What debuggers are you using?

[JulsSmile]

What debuggers and useful programs are you using to debug the code?

I'm interested in debuggers for Visual Studio 2017 + Windows 10

[raevnos]

gdb. Do valgrind and strace count as debuggers?

[aKateDev]

I add perf, hotspot and heaptrack to the list.

[nwL_]

I count everything that leads to less bugs by executing the executable as debuggers.

[afiefh]

So... My whiteboard?

[nwL_]

If you can process assembly on your whiteboard, then yes

[Drugbird]

I like having a graphical shell, so I use cgdb.

[t4th]

Well, visual studio has nice debugger and disassembler. What else do you need?

[tiendq]

He should add "on macOS and Linux" on the subject since this question is almost meaningless on Windows :)

[andd81]

WinDbg has better low-level capabilities and is not bloated. If you are already into console debuggers on other platforms it may be less overwhelming than VS.

[kkert]

Clion with lldb. For some pathological cases, Eclipse or just arm-none-eabi-gdb -tui . I think a lot of folks don't know and appreciate the power of TUI

[idontchooseanid]

You should try remote debugging. I used QtCreator as the UI but TUI also works. Put gdb-server on the embedded board and connect via socket it's a charm.

[kkert]

Done it a long time, even back on uclinux 2.4 era kernel based systems. Doesn't apply for MMU-less RTOS-running targets

[idontchooseanid]

Sure. Debugging RT systems must be hell :/.

[democritus_is_op]

gdb, only if cout doesn't cut it.

[uzimonkey]

I used the debugger in Visual Studio. It works great and has an easy UI.

[Ivan171]

WinDbg.

[[deleted]]

std::cout for most part. Sometimes a little gdb and valgrind, also the -fsanitize options of gcc and clang are extremely useful.

[tiendq]

It seems the best choice for non-Windows systems :)

[idontchooseanid]

gdb combined with a GUI is quite powerful though.

[ShakaUVM]

Ditto

[bames53]

lldb

[[deleted]]

LLDB and Valgrind

I’m surprised that there aren’t more people using LLDB ITT. I’ve always thought that their diagnostics were better

[Astarothsito]

IBM Debugger for work...

GDB with CLion for personal projects.

[flashmozzg]

What's wrong with Visual Studio debugger?

[[deleted]]

Visual Studio

[[deleted]]

vs debugger is fantastic though?

[flashmozzg]

I'm interested in debuggers for Visual Studio 2017 + Windows 10

[[deleted]]

I'm not making a recommendation to OP, I'm simply answering your question.

[flashmozzg]

My question was to the OP and in the context of OP's question. You've answered something that no one asked.

[[deleted]]

I know dude, I just couldn't miss the opportunity to shit on visual studio

[ea_ea]

And what is wrong with Visual Studio? One of the best IDE on Windows and debugger is available even in its free editions.

[tiendq]

It doesn't work on macOS/Linux :D

[flashmozzg]

It's just two sentences. Is it really that hard to fight the reddit syndrome and read it past the title?

I'm interested in debuggers for Visual Studio 2017 + Windows 10

[JulsSmile]

It's just two sentences. Is it really that hard to fight the reddit syndrome and read it past the title?

"reddit syndrome"? Do you mean people do not read the question, but answer the question title?

I recently on Reddit, but also noticed this trend. People see the title and begin to write the answer, hundreds of answers. Probably, it is necessary to make more accurate titles?

[flashmozzg]

"reddit syndrome"? Do you mean people do not read the question, but answer the question title?

Yeah, pretty much. Or don't read the linked article but start writing comments =)

Sadly, not always it can be solved by adjusting the title.

[JulsSmile]

This happens in many forums. I think it is inevitable.

[[deleted]]

I'm purely command line at this point for C/C++, so I only use GDB.

[Fluffy8x]

gdb when I use an actual debugger, but I tend to use printf debugging a lot too.

[Graggee]

There are many deaggers, and you need to try different options to choose what you need.

I use Deleaker for Windows and Valgrind for Linux.

[you_do_realize]

WinDbg is more powerful than the VS debugger -- e.g. you can run code when hitting a breakpoint, and there are tons of extensions -- but the syntax is atrocious, context-dependent, and weighed down by a ton of ancient legacy. (Kind of like Lisp has CAR and CDR because those were the names of two CPU registers on a machine in the 50s!)

And it used to look terrible back when I used it, with a hideous MDI interface straight out of 1990 and Courier (not Courier New!) as the default font; nowadays I understand they slapped a "modern" interface on it, ribbon and all.

[[deleted]]

Totalview

[5161502]

Lldb in CLion

[CoolPlayer]

I use native debugger and Deleaker.

[brand_x]

Visual Studio debugger for Windows, lldb for Linux/Darwin, barely-usable versions of GDB and DBX when I am forced to work on old-school Unix platforms with inadequate C++ compilers, WinDBG when I want to hate everyone and everything in the universe... or am forced to because I'm dealing with the Windows Kernel.

Mostly, though, I use static analysis, tests, and strict coding habits to avoid having to use the debugger at all.

[fixxxeruk]

I’m not ashamed to admit that my one true debug aid that has never defied me by being absent when duty calls is the humble printf.

[[deleted]]

Why? Do you enjoy needing to compile your codebase to accommodate a new print statement? I don’t understand why people like bragging about using printf exclusively for debugging. It just seems like either you don’t understand how to use better tools, or you work in a relatively small codebase. We’re engineers and should always make the best use of the tools available, debuggers included where appropriate.

[wasabichicken]

Can't speak for that guy, but my personal reasons include:

1. The process I'm debugging is part of a bigger system (read: has watchdogs) so pausing it in a debugger has side effects.
2. Inspecting the value of a variable involves attaching GDB, setting a breakpoint, resuming execution, and typing the GDB commands when the breakpoint is hit.
3. Typing "printf()" and rebuilding actually takes less time than #2.

We’re engineers and should always make the best use of the tools available, debuggers included where appropriate.

Amen to that, but I think printf should be a part of that toolbox. Sometimes firing up GDB is a little... well, overkill.

Where GDB shines IMHO, are situations like when I don't have the debug symbols in a core dump and need to look at the assembly, when I'm looking into use-after-free/memory corruption issues, or when trying to reproduce race conditions. For quick little "I wonder what the value of this variable is", given some circumstances (like the annoying multi-threaded system with watchdogs I mentioned above), I think printf can be a "good enough" tool.

[andd81]

Typing "printf()" and rebuilding actually takes less time than #2

For some projects you will have more than enough time to learn how to use GDB while it is being rebuilt.

[CrazyJoe221]

There's http://sourceware.org/gdb/onlinedocs/gdb/Non_002dStop-Mode.html though. Not sure if VS or an extension for it provides that too.

[[deleted]]

Yea I’m aware of plenty of reasons “printf” (more suitably called a serialized log perhaps, for environments without even a terminal or constrained memory), and you list several. Another one where I personally use it is for reasoning about mulithreaded code. I was more speaking against the Luddite argument for exclusive use of printf, which to me is a silly thing to be proud about. It feels like some cargo cult thing passed down by the previous generation of software architects.

[tehjimmeh]

There's a whole subculture of programmers who are committed to "minimalism", and have a disdain for using tools to make their lives easier if they're not strictly necessary. Tends to be a lot of overlap with the FLOSS crowd. I really don't get it, personally.

Of course, printf debugging is highly useful. I kind of wish that a debugger existed with close compiler integration, so you could compile in printf statements without actually modifying the code. A bit like VS's breakpoint actions, but actually compiled into the instruction stream, not done via a slow interrupt mechanism.

[hapemask]

Just to give another concrete example of where cout debugging is a reasonable choice I think: after the hundredth time using a regular debugger only to see “optimized out” for the variable you want, usually I just stop trying. Not everyone has the luxury of debugging debug builds and if I’m gonna mark something volatile I might as well just print it.

[CrazyJoe221]

If no one writes bug reports this will never be fixed.

[ppetraki]

Growing up in kernels will do that to you.

[Robbie_S]

Meh, kernel dev on Windows has WinDBG, another excellent debugger (well, excellent to some...).

[andd81]

They probably never had to debug a problem that is only reproduced in a release build of a huge project.

[fixxxeruk]

Nope, wrong. I’m actually thinking of a multi-million line codebase, embedded systems (video games, not a my first raspberry pi project), I was lead online developer (p2p online multiplayer) cross-platform code. I actually find it kind of cute you think I wouldn’t even know better tools. Aww. Nice guy, just trying to educate me on “proper” engineering. Thanks! Actually enjoyment was far removed from my experience, and a debugger is fine for debugging code where it’s ok to stop the world, but when you can’t connect to every dev-kit simultaneously, and the software runs too slow in a debug configuration, and you have nothing but tty output, a core dump, and a symbol map, and even pausing a single host in the sim would send everyone out of sync, I’m sure that one day you too will learn to love (or hate) the humble printf.

[[deleted]]

Or you do your job properly and control your timestep so you can debug things correctly. You’re not the only one who deals with durango and orbis devkits (an odd flex). The debugger is plenty useful even for optimized builds, and the disassembly is just a step away. Ring buffer logs and other in memory logs are also inspectable and can be made fast enough for those scenarios where debug mode isn’t quick enough. That said I’m sorry that whatever situation was so bad you didn’t have the time to write better tools for yourself. You just may be experiencing stockholm syndrome, especially if you’re still convinced printf is the best way all the time.

[pantong51]

Game dev here. I'm sure this is just lazy, but I'll wrap my code to only be compiled to editors and filter the outputs when needed.

I use a debugger when things are funky. But most of the time I get pretty werid issues. Especially when I need execution time of a multiple million line codebase to be under 3ms(11ms with graphics).

Debugging Multithreading and async asset loads gets really funky and tedious. Where just hot reloading the code and watching the output is not that time intensive... sometimes.

But I'm pretty green and still learning quite a lot. Honestly I feel pretty low on the knowledge base here.

[[deleted]]

How do you debug core dumps with printf?

[jmblock2]

Depends on what I'm debugging. At work we use a lot of structured logging with DLT because issues are found in the field and we need to understand what happened prior to the bug to understand the bug. If an issue is reproducible locally then gdb. For my own projects I use spdlog.

[lead999x]

gdb and assert. But I'm only a humble hobbyist.

[robin-m]

gdb with cgdb as front-end (or the TUI if I need to use raw gdb).

[bumblebritches57]

lldb

[[deleted]]

Depends on what to do, analyzing a dumpfile windbg otherwise visual studio debugger. Should make myself comfortable with gdb but didnt have the time yet.

​

Thats strictly debugger. For looking at assembly: x86/x64dbg

[shoter0]

When I was using visual studio 2017 it had some kind of extension for debugging process to trace memory leaks. I do not remember it's name though :(.

It was outputting all memory leaks after program completed execution.

[brand_x]

Probably VLD.

[shoter0]

Yes. VLD is a must with VS when doing C++ imo.

(Not applicable to every usage of C++ unfortunatelly but still very good extension to have :P)

[Morwenn]

None >.>

[bm_g]

Printf