[IPython-dev] Step-by-step debugging with IPython

[Thomas Kluyver]

On 15 July 2014 06:02, Josh Wasserstein <ribonucleico at gmail.com> wrote:

> This makes me wonder if:
>
> 1) I am doing things wrong
> 2) The current status of IPython does not provide the debugging
> functionality stated in the OP.
>
> And the reason behind 2) could be:
> a. Limitations of Python / execution model that make this inviable
> b. There is not enough interest to justify an effort to improve the
> debugging model / the relatively high complexity required to have Python /
> IPython support this workflow
>

There's a distinct possibility that the answer is 2c: The effort is
justified, but no-one has done it yet.

I know several of us on the core team routinely just scatter print
statements around the code when we want to debug something. Even using a
post-mortem debugger to go up and down the stack, with no way to step
through code, seems advanced to me.

My personal take on it is that the effort necessary to learn and use a
command-line debugger isn't really worth it for writing Python code, where
uncaught errors automatically give you quite a bit of detail on what went
wrong. I suspect that a good graphical debugger could be useful (I've used
the JS debugger in Firefox, for instance).

Thomas
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