debugger: A C repository from cldwalker

Status

Status: Maintained until 8/1/15. Accepting bug fixes only

As debugger is only supported for 1.9 and support for 1.9 has ended, debugger will only be maintained until 8/1/15. After this date, this gem will have no more releases. Use of Ruby 2.X is recommended as the Ruby core team has advised.

Description

A fork of ruby-debug(19) that works on 1.9.2 and 1.9.3 and installs easily for rvm/rbenv rubies. ruby >= 2.0 are not supported - see below.

Install

$ gem install debugger

# If install fails, try passing headers path
$ gem install debugger -- --with-ruby-include=PATH_TO_HEADERS

For Windows install instructions, see OLD_README.

Supported Rubies

On install, debugger tries to find your ruby's headers. If it's unable to find them and your ruby is a patch release, it will use headers included with debugger-ruby_core_source. For the list of 1.9.X rubies supported by debugger see here. If your ruby is not an official patch release i.e. head, dev or an rc, you are responsible for having headers and setting them with --with-ruby-include.

Usage

Wherever you need a debugger, simply:

require 'debugger'; debugger

To use with bundler, drop in your Gemfile:

gem 'debugger'

Configuration

At initialization time, debugger loads config files, executing their lines as if they were actual commands a user has typed. config files are loaded from two locations:

~~/.rdebugrc (~~/rdebug.ini for windows)
$PWD/.rdebugrc ($PWD/rdebug.ini for windows)

To see debugger's current settings, use the set command.

Getting Started

After installing the debugger gem, you can create a test file to try out the debugger functionality. Save this example to a file and run it with ruby:

require 'debugger'

x = 4
debugger
y = 5

Running the above code as a file in Ruby (e.g., ruby test-debug.rb) will cause debugger to break code execution and give you an interactive console on the line "debugger". You can type "step" to dive into the line of code or type "next" to stay at the same level and process the line you're on. You can also make any IRB style commands you want to inspect or modify the code. Typing "continue" will resume code execution until the next "debugger" line is encountered, if any.

Using Commands

For a list of commands:

(rdb: 1) help

Most commands are described in rdebug's man page

$ gem install gem-man
$ man rdebug

Remote Debugging

To debug a separate process remotely (such as unicorn) try:

  Debugger.wait_connection = true
  Debugger.start_remote
  debugger

Then you can do

 $ rdebug -c

Reason for Fork

ruby-debug19 maintainer isn't maintaining:
- Despite patches from ruby core, no gem release in 2+ years! - 9/1/09.
- Requests to release a known working 1.9.3 version have been ignored.
- Doesn't respond to rubyforge issues and doesn't have github issues open.
Current install is painful. Requires either manually downloading gems from rubyforge and installing with compiler flags or recompiling ruby.
We need a decent ruby debugger for future rubies!

What's different from ruby-debug19

Major
- Works on 1.9.2 and 1.9.3
  - 1.9.2 points to ruby-debug-base19-0.11.25 headers
  - 1.9.3 points to ruby-debug-base19-0.11.26 headers
- Install painlessly for rvm and rbenv rubies i.e. no compiler flags needed
- No downloading ruby source during install - was behavior of old ruby_core_source dependency
- Add output adapters, Printers, to support output besides plain text e.g. xml
- A new and improved test suite
- Passing tests are up on travis-ci
- Fix several bugs
  - Fix LocalJumpError caused by using proc in extconf.rb
  - Fix where command failing at top level
  - See changelog for more
Minor
- The gem name matches the module namespace, Debugger, and main required file, debugger.
- autolist and autoeval enabled by default
- ruby-debug-base19 and ruby-debug19 are released as one gem
- Rake tasks have been updated
- No more $LOAD_PATH manipulation or runtime code outside of lib
- man page available via gem-man
- Test helpers for third-party debugger libraries can be accessed from debugger/test. See debugger-xml for an example

Issues

Please report them on github.

Known Issues

Only 1.9.2 and 1.9.3 are supported. For 2.X rubies, consider using byebug.
If you're interested in porting debugger to ruby2, see this checklist. Note an old attempt at porting it lives at debugger2.
If you place a debugger call at the end of a block, debugging will start at the next step and outside of your block. A simple work-around is to place a meaningless step (i.e. puts "STAY") at the end of your block and before debugger.

Contributing

See here for contribution policies. Let's keep this working for the ruby community!

Related projects

debugger-completion - autocompletion for debugger commands and more
debugger-xml - XML interface for debugger, compatible with ruby-debug-ide
vim-ruby-debugger - Vim plugin that uses debugger
debugger-pry - using pry within debugger
pry-debugger - using debugger within pry
ruby-debug-passenger - rake task to restart Passenger with debugger connected
jruby-debug
rb-trepanning - rewrite of ruby-debug that requires a patched ruby

License

Licensing due to the complicated forking history of this project. Licensing is BSD throughout most of the repository except for portions of emacs/, doc/ and old_scripts/ which are GPL.

Credits

Thanks to the original authors: Kent Sibilev and Mark Moseley
Thanks to astashov for bringing in a new and improved test suite, adding printers support and various bug fixes.
Thanks to windwiny for starting the port to 2.0.0
Contributors: ericpromislow, jnimety, adammck, hipe, FooBarWidget, aghull, deivid-rodriguez, tessi, os97673, arthurnn
Fork started on awesome @relevance fridays!

TODO

Port some of bashdb's docs
Use ~/.debuggerrc and bin/debugger and gracefully deprecate rdebug*
Work with others willing to tackle jruby, rubinius or windows support

cldwalker/debugger