instead of pdb. pdb
>  |becomes only a debugging engine that's loaded in a Python program and
>  |knows how to setup breakpoints, continue the program etc. All these
>  |operations are published in a simple Python API that could be called from
>  |GDB.
> 
> I believe this is how DDD/PyDB works as well (providing the user with a
> graphical Python debugger).

Actually PyDB works as a front-end for GDB. It sets up breakpoints inside the
interpreter and analyzes the internal C data structures to discover the state
of the Python program.

The thing I was thinking of is a much tighter integration between GDB and the
Python program, as GDB would make calls into the Python program to find out
about its state.

>  |What I'm working on right now is adding scripting language support to GDB
>  |so that this kind of functionality could be implemented in GDB using an
>  |interpreted language and not C. The language I'm embedding is surprise,
>  |Python ;-). This work is part of the WDB project here, at HP, but all the
>  |work we're doing is going back in the FSF main tree. For more information
>  |on WDB, take a look at:
>  |
>  |http://www.hp.com/esy/lang/tools/Debuggers/index.html
> 
> Sounds interesting.  Hope to hear more about this later.

Sure, I'll let you all know when I have something you can play with.


Greetings,
Ovidiu

-- 
Ovidiu Predescu <ovidiu at cup.hp.com>
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