bash debugger / News: Recent posts

1.0 added profiling and getting callgraph info using the --profile option.
1.1 fixes a bug in remake's "set" command which caused a SEGV and adds a "setqx" which expands the value given it before assigning to a variable. Both setq and setqx commands also now allow setting a variable that hasn't been defined before.

Just in time for the New Year -

Here are the highlights

• remake for GNU Make 4.1
• zshdb with command completion and history
• bashdb for Bash 4.3

A new release of remake for GNU Make 4.1 is out.

Since I haven't posted here in a while, mid-December I made a new release of zshdb. This version has some custom debugger command completion and command history working. Thanks go to to the zsh-gurus on the zsh mailing list for the help here.... read more

bashdb and zshdb debuggers releases have been made. Changes are small, and include bug fixes and code reorganization. The debugger "set autolist" has been added.

This version has some minor bug fixed that folks have reported. It now compiles on Solaris too.

In this second release, debugger commands "enable", "disable", "examine", and "set and inferior-tty" were added; also the
command line option --tty option was added.

This release of bashdb has a couple of bug fixes (e.g. for bash 4.0) while pydb has features back ported from its rewrite http://code.google.com/p/pydbgr/.

In preparing an update for Debian, Yaroslav Halchenk noticed missing documentation from the 3.80x code. Also a bug causing a SEGV in showing target information for a .PHONY target was fixed.

Some small bugs and configuration bugs were fixed. Listing zipped eggs is now supported.

Tests were revised for Python 2.6 and Python without readline installed. A bug involving invocation from ipython was fixed. The "frame" command is a little more like gdb's. Exceptions are now caught in runcall().

The first release of a debugger for ksh version 93t 10/31/08 or better has been release. There are also some small updates to the bash and zsh debuggers.

A big release day for this project: first serious debugger for zsh has been released. Also there is a major update to the bash debugger which has been tested on both bash 3.2 and bash 4.0 alpha. Finally a release of the debugger for GNU Make has been rebased off of version 3.81 rather than the previous hybrid 3.80 and pre 3.81.

In version 1.23 an experimental feature allows you to drop into a Python or IPython shell (similar to irb for ruby-debug). Parameters are now shown on calls. You can save the current breakpoints and/or settings to a file to be read in during a subsequent debugger session. A gdb-like "annotate" mode was added, improving emacs interaction. Some bugs were fixed and the documentation was updated.

See the NEWS file in the release for a summary of the changes and ChangeLog for the gory details.

Changes in this release are:

set/show trace-commands were added to make samilar to those commands in gdb 6.6

show commands now allows for a starting number and +; again the same as gdb.

variable and tilde expansion now occurs in cd command. Note that gdb does tilde expansion but not variable expansion like $HOME.

Add linetrace delay debugger command.

Make FreeBSD tests work, cygwin signals are working so test are run there... read more

Function tracing, interactive and non-intractive, was added; calls and returns now show the nesting level.

Support for Emacs 22 and 23 was added; there is better tolerance for emacs on MS Windows.

ipython interaction was improved. BSD make can now be used instead of GNU make to build the debugger. Various bugs have been fixed.

There were some small bugfixes changes to track GNU Make development and changes to make more Debian compatibile.

A number of small usability enhancements were made. Some of these include improvements to command completion, getting help via pydoc, search-path lookup of Python executables, and showing thread information without explicit thread debugging requested. Note: Python version 2.4.0 or greater is now required.

In the release, debugger commands added were "signal", "kill" and "quit" ; "contiinue" now allows an optional line-specification argument. This version works on bash versions 3.1 and 3.2 and changes have been made to facilitate building on cygwin. Some bugs fixed and documentation updated.

Python 1.20 has a number of bug fixes. Additional features to make it play nice with the upcoming release of ipython have also been made.

Some small improvements were made in signal handling, thread debugging, and documentation. Also there were changes to make pydb ipython friendly. The "continue" command now accepts an optional position name.

The ability to show thread information and debug threads was added. This is a bit experimental and is not completely stable.

GDB-style signal handling was added.

The gdb FILE command was added.

A bug in tbreak fixed.

The "examine" command now shows instance variables for an object.

Many small improvements have been made to improve usability and make it possible for planned future changes. You can call the debugger without a script name.

The gdb "directory" and "show directories" commands have been implemented. The "examine" command shows more information about a Python object.

This release adds tolerance for Python 2.3.4, 2.3.5, and Python 2.5b. Systems tested include cygwin, FreeBSD, GNU/Linux, NetBSD, OSX, and Solaris. Bugs have been fixed and documentation improved.

There have been a number of small but important changes. Basically working on extending the Python debugger has helped this project out and I've tried to make the code bases be more alike.

This release adds the ability to run debugger commands on program breakpoint (gdb "commands"), show program status (gdb "info program"),
and call the debugger from inside the a debugged program, which potentially can speed things up and may increase reliabilty/reproducability of errors. A better line tracing facility was added. ... read more

There are new releases of the remake, bashdb, pydb debuggers. They now have more of additional gdb commands. But most notable of the last two debuggers, bahdb, and pydb, is that they support some sort of command completion (if GNU readline is available).

As always bugs have been fixed and documentation improved (and is online as well).

In conjunction with the new debuggers the features have been encorporated into a new test version of ddd. The previous test version (3.3.12-test4) of ddd introducted a bug which prevented correct interaction between ddd and gdb. So if you have version 3.3.12-test4 installed you should definitely upgrade to 3.3.12-test5.

Some small configuration management problems were fixed. Sometime later various problems with gdb breakage in ddd-3.3.12-test4 will be addressed.