Looking for debugger

Python Help
1

I’m trying to use a debugger to view the internal functioning of a program. It has
14 files total. I tried to use Wing debugger, which seems pretty nice, but with heavy reliance on
external modules, the stack frames get lost in the weeds. Is there a debugger I can set to limit
stepping hits to only files that are part of the project?

1 Like
2

Personally i do not find debuggers useful for learning a code base.
I tend to add logging to the code to show me the interesting flow and variable values.

If you do want to use a debugger then set break points on interesting function to cut down on the stepping.
Beware of the trap of single stepping 100s or 1000s of lines of code.
It takes a long time and you tend to lose focus.

2 Likes
3

Hi @whiffee,

You can skip modules you don’t want to step into by adding a skip argument to Pdb.
For example, define and use the following function instead of builtins.breakpoint:

import sys
from pdb import Pdb

def breakpoint(skip=None):
    pdb = Pdb(skip=skip)
    pdb.set_trace(sys._getframe().f_back)

Usage:

breakpoint(skip={
    'warnings', 'textwrap', "<your-module>", ...
})

See also:

4

In relation to the above post, seeing that you are a Wing user (as am I), you can put the Debug tools to good use:

Step Into              F7
Step Over Instruction  Ctrl+F6
Step Over Statement    F6
Step Out               F8

… to skip single stepping any module.

Given the tools that Wing provide, I see no need for any other Debugger.

@whiffee Which Version of Wing are you running with?