Python Debugger

[David Bolen]

llothar at web.de (Lothar Scholz) writes:

> Is there any python debugger that can
> 
> 1)  be used remotely
> 2)  can handle multiple threads
> 
> I checked Eric, IDLE and Wing-IDE. None of them can do this.
> Any other recommendations?

Well, Wing-IDE can definitely do 1.  Just import wingdbstub in your
remote application and it will connect back to the debugger whereever
else it may be - IP communications path required.  Works even if the
application being debugged is internal to something else (a web app,
or just a library for some other system, etc...)

(2) is going to be tough currently because of some limitations of the
internals of the Python debugger support.  I'm not up on all the
specifics but the debugger isn't told about thread changes and there
is some state information that is not maintained on a per-thread
basis.  There was some talk about enhancing this in the 2.3 timeframe,
but I don't think it made it in.

However, with Wing at least, it has partial thread support in that
while it can't monitor multiple threads, by controlling which thread
imports wingdbstub you can set the single thread being monitored and
has full debugging support.  So it's not as good as arbitrary thread
support, but in many cases is much better than no thread support at
all, and it's probably about as good a debugger support as you'll see
for Python at the moment.

-- David