Node.js v4.x+ C++ plugin for the LLDB debugger.
The llnode plugin adds the ability to inspect JavaScript stack frames, objects, source code and more to the standard C/C++ debugging facilities when working with Node.js processes or core dumps in LLDB.
Start an LLDB session with the llnode plugin automatically loaded:
npm install -g llnode
llnode `which node` -c /path/to/core/dump
- For more details on starting llnode see the Usage section.
- To get started with the llnode commands see the Commands section.
To use llnode you need to have the LLDB debugger installed. The recommended version is LLDB 3.9 and above.
-
OS X/macOS
-
You can install Xcode and use the LLDB that comes with it.
-
Optionally, you can install newer versions of lldb using Homebrew with
brew update && brew install --with-lldb --with-toolchain llvm
and make sure
/usr/local/opt/llvm/bin
gets searched before/usr/bin/
on yourPATH
. llnode will link to the LLDB installation returned byllvm-config
if available.
-
-
Linux
-
You can install the lldb package using the package manager of your distribution. You may need to install additional packages for
liblldb
as well. -
For example, on Ubuntu 16.04 you can install the prerequisites with
apt-get install lldb-4.0 liblldb-4.0-dev
-
-
FreeBSD
# Install llvm with lldb and headers pkg install llvm39 rm -f /usr/bin/lldb ln -s /usr/local/bin/lldb39 /usr/bin/lldb
-
Windows
-
You can install a binary distribution of LLVM directly or using Chocolatey:
cinst -y visualstudio2017buildtools visualstudio2017-workload-vctools llvm git
Visual Studio is required for MSBuild and headers when building llnode. Git is required to download the lldb headers.
-
-
Android / Termux (Experimental)
-
Install Termux (https://termux.com)
-
Install Termux Packages
- pkg install clang lldb lldb-dev make
- pkg install nodejs-lts nodejs-lts-dev
-
To debug:
llnode -- /data/data/com.termux/files/usr/bin/node --abort_on_uncaught_exception script.js (llnode) run
-
If you have lldb
available on your PATH
, simply run:
npm install -g llnode
To build llnode against a specific lldb version matching an lldb executable,
use the --lldb_exe
npm option. For example, on Linux the executable on the
PATH
might be lldb-3.9
:
npm install --lldb_exe=`which lldb-3.9` -g llnode
After installing with npm, llnode
should be available on your PATH
as a
shortcut for running LLDB with the llnode plugin.
brew install llnode
There are several ways to load the llnode plugin:
If you install llnode globally via npm (npm install -g llnode
), you can use
the llnode
shortcut script. This starts lldb
and automatically issues
the plugin load
command. All parameters to the llnode script are passed
directly to lldb. If you it's not a local installation, the shortcut will be in
node_modules/.bin/llnode
.
To tell LLDB to load llnode automatically regardless of the
version of lldb that you are running, add this line to ~/.lldbinit
:
plugin load /path/to/the/llnode/plugin
The path to the llnode plugin should be printed when the installation
is finished. On OS X/macOS the plugin is typically
node_modules/llnode/llnode.dylib
, on Linux it's
node_modules/llnode/llnode.so
.
The llnode plugin can also be manually loaded into LLDB using the
plugin load
command within lldb.
It does not matter whether the plugin load
command is issued before or after
loading a core dump or attaching to a process.
Similar to the ~/.lldbinit
approach, this way LLDB will also load the plugin
automatically on start-up. Doing this may require additional permissions
to be able to copy the plugin library to the system plugin directory.
On Linux, run make install-linux
in the project directory, or if
installing with npm, copy node_modules/llnode/llnode.so
to /usr/lib/lldb/plugins
or create a link there.
On OS X/macOS, run make install-osx
in the project directory, or if
installing with npm, copy node_modules/llnode/llnode.dylib
to ~/Library/Application\ Support/LLDB/PlugIns/
or create a link there.
To use llnode with a core dump the core dump needs to be loaded into lldb along with the exact executable that created the core dump. The executable contains information that lldb and the llnode plugin need to make sense of the data in the core dump.
To load a core dump when starting llnode use:
llnode /path/to/bin/node -c /path/to/core
or to load the core dump after starting lldb:
(llnode) target create /path/to/bin/node -c /path/to/core
To use llnode against a live process:
llnode -- /path/to/bin/node script.js
(llnode) run
This is ideal for debugging an npm package with native code. To debug a Node.js crash on uncaught exception:
llnode -- /path/to/bin/node --abort_on_uncaught_exception script.js
(llnode) run
lldb will stop your process when it crashes. To see where it stopped use the v8 bt command. See the Commands section below for more commands.
(llnode) v8 help
Node.js helpers
Syntax: v8
The following subcommands are supported:
bt -- Show a backtrace with node.js JavaScript functions and their args. An optional argument is accepted; if
that argument is a number, it specifies the number of frames to display. Otherwise all frames will be
dumped.
Syntax: v8 bt [number]
findjsinstances -- List every object with the specified type name.
Use -v or --verbose to display detailed `v8 inspect` output for each object.
Accepts the same options as `v8 inspect`
findjsobjects -- List all object types and instance counts grouped by typename and sorted by instance count. Use
-d or --detailed to get an output grouped by type name, properties, and array length, as well as
more information regarding each type.
findrefs -- Finds all the object properties which meet the search criteria.
The default is to list all the object properties that reference the specified value.
Flags:
* -v, --value expr - all properties that refer to the specified JavaScript object (default)
* -n, --name name - all properties with the specified name
* -s, --string string - all properties that refer to the specified JavaScript string value
getactivehandles -- Print all pending handles in the queue. Equivalent to running process._getActiveHandles() on
the living process.
getactiverequests -- Print all pending requests in the queue. Equivalent to running process._getActiveRequests() on
the living process.
inspect -- Print detailed description and contents of the JavaScript value.
Possible flags (all optional):
* -F, --full-string - print whole string without adding ellipsis
* -m, --print-map - print object's map address
* -s, --print-source - print source code for function objects
* -l num, --length num - print maximum of `num` elements from string/array
Syntax: v8 inspect [flags] expr
nodeinfo -- Print information about Node.js
print -- Print short description of the JavaScript value.
Syntax: v8 print expr
source list -- Print source lines around the currently selected
JavaScript frame.
Syntax: v8 source list [flags]
Flags:
* -l <line> - Print source code below line <line>.
For more help on any particular subcommand, type 'help <command> <subcommand>'.
The easiest way to build the plugin:
# Clone this repo
git clone https://github.com/nodejs/llnode.git && cd llnode
# Configure and build the plugin with npm
npm install
# To configure and build the plugin without npm
node scripts/configure.js && node scripts/install.js && node scripts/cleanup.js
# Or use make
make plugin
# To configure and build both the plugin and the addon
npm install --llnode_build_addon=true
# To configure and build with a specific path to headers
npm install --llnode_lldb_include_dir=/path/to/lldb/include
# Without npm
LLNODE_BUILD_ADDON=true node scripts/configure.js && node scripts/install.js && node scripts/cleanup.js
# Or use make
make addon # Builds the addon
make # Builds both the addon and the plugin
To configure the build yourself:
# Detect available lldb installation and download headers if necessary
node scripts/configure.js
# To build the addon, set the environment variable LLNODE_BUILD_ADDON=true
# To configure with the detected lldb installation
node-gyp configure
# To configure with a specified path to headers, where `$lldb_include_dir`
# contains the <lldb/*/*.h> headers
node-gyp configure -- -Dlldb_include_dir=/usr/local/Cellar/llvm/5.0.0/include
# To configure with a specified path to the libraries, where `$lldb_lib_dir`
# contains `liblldb.so` or `liblldb.dylib`
node-gyp configure -- -Dlldb_lib_dir=/usr/lib/llvm-3.9/lib
# Build the plugin (and the addon if LLNODE_BUILD_ADDON=true)
node-gyp build
# Move the built plugin to the project directory
node scripts/cleanup.js
To run the tests, if lldb
is an executable on the PATH
:
npm run test-all # Run both addon and plugin tests
npm run test-plugin # Run plugin tests
npm run test-addon # Run addon tests
If the LLDB executable is named differently, point TEST_LLDB_BINARY
to it before running the tests:
TEST_LLDB_BINARY=`which lldb-4.0` npm run test-all
LLNODE_DEBUG=true
to see additional debug info from llnodeTEST_LLNODE_DEBUG=true
to see additional debug info coming from the testsLLNODE_CORE=/path/to/core/dump LLNODE_NODE_EXE=/path/to/node
to use a prepared core dump instead of generating one on-the-fly when running the tests.
For example, to inspect the process of inspect-scenario.js
, run:
LLNODE_DEBUG=true lldb -- \
node --abort_on_uncaught_exception --expose_externalize_string \
test/fixtures/inspect-scenario.js
(lldb) run
To debug test/scan-test.js
with a prepared core dump:
LLNODE_DEBUG=true TEST_LLNODE_DEBUG=true \
LLNODE_CORE=/path/to/core/dump/of/inspect/scenario.js \
LLNODE_NODE_EXE=/path/to/node \
node test/scan-test.js
This software is licensed under the MIT License.
Copyright Fedor Indutny, 2016.
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.