Debugging Python

The tool to debug Python is pdb, think gdb for Python. It works, but it has warts.

The emacs integration is OK, but not great, the execution point glyph overwrites the first few columns of text. Breakpoints cannot be set on comments. Recoverable runtime errors cause it to bomb.

There’s an old fork for pdb to get ddd integration working, pydb. It basically doesn’t work. Setting breakpoints is very tricky. There’s no execution point glyph. Data structures don’t display.. which is why you use ddd in the first place. My plan is to get pydb working with ddd, then try to merge the pydb patches back upstream into pdb.

So many items added to the todo list..

Sometimes, it Just Works

Amid the crashing mozilla browsers (silly me for moving the mouse), segfaulting openoffice and heaps of other crap software making my life horrible, some of it actually works.

One such piece of software is module-assistant. I got to use it twice yesterday, recompiling the nVidia modules after a kernel upgrade, and compiling the madwifi modules.

Setting up all the kernel crap, compiling the modules, and making a deb. And it Just Works.

Thank you to Eduard Bloch.