Debugging with ruby-debug

This file describes ruby-debug, the Ruby Debugger, version 0.10.5

This is the 0.10.4 Edition, 21 February 2011

Appendix

Indexes (nodes containing large menus)

1. Summary of ruby-debug

The purpose of a debugger such as ruby-debug is to allow you to see what is going on “inside” a Ruby program while it executes.

rdebug can do four main kinds of things (plus other things in support of these) to help you catch bugs in the act:

• Start your script, specifying anything that might affect its behavior.
• Make your script stop on specified conditions.
• Examine what has happened, when your script has stopped.
• Change things in your script, so you can experiment with correcting the effects of one bug and go on to learn about another.

Although you can use rdebug to invoke your Ruby programs via a debugger at the outset, there are other ways to use and enter the debugger.

1.1 The First Sample rdebug Session (list, display, print, and quit)

You can use this manual at your leisure to read all about ruby-debug. However, a handful of commands are enough to get started using the debugger. The following sections illustrates these commands.

Below is Ruby code to compute a triangle number of a given length.(1)

$ rdebug triangle.rb
triangle.rb:4 def hanoi(n,a,b,c)
(rdb:1) list
[-1, 8] in ./triangle.rb
   1  #!/usr/bin/env ruby
   2  # Compute the n'th triangle number - the hard way
   3  # triangle(n) == (n * (n+1)) / 2
=> 4  def triangle(n)
   5    tri = 0
   6    0.upto(n) do |i|
   7      tri += i
   8    end
(rdb:1) l
[9, 18] in ./triangle.rb
   9    return tri
   10  end
   11  
   12  puts triangle(3)
(rdb:1) list 1,100
[1, 100] in ./triangle.rb
   1  #!/usr/bin/env ruby
   2  # Compute the n'th triangle number - the hard way
   3  # triangle(n) == (n * (n+1)) / 2
=> 4  def triangle(n)
   5    tri = 0
   6    0.upto(n) do |i|
   7      tri += i
   8    end
   9    return tri
   10  end
   11  
   12  puts triangle(3)
(rdb:1) 

There are lots of command options, but we don’t need them for now. See Options you can pass to rdebug for a full list of command options.

Position information consists of a filename and line number, e.g. triangle.rb:4. We are currently stopped before the first executable line of the program; this is line 4 of triangle.rb. If you are used to less dynamic languages and have used debuggers for more statically compiled languages like C, C++, or Java, it may seem odd to be stopped before a function definition. But in Ruby line 4 is executed, the name triangle (probably) does not exist so issuing a method call of triangle will raise a “method not found” error.

ruby-debug’s prompt is (rdb:n). The n is the thread number. Here it is 1 which is usually the case for the main thread. If the program has died and you are in post-mortem debugging, there is no thread number. In this situation, the string post-mortem is used in place of a thread number. If the program has terminated normally, the string this position will be ctrl. The commands which are available change depending on the program state.

The first command, list (see section Examining Program Source Files (‘list’)), prints 10 lines centered around the current line; the current line here is line 4 and is marked by =>, so the range the debugger would like to show is -1..8. However since there aren’t 5 lines before the current line, those additional lines—“lines” -1 and 0—are dropped and we print the remaining 8 lines. The list command can be abbreviated with l which is what we use next. Notice that when we use this a second time, we continue listing from the place we last left off. The desired range of lines this time is lines 9 to 18; but since the program ends as line 12, only the remaining 4 lines are shown.

If you want to set how many lines to print by default rather than use the initial number of lines, 10, use the set listsize command (see section Set/Show Number of Lines Shown in a List Command). To see the entire program in one shot, we gave an explicit starting and ending line number.

If you want a list command to run every time the debugger stops, use set autolist (see section Execute “list” Command on Every Stop).

If you use a front-end to the debugger such as the Emacs interface, you probably won’t use list all that much.

Now let us step through the program.

(rdb:1) step
triangle.rb:12
puts triangle(3)
(rdb:1) <<RET>>
triangle.rb:5
tri = 0
(rdb:1) p tri
nil
(rdb:1) step
triangle.rb:6
0.upto(n) do |i|
(rdb:1) p tri
0

The first step command (see section Step (‘step’)) runs the script one executable unit. The second command we entered was just hitting the return key; rdebug remembers the last command you entered was step, so it runs that last command again.

One way to print the values of variables uses p. (Of course, there are of course lots of other ways too.). When we look at the value of tri the first time, we see it is nil. Again we are stopped before the assignment on line 5, and this variable hasn’t been set previously. However after issuing another “step” command we see that the value is 0 as expected. You could issue the step and print comman in one shot:

However if every time we stop we want to see the value of tri to see how things are going stop, there is a better way by setting a display expression (see section Executing expressions on stop (‘display’, ‘undisplay’)).

(rdb:1) display tri
1: tri = 0

Now let us run the program until we return from the function. However we’ll want to see which lines get run.

(rdb:1) display i
2: i =
(rdb:1) set linetrace on
line tracing is on.
(rdb:1) finish
Tracing(1):triangle.rb:7 tri += i
1: tri = 0
2: i = 0
Tracing(1):triangle.rb:7 tri += i
1: tri = 0
2: i = 1
Tracing(1):triangle.rb:7 tri += i
1: tri = 1
2: i = 2
Tracing(1):triangle.rb:7 tri += i
1: tri = 3
2: i = 3
Tracing(1):triangle.rb:9 return tri
1: tri = 6
2: i =
(rdb:1) quit
Really quit? (y/n) y

So far, so good. A you can see from the above to get out of the debugger, one can issue a quit command. (q and exit are just as good. If you want to quit without being prompted, suffix the command with an exclamation mark, e.g. q!.

1.2 Sample Session 2: Delving Deeper (where, frame, restart, autoeval, break, ps)

In this section we’ll introduce breakpoints, the call stack and restarting. So far we’ve been doing pretty good in that we’ve not encountered a bug to fix. Let’s try another simple example. Okay here’s the program.

Below we will debug a simple Ruby program to solve the classic Towers of Hanoi puzzle. It is augmented by the bane of programming: some command-parameter processing with error checking.

$ rdebug hanoi.rb
hanoi.rb:3 def hanoi(n,a,b,c)
(rdb:1) list 1,100
[1, 100] in ./hanoi.rb
   1  #!/usr/bin/ruby
   2
=> 3  def hanoi(n,a,b,c)
   4      if n-1 > 0
   5         hanoi(n-1, a, c, b)
   6      end
   7      puts "Move disk %s to %s" % [a, b]
   8      if n-1 > 0
   9         hanoi(n-1, c, b, a)
   10      end
   11  end
   12
   13  i_args=ARGV.length
   14  if i_args > 1
   15      puts "*** Need number of disks or no parameter"
   16      exit 1
   17  end
   18
   19  n=3
   20
   21  if i_args > 0
   22      begin
   23        n = ARGV[0].to_i
   24      rescue ValueError, msg:
   25          print "** Expecting an integer, got: %s" % ARGV[0].to_s
   26        exit 2
   27      end
   28  end
   29
   30  if n < 1 or n > 100
   31      puts "*** number of disks should be between 1 and 100"
   32      exit 2
   33  end
   34
   35  hanoi(n, :a, :b, :c)
(rdb:1)

Recall in the first section I said that before the def is run the method it names is undefined. Let’s check that out. First let’s see what private methods we can call before running def hanoi

(rdb:1) set autoeval on
autoeval is on.
(rdb:1) private_methods
["select", "URI", "local_variables", "lambda", "chomp", ... 

The set autoeval (see section Set/Show auto-eval) command causes any commands that are not normally understood to be debugger commands to get evaluated as though they were Ruby commands. I use this a lot, so I set this by putting it the command file .rdebugrc, see section Command files, that gets read when ruby-debug starts.

As showing the list output of private_methods, I find this kind of list unwieldy. What you are supposed to notice here is that method hanoi is not in this list. When you ask ruby-debug for a list of method names via method instance, it doesn’t show output in this way; ruby-debug can sort and put into columns lists like this using the print command, ps.

(rdb:1) ps private_methods
Array                    exit!                 puts                        warn
Float                    fail                  raise                       y
Integer                  fork                  rand
Rational                 format                readline
String                   gem_original_require  readlines
URI                      getc                  remove_instance_variable
`                        gets                  scan
abort                    global_variables      select
active_gem_with_options  gsub                  set_trace_func
at_exit                  gsub!                 singleton_method_added
autoload                 initialize            singleton_method_removed
autoload?                initialize_copy       singleton_method_undefined
binding                  iterator?             sleep
block_given?             lambda                split
callcc                   load                  sprintf
caller                   local_variables       srand
catch                    location_of_caller    sub
chomp                    loop                  sub!
chomp!                   method_missing        syscall
chop                     open                  system
chop!                    p                     test
dbg_print                pp                    throw
dbg_puts                 print                 timeout
eval                     printf                trace_var
exec                     proc                  trap
exit                     putc                  untrace_var

Now let’s see what happens after stepping

(rdb:1) private.methods.member?("hanoi")
false
(rdb:1) step
hanoi.rb:13
i_args=ARGV.length
(rdb:1) private_methods.member?("hanoi")
true
(rdb:1)

Okay, now where were we?

(rdb:1) list
[8, 17] in ./hanoi.rb
   8      if n-1 > 0
   9         hanoi(n-1, c, b, a)
   10      end
   11  end
   12
=> 13  i_args=ARGV.length
   14  if i_args > 1
   15      puts "*** Need number of disks or no parameter"
   16      exit 1
   17  end
(rdb:1) ARGV
[]

Ooops. We forgot to specify any parameters to this program. Let’s try again. We can use the restart command here.

(rdb:1) restart 3
Re exec'ing:
        /usr/bin/rdebug hanoi.rb 3
hanoi.rb:3
def hanoi(n,a,b,c)
(rdb:1) break 4
Breakpoint 1 file hanoi.rb, line 4
(rdb:1) continue
Breakpoint 1 at hanoi.rb:4
./hanoi.rb:4 if n-1 > 0
(rdb:1) display n
1: n = 3
(rdb:1) display a
2: a = a
(rdb:1) undisplay 2
(rdb:1) display a.inspect
3: a.inspect = :a
(rdb:1) display b.inspect
4: b.inspect = :b
(rdb:1) continue
Breakpoint 1 at hanoi.rb:4
./hanoi.rb:4 
if n-1 > 0
1: n = 2
3: a.inspect = :a
4: b.inspect = :c
(rdb:1) c
Breakpoint 1 at hanoi.rb:4
./hanoi.rb:4 
if n-1 > 0
1: n = 1
3: a.inspect = :a
4: b.inspect = :b
(rdb:1) where
--> #0 Object.hanoi(n#Fixnum, a#Symbol, b#Symbol, c#Symbol) at line hanoi.rb:4
    #1 Object.-(n#Fixnum, a#Symbol, b#Symbol, c#Symbol) at line hanoi.rb:5
    #2 Object.-(n#Fixnum, a#Symbol, b#Symbol, c#Symbol) at line hanoi.rb:5
    #3 at line hanoi.rb:35
(rdb:1) 

In the above we added a new command, break (see section Breakpoints (‘break’, ‘catch’, ‘delete’)) which indicates to go into the debugger just before that line of code is run. And continue resumes execution. Notice the difference between display a and display a.inspect. An implied string conversion is performed on the expression after it is evaluated. To remove a display expression we used undisplay is used. If we give a display number, just that display expression is removed.

Above we also used a new command where (see section Backtraces (‘where’) to show the call stack. In the above situation, starting from the bottom line we see we called the hanoi from line 35 of the file hanoi.rb and the hanoi method called itself two more times at line 5.

In the call stack we show the file line position in the same format when we stop at a line. Also we see the names of the parameters and the types that those parameters currently have. It’s possible that when the program was called the parameter had a different type, since the types of variables can change dynamically. You alter the style of what to show in the trace (see section Set/Show Call Style).

Let’s explore a little more. Now were were we?

(rdb:1) list
   1  #!/usr/bin/ruby
   2
   3  def hanoi(n,a,b,c)
=> 4      if n-1 > 0
   5         hanoi(n-1, a, c, b)
   6      end
   7      puts "Move disk %s to %s" % [a, b]
   8      if n-1 > 0
(rdb:1) undisplay
Clear all expressions? (y/n) y
(rdb:1) i_args
NameError Exception: undefined local variable or method `i_args' for main:Object
(rdb:1) frame -1
#3 at line hanoi.rb:35
(rdb:1) i_args
1
(rdb:1) p n
3
(rdb:1) down 2
#2 Object.-(n#Fixnum, a#Symbol, b#Symbol, c#Symbol) at line hanoi.rb:5
(rdb:1) p n
2

Notice in the above to get the value of variable n, I have to use a print command like p n; If I entered just n, that would be taken to mean the debugger command “next”. In the current scope, variable i_args is not defined. However I can change to the top-most frame by using the frame command. Just as with arrays, -1 means the last one. Alternatively using frame number 3 would have been the same thing; so would issuing up 3.

Note that in the outside frame 3, the value of i_args can be shown. Also note that the value of variable n is different.

1.3 Using the debugger in unit testing (ruby-debug/debugger, Debugger.start)

In the previous sessions we’ve been calling the debugger right at the outset. I confess that this mode of operation is usually not how I use the debugger.

There are a number of situations where calling the debugger at the outset is impractical for a couple of reasons.

1. The debugger just doesn’t work when run at the outset. By necessity any debugging changes to the behavior or the program in slight and subtle ways, and sometimes this can hinder finding the bugs.
2. There’s a lot of code which that needs to get run before the part you want to inspect. Running this code takes time and you don’t the overhead of the debugger in this first part.

In this section we’ll delve show how to enter the code in the middle of your program, while delving more into the debugger operation.

In this section we will also use unit testing. Using unit tests will greatly reduce the amount of debugging needed while at the same time increase the quality of your program.

What we’ll do is take the triangle code from the first session and write a unit test for that. In a sense we did write a mini-test for the program which was basically the last line where we printed the value of triangle(3). This test however wasn’t automated: the implication is that someone would look at the output and verify that what was printed is what was expected.

And before we can turn that into something that can be required, we probably want to remove that output. However I like to keep in that line so that when I look at the file, I have an example of how to run it. Therefore we will conditionally run this line if that file is invoked directly, but skip it if it is not.(2)

  if __FILE__ == $0 
    puts triangle(3)
  end

Let’s call this file tri2.rb.

Okay, we’re now ready to write our unit test. We’ll use "test/unit" which comes with the standard Ruby distribution. Here’s the test code:

  #!/usr/bin/env ruby
  require 'test/unit'
  require 'tri2.rb'

  class TestTri < Test::Unit::TestCase
    def test_basic
     solutions = []
     0.upto(5) do |i|
        solutions << triangle(i)
      end
      assert_equal([0, 1, 3, 6, 10, 15], solutions,
                   'Testing the first 5 triangle numbers')
    end
  end

If you run it will work. However if you run rdebug initially, you will not get into the test, because test/unit wants to be the main program. So here is a situation where one may need to modify the program to add an explicit entry into the debugger.(3)

One way to do this is to add the following before the place you want to stop:

  require 'rubygems'
  require 'ruby-debug/debugger'

The line require "rubygems" is needed if ruby-debug is installed as a Ruby gem.

Let’s add this code just after entering test_basic:

  ... 
  def test_basic
    require "rubygems"
    require "ruby-debug/debugger"
    solutions = []
   ...

Now we run the program..

  $ ruby test-tri.rb
  Loaded suite test-tri
  Started
  test-tri.rb:9
  solutions = []
  (rdb:1)

and we see that we are stopped at line 9 just before the initialization of the list solutions.

Now let’s see where we are...

(rdb:1) where
--> #0 TestTri.test_basic at line /home/rocky/ruby/test-tri.rb:9
(rdb:1) 

Something seems wrong here; TestTri.test_basic indicates that we are in class TestTri in method test_basic. However we don’t see the call to this like we did in the last example when we used the where command. This is because the debugger really didn’t spring into existence until after we already entered that method, and Ruby doesn’t keep call stack information around in a way that will give the information we show when running where.

If we want call stack information, we have to turn call-stack tracking on beforehand. This is done by adding Debugger.start.

Here’s what our test program looks like so after we modify it to start tracking calls from the outset

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require 'test/unit'
require 'tri2.rb'
require 'rubygems'
Debugger.start

class TestTri < Test::Unit::TestCase
  def test_basic
    debugger
    solutions = []
    0.upto(5) do |i|
      solutions << triangle(i)
    end
    assert_equal([0, 1, 3, 6, 10, 15], solutions,
                 "Testing the first 5 triangle numbers")
  end
end

Now when we run this:

$ ruby test-tri2.rb
Loaded suite test-tri2
Started
test-tri2.rb:11
solutions = []
(rdb:1) where
--> #0 TestTri.test_basic at line test-tri2.rb:11
    #1 Kernel.__send__(result#Test::Unit::TestResult) 
       at line /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/test/unit/testcase.rb:70
    #2 Test::Unit::TestCase.run(result#Test::Unit::TestResult) 
       at line /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/test/unit/testcase.rb:70
...
    #11 Test::Unit::AutoRunner.run 
       at line /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/test/unit/autorunner.rb:200
    #12 Test::Unit::AutoRunner.run(force_standalone#FalseClass, ...
       at line /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/test/unit/autorunner.rb:13
    #13 at line /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/test/unit.rb:285
(rdb:1) 

Much better. But again let me emphasize that the parameter types are those of the corresponding variables that currently exist, and this might have changed since the time when the call was made. Even so and even though we only have types listed, it’s a pretty good bet that when Test::Unit was first called, shown above as frame 12, that the values of its two parameters were false and nil.

1.4 Using the Debugger.start with a block

We saw that Debugger.start() and Debugger.stop() allow fine-grain control over where the debugger tracking should occur.

Rather than use an explicit stop(), you can also pass a block to the start() method. This causes start() to run and then yield to that block. When the block is finished, stop() is run. In other words, this wraps a Debugger.start() and Debugger.stop() around the block of code. But it also has a side benefit of ensuring that in the presence of an uncaught exception stop is run, without having to explicitly use begin ... ensure Debugger.stop() end.

For example, in Ruby Rails you might want to debug code in one of the controllers without causing any slowdown to any other code. And this can be done by wrapping the controller in a start() with a block; when the method wrapped this way finishes the debugger is turned off, and the application proceeds at regular speed.

Of course, inside the block you will probably want to enter the debugger using Debugger.debugger(), otherwise there would little point in using the start. For example, you can do this in irb:

$ irb
irb(main):001:0> require 'rubygems'; require 'ruby-debug'
=> true
irb(main):002:0> def foo
irb(main):003:1> x=1
irb(main):004:1> puts 'foo'
irb(main):005:1> end
=> nil
irb(main):006:0> Debugger.start{debugger; foo}
(irb):6
(rdb:1) s
(irb):3
(rdb:1) p x
nil
(rdb:1) s
(irb):4
(rdb:1) p x
1
(rdb:1) s
foo
=> true
irb(main):007:0> 

There is a counter inside of Debugger.start method to make sure that this works when another Debugger.start method is called inside of outer one. However if you are stopped inside the debugger, issuing another debugger call will not have any effect even if it is nested inside another Debugger.start.

1.5 Connecting to the debugger from the Outside

1.5.1 Remote execution from the outset

It is possible to set up debugging so that you can issue debugger commands from outside of the process running the Ruby code. In fact, you might even be on a different computer than the one running the Ruby program.

To do this one sets up the to debug a program a “server” mode. For this use the ‘--server’ option on a rdebug invocation. We will use one other option below: ‘--wait’:

$ rdebug --server --wait tri3.rb
# Nothing happens

Without ‘--wait’ the program would run and probably terminate before we have a chance to connect to it. Next, in a different window on the same machine, run the “client” side. This will connect to this waiting program in “server” mode:

$ rdebug --client
Connected.
(rdb:1) bt
--> #0 at line triangle.rb:4

Other options related to remote debugging on both the client and server side are the ‘--host’, ‘--port’ options. By setting these options appropriately, is possible that to debug the program over a TCP/IP connection.

Note however that program output is still going to the place it normally would go; output is not redirected across the debugger connection.

1.5.2 Going into Remote execution from inside a Ruby program

As with the case where you are debugging on the same machine, often you might not want call the debugger initially, but only after something happens. It is possible to call the debugger and arrange it to start out in server mode.

To do this, arrange for the following code to get executed.

  require 'rubygems'; require 'ruby-debug';

  # Omit the following assignment statment line if don't want to wait
  # for a client before continuing...
  Debugger.wait_connection = true
  Debugger.start_remote

The above only needs to happen one sometime before you code gets run that needs the debugger. As before, you probably want to put this before too many methods get nested in the call chain. Otherwise you won’t be able to inspect frames of those that were created before the “start_remote” above.

Next, at a place of program execution which gets run before you might ever want a debugger stop, add a call to “debugger” as was done without remote execution:

   # work, work, work....  
   debugger 
   some ruby code  # debugger will stop before this is run

If you are running for example a web service, you might create a URL that basically invokes “debugger”. And although, I’ve not tried this, I think you could but the call “debugger” inside a signal handler. When the signal handler returns you would be at the place you interrupted the Ruby program.

1.6 How debugging Ruby may be different than debugging other Languages

If you are used to debugging in other languages like C, C++, Perl, Java or even Bash(4), there may be a number of things that seem or feel a little bit different and may confuse you. A number of these things aren’t oddities of the debugger per see, so much as a difference in how Ruby works compared to those other languages. Because Ruby works a little differently from those other languages, writing a debugger has to also be a little different as well if it is to be useful.

In this respect, using the debugger may help you understand Ruby better.

We’ve already seen two examples of such differences. One difference is the fact that we stop on method definitions or def’s and that’s because these are in fact executable statements. In other compiled languages this would not happen because that’s already been done when you compile the program (or in Perl when it scans in the program). The other difference we saw was in our inability to show call stack parameter types without having made arrangements for the debugger to track this. In other languages call stack information is usually available without asking assistance of the debugger.(5)

In this section we’ll consider some other things that might throw off new users to Ruby who are familiar with other languages and debugging in them.

1.6.1 Stack Shows Scope Nesting

In a backtrace, you will find more stack frames than you might in say C.

Consider another way to write the triangle program of see section The First Sample rdebug Session (list, display, print, and quit).

  1 #!/usr/bin/env ruby
  2 def triangle(n) 
  3   (0..n).inject do |sum, i| 
  4    sum +=i 
  5   end
  6 end
  7 puts triangle(3)

Let’s stop inside the inject block:

$ rdebug tri3.rb
(rdb:1) c 4
tri3.rb:4
sum +=i 
(rdb:1) where
--> #0 Range.triangle at line tri3.rb:4
    #1 Enumerable.inject at line tri3.rb:3
    #2 Object.triangle(n#Fixnum) at line tri3.rb:3
    #3 at line tri3.rb:7
(rdb:1)

Because a new scope was entered, it appears as a stack frame. Probably “scope” frame would be a more appropriate name.

1.6.2 More Frequent Evaluations per Line

Consider this simple program to compute the Greatest Common Divisor of two numbers:

 1 #!/usr/bin/env ruby
 2 # GCD. We assume positive numbers
 3
 4 def gcd(a, b)
 5   # Make: a <= b
 6  if a > b
 7     a, b = [b, a]
 8  end
 9
10  return nil if a <= 0
11 
12  if a == 1 or b-a == 0
13    return a
14   end
15   return gcd(b-a, a)
16 end
17
18 a, b = ARGV[0..1].map {|arg| arg.to_i}
19 puts "The GCD of %d and %d is %d" % [a, b, gcd(a, b)]

Now let’s try tracing a portion of the program to see what we get.

$ rdebug gcd.rb 3 5
gcd.rb:4
def gcd(a, b)
(rdb:1) step
gcd.rb:18
a, b = ARGV[0..1].map {|arg| arg.to_i}
(rdb:1) step
gcd.rb:18
a, b = ARGV[0..1].map {|arg| arg.to_i}
(rdb:1) step
gcd.rb:18
a, b = ARGV[0..1].map {|arg| arg.to_i}
(rdb:1) step
(rdb:1) break Object.gcd
Breakpoint 1 at Object::gcd
(rdb:1) continue
Breakpoint 1 at Object:gcd
gcd.rb:4
def gcd(a, b)
(rdb:1) set linetrace on
line tracing is on.
(rdb:1) continue
Tracing(1):gcd.rb:6 if a > b
Tracing(1):gcd.rb:6 if a > b
Tracing(1):gcd.rb:10 return nil if a <= 0
Tracing(1):gcd.rb:10 return nil if a <= 0
Tracing(1):gcd.rb:12 if a == 1 or b-a == 0
Tracing(1):gcd.rb:12 if a == 1 or b-a == 0
Tracing(1):gcd.rb:15 return gcd(b-a, a)
Breakpoint 1 at Object:gcd
gcd.rb:4
def gcd(a, b)
(rdb:1) 

The thing to note here is that we see lots of lines duplicated. For example, the first line:

Tracing(1):gcd.rb:18 a, b = ARGV[0..1].map {|arg| arg.to_i}

appears three times. If we were to break this line into the equivalent multi-line expression:

a, b = ARGV[0..1].map do |arg| 
  arg.to_i
end

we would find one stop at the first line before running map and two listings of arg.to_i, once for each value of arg which here is 0 and then 1. Perhaps this is is not surprising because we have a loop here which gets run in this situation 3 times. A similar command next, can also be used to skip over loops and method calls.

But what about all the duplicated if statements in gcd? Each one is listed twice whether or not we put the if at the beginning or the end. You will find this to be the case for any conditional statement such as until or while.

Each statement appears twice because we stop once before the expression is evaluated and once after the expression is evaluated but before the if statement takes hold. There is a bug in Ruby up to version 1.8.6 in that we stop a second time before the evaluation, so examining values that may have changed during the expression evaluation doesn’t work in these versions.

If you are issuing a step command one at a time, the repetitive nature can be little cumbersome if not annoying. So ruby-debug offers a variant called step+ which forces a new line on every step. Let’s try that.

(rdb:1) R
Re exec'ing:
	/usr/bin/rdebug gcd.rb 3 5
gcd.rb:4
def gcd(a, b)
(rdb:1) step+
gcd.rb:18
a, b = ARGV[0..1].map {|arg| arg.to_i}
(rdb:1) step+
gcd.rb:19
puts "The GCD of %d and %d is %d" % [a, b, gcd(a, b)]
(rdb:1) break Object.gcd
Breakpoint 1 at Object:gcd
(rdb:1) c
Breakpoint 1 at Object:gcd
gcd.rb:4
def gcd(a, b)
(rdb:1) set linetrace+
line tracing style is different consecutive lines.
(rdb:1) set linetrace on
line tracing is on.
(rdb:1) c
Tracing(1):gcd.rb:6 if a > b
Tracing(1):gcd.rb:10 return nil if a <= 0
Tracing(1):gcd.rb:12 if a == 1 or b-a == 0
Tracing(1):gcd.rb:15 return gcd(b-a, a)
Breakpoint 1 at Object:gcd
gcd.rb:4
def gcd(a, b)

If you want step+ to be the default behavior when stepping, issue the command set different on, (see section Set/Show Different Line Forcing on Step/Next). I generally put this in my start-up file .rdebugrc.

Similar to the difference between step+ and step is set linetrace+. This removes duplicate consecutive line tracing.

One last thing to note above is the use of a method name to set a breakpoint position, rather than a file and line number. Because method gcd is in the outermost scope, we use Object as the class name.

1.6.3 Bouncing Around in Blocks (e.g. Iterators)

When debugging languages with coroutines like Python and Ruby, a method call may not necessarily go to the first statement after the method header. It’s possible the call will continue after a yield statement from a prior call.

 1 #!/usr/bin/env ruby
 2 # Enumerator for primes
 3 class SievePrime
 4   @@odd_primes = []
 5   def self.next_prime(&block)
 6     candidate = 2
 7     yield candidate
 8     not_prime = false
 9     candidate += 1
10     while true do
11       @@odd_primes.each do |p|
12         not_prime = (0 == (candidate % p))
13         break if not_prime
14       end
15       unless not_prime
16         @@odd_primes << candidate
17         yield candidate 
18       end
19       candidate += 2
20     end
21   end
22 end
23 SievePrime.next_prime do |prime|
24   puts prime
25   break if prime > 10
26 end

$ rdebug primes.rb
primes.rb:3
class SievePrime
(rdb:1) set linetrace on
line tracing is on.
(rdb:1) step 10
Tracing(1):primes.rb:4 @odd_primes = []
Tracing(1):primes.rb:5 def self.next_prime(&block)
Tracing(1):primes.rb:23 SievePrime.next_prime do |prime|
Tracing(1):primes.rb:6 candidate = 2
Tracing(1):primes.rb:7 yield candidate
Tracing(1):primes.rb:24 puts prime
2
Tracing(1):primes.rb:25 break if prime > 10
Tracing(1):primes.rb:25 break if prime > 10
Tracing(1):primes.rb:8 not_prime = false
Tracing(1):primes.rb:9 candidate += 1
primes.rb:9
candidate += 1
(rdb:1) 

The loop between lines 23–26 gets interleaved between those of Sieve::next_prime, lines 6–19 above.

A similar kind of thing can occur in debugging programs with many threads.

1.6.4 No Parameter Values in a Call Stack

In traditional debuggers in a call stack you can generally see the names of the parameters and the values that were passed in.

Ruby is a very dynamic language and it tries to be efficient within the confines of the language definition. Values generally aren’t taken out of a variable or expression and pushed onto a stack. Instead a new scope created and the parameters are given initial values. Parameter passing is by reference, not by value as it is say Algol, C, or Perl. During the execution of a method, parameter values can change—and often do. In fact even the class of the object can change.

So at present, the name of the parameter shown. The call-style setting see section Set/Show Call Style can be used to set whether the name is shown or the name and the current class of the object.

It has been contemplated that a style might be added which saves on call shorter “scalar” types of values and the class name.

1.6.5 Lines You Can Stop At

As with the duplicate stops per control (e.g. if statement), until tools like debuggers get more traction among core ruby developers there are going to be weirdness. Here we describe the stopping locations which effects the breakpoint line numbers you can stop at.

Consider the following little Ruby program.

'Yes it does' =~ /
(Yes) \s+
it  \s+
does
/ix 
puts $1

The stopping points that Ruby records are the last two lines, lines 5 and 6. If you run ruby -rtracer on this file you’ll see that this is so:

$ ruby -rtracer lines.rb
#0:lines.rb:5::-: /ix 
#0:lines.rb:6::-: puts $1
#0:lines.rb:6:Kernel:>: puts $1
#0:lines.rb:6:IO:>: puts $1
Yes#0:lines.rb:6:IO:<: puts $1
#0:lines.rb:6:IO:>: puts $1

#0:lines.rb:6:IO:<: puts $1
#0:lines.rb:6:Kernel:<: puts $1

Inside ruby-debug you an get a list of stoppable lines for a file using the info file command with the attribute breakpoints.

2. Installing ruby-debug

There are a number of pitfalls that one can run into in trying to install ruby-debug. We will try to go over them here.

2.1 ruby-debug is not debug.rb

One problem that comes up a bit is a confusion of this gem package, ruby-debug, with the Ruby library program debug.rb. The latter comes distributed with Ruby.

When you run ruby -r debug test.rb or without the space between the -r and the debug:

   $ ruby -rdebug test.rb  # This is something not described here

you are getting the program that comes installed with Ruby. Although what we describe here, ruby-debug, has commands which are largely a superset of the debug.rb commands, ruby-debug is something vastly different.

ruby-debug is a packaged as a gem. When installed, the program bin/rdebug is installed. This allows you to invoke the debugger from the outset. But don’t confuse the example above with

   $ rdebug test.rb  # not the same as the above!

The Pickaxe books talk about debug.rb, not the ruby-debug gem. I think it safe to say that most folks who use any sort of debugger are nowadays using ruby-debug. (Even the IDE’s like the ones from Eclipse, JetBrains, or Aptana use common code from ruby-debug and none import any code from debug.rb)

I realize all of this is confusing. Unfortunately it is a bit too late to change this in any significant way.

In the next round of debuggers, the “trepanning” debuggers — http://github.com/rocky/rb-trepanning and http://github.com/rocky/rbx-trepanning — I’ve tried to make the distinction more clear. The command-line invocation is no longer rdebug. And the prompt which had been inside the debugger (rdb) is now different.

2.2 Installing the gem

In the simplest case, one should be able to run:

  gem install ruby-debug  

If however you need root permission to install gems (which is not the case if your Ruby is installed via rvm (http://rvm.beginrescueend.com), then:

  sudo gem install ruby-debug # Note: nuke the 'sudo' if using rvm!

Ruby debug uses a number of packages, namely: ruby-debug-base, columnize, and linecache. But those gems should get pulled in automatically. The gem ruby-debug-base is a C extension. To install C extensions you need to make sure you have Ruby’s C header files for compiling extension modules. This includes a file called ruby.h. On Debain/Ubuntu the name of Debian package is called ruby1.8-dev and is not installed when you just install Ruby 1.8.

If you are using an IDE or the Ruby you use is JRuby, then instead of installing ruby-debug, you want the gem ruby-debug-ide.

Mark Moseley ported ruby-debug and ruby-debug-ide for Ruby 1.9. Those gems are called ruby-debug19 and ruby-debug-ide19 respectively.

I (rocky) have however been rewriting ruby-debug from scratch to address a number of failings folks have encountered in ruby-debug. Those debuggers are called the “trepanning” debuggers. For Ruby 1.9.2 you need a patched version of Ruby. See https://github.com/rocky/rb-trepanning/wiki/How-to-Install-rb-trepanning. For Rubinius the gem to use is rbx-trepanning. No patched Ruby is needed, however you will need a recent version of Rubinius.

3. Getting in and out

It is also possible to enter the debugger when you have an uncaught exception. See See also Post-Mortem Debugging.

3.1 Starting the debugger

Although one can enter ruby-debug via Emacs (described in a later section) and possibly others interfaces, probably the most familiar thing to do is invoke the debugger from a command line.

A wrapper shell script called rdebug basically require’s the gem package ruby-debug and then loads rdebug.

rdebug [rdebug-options] [--] ruby-script ruby-script-arguments...

If you don’t need to pass dash options to your program which might get confused with the debugger options, then you don’t need to add the ‘--’.

To get a brief list of options and descriptions, use the --help option.

$ rdebug --help
rdebug 0.10.5
Usage: rdebug [options] <script.rb> -- <script.rb parameters>

Options:
    -A, --annotate LEVEL             Set annotation level
    -c, --client                     Connect to remote debugger
        --cport PORT                 Port used for control commands
    -d, --debug                      Set $DEBUG=true
        --emacs LEVEL                Activates full Emacs support at annotation level LEVEL
        --emacs-basic                Activates basic Emacs mode
    -h, --host HOST                  Host name used for remote debugging
    -I, --include PATH               Add PATH to $LOAD_PATH
        --keep-frame-binding         Keep frame bindings
    -m, --post-mortem                Activate post-mortem mode
        --no-control                 Do not automatically start control thread
        --no-quit                    Do not quit when script finishes
        --no-rewrite-program         Do not set $0 to the program being debugged
        --no-stop                    Do not stop when script is loaded
    -nx                              Not run debugger initialization files (e.g. .rdebugrc
    -p, --port PORT                  Port used for remote debugging
    -r, --require SCRIPT             Require the library, before executing your script
        --script FILE                Name of the script file to run
    -s, --server                     Listen for remote connections
    -w, --wait                       Wait for a client connection, implies -s option
    -x, --trace                      Turn on line tracing

Common options:
        --verbose                    Turn on verbose mode
        --help                       Show this message
        --version                    Print the version
    -v                               Print version number, then turn on verbose mode

Options for the rdebug are shown in the following list.

3.1.1 Options you can pass to rdebug

You can run ruby-debug in various alternative modes—for example, as a program that interacts directly with the program in the same process on the same computer or via a socket to another process possibly on a different computer.

Many options appear as a long option name, such as ‘--help’, and a short one letter option name, such as ‘-h’. A double dash (‘--’ is used to separate options which go to rdebug from options that are intended to go to your Ruby script. Options (if any) to rdebug should come first. If there is no possibility of the Ruby script to be debugged getting confused with rdebug’s option the double dash can be omitted.

--help

This option causes rdebug to print some basic help and exit.

-v | --version

This option causes rdebug to print its version number and exit.

-A | --annotate level

Set gdb-style annotation level, a number. Additional information is output automatically when program state is changed. This can be used by front-ends such as GNU Emacs to post this updated information without having to poll for it.

-c | --client

Connect to remote debugger. The remote debugger should have been set up previously our you will get a connection error and rdebug will terminate.

--cport port

Port used for control commands.

--debug

Set $DEBUG to true. This option is compatible with Ruby’s.

--emacs

Activates GNU Emacs mode. Debugger output is tagged in such a way to allow GNU Emacs to track where you are in the code.

--emacs-basic

Activates full GNU Emacs mode. This is the equivalent of setting the options --emacs-basic, annotate=3, --no-stop, -no-control and --post-mortem.

-h | --host host-address

Connect host address for remote debugging.

-I --include PATH

Add PATH to $LOAD_PATH

--keep-frame-binding

Bindings are used to set the proper environment in evaluating expression inside the debugger. Under normal circumstances, I don’t believe most people will ever need this option.

By default, the debugger doesn’t create binding object for each frame when the frame is created, i.e. when a call is performed. Creating a binding is an expensive operation and has been a major source of performance problems.

Instead, the debugger creates a binding when there is a need to evaluate expressions. The artificial binding that is created might be different from the real one. In particular, in performing constant and module name resolution.

However it’s still possible to restore the old, slower behavior by using this option or by setting Debugger.keep_frame_binding = true. There are two possibilities for which you might want to use this option.

First, if you think there’s a bug in the evaluation of variables, you might want to set this to see if this corrects things.

Second, since the internal structures that are used here FRAME and SCOPE are not part of the Ruby specification, it is possible they can change with newer releases; so here this option this may offer a remedy. (But you’ll probably also have to hack the C code since it’s likely under this scenario that ruby-debug will no longer compile.) In fact, in Ruby 1.9 these structures have changed and that is partly why this debugger doesn’t work on Ruby 1.9.

-m | --post-mortem

If your program raises an exception that isn’t caught you can enter the debugger for inspection of what went wrong. You may also want to use this option in conjunction with --no-stop. See also Post-Mortem Debugging.

--no-control

Do not automatically start control thread.

--no-quit

Restart the debugger when your program terminates normally.

--no-rewrite-program

Normally rdebug will reset the program name $0 from its name to the debugged program, and set the its name in variable $RDEBUG_0. In the unlikely even you don’t want this use this option.

--no-stop

Normally the rdebug stops before executing the first statement. If instead you want it to start running initially and will perhaps break it later in the running, use this options.

-p | --port port

Port used for remote debugging.

-r | --require library

Require the library, before executing your script. However if the library happened to be debug, we’ll just ignore the require (since we’re already a debugger). This option is compatible with Ruby’s.

--script file

Require the library, before executing your script. However if the library hap-pend to be debug, we’ll just ignore the require (since we’re already a debugger). This option is compatible with Ruby’s.

-s | --server

Debug the program but listen for remote connections on the default port or port set up via the --port option. See also --wait.

-w | --wait

Debug the program but stop waiting for a client connection first. This option automatically sets --server option.

-x | --trace

Turn on line tracing. Running rdebug --trace rubyscript.rb is much like running: ruby -rtracer rubyscript.rb

If all you want to do however is get a linetrace, tracer, not rdebug, may be faster:

$ time ruby -rtracer gcd.rb 34 21 > /dev/null real 0m0.266s user 0m0.008s sys 0m0.000s $ time rdebug --trace gcd.rb 34 21 > /dev/null real 0m0.875s user 0m0.448s sys 0m0.056s $

3.1.2 Options for Out-of-process execution

Option ‘--wait’ (pause execution until a client connects to the program) is only meaningful in “server” mode or with the ‘--server’ option.

With option ‘--client’ you don’t give the name of a program to debug. That was done when running the server.

With both the ‘--client’ and ‘--server’ options, you can specify the interface name to listen on (for server) or connect to (for client) as either a DNS name or as an IP address. Likewise one can specify a port number to listen on or connect to. As with any other TCP/IP connection the port names and interface name (as either an IP or a name) much correspond for the client to connect to a program in server mode. In the simple cases, the port names and host names will be the same. However due to port forwarding and NAT translation that sometimes occurs behind firewalls, it is possible these may be different.

3.1.3 How to Set Default Command-Line Options

ruby-debug has many command-line options; it seems that some people want to set them differently from the our defaults. For example, some people may want ‘--no-quit --no-control’ to be the default behavior. One could write a wrapper script or set a shell alias to handle this. ruby-debug has another way to do this as well. Before processing command options if the file $HOME/.rdboptrc is found it is loaded. If you want to set the defaults in some other way, you can put Ruby code here and set variable options which is an OpenStruct. For example here’s how you’d set ‘-no-quit’ and change the default control port to 5000.

# This file contains how you want the default options to ruby-debug
# to be set. Any Ruby code can be put here.
#
# debugger # Uncomment if you want to debug rdebug!
options.control = false
options.port = 5000
puts "rocky's rdboptrc run"

Here are the default values in options

#<OpenStruct server=false, client=false, frame_bind=false, cport=8990, tracing=false, nx=false, post_mortem=false, port=8989, verbose_long=false, annotate=nil, control=true, restart_script=nil, quit=true, no_rewrite_program=false, stop=true, script=nil, host=nil, wait=false>

3.2 Command files

A command file for ruby-debug is a file of lines that are ruby-debug commands. Comments (lines starting with #) may also be included. An empty line in a command file does nothing; it does not mean to repeat the last command, as it would from the terminal.

When you start ruby-debug, it automatically executes commands from its init files, normally called ‘.rdebugrc’.

On some configurations of ruby-debug, the init file may be known by a different name. In particular on MS-Windows (but not cygwin) ‘rdebug.ini’ is used.

During startup, ruby-debug does the following:

1. Processes command line options and operands.
2. Reads the init file in your current directory, if any, and failing that the home directory. The home directory is the directory named in the HOME or HOMEPATH environment variable.

   Thus, you can have more than one init file, one generic in your home directory, and another, specific to the program you are debugging, in the directory where you invoke ruby-debug.

3. Reads command files specified by the ‘--script’ option.

You can also request the execution of a command file with the source command, see section Running Debugger Commands (‘source’).

3.3 Quitting the debugger

An interrupt (often C-c) does not exit from ruby-debug, but rather terminates the action of any ruby-debug command that is in progress and returns to ruby-debug command level. Inside a debugger command interpreter, use quit command (see section Quitting the debugger).

There way to terminate the debugger is to use the kill command. This does more forceful kill -9. It can be used in cases where quit doesn’t work.

3.4 Calling the debugger from inside your Ruby program

Running a program from the debugger adds a bit of overhead and slows down your program a little.

Furthermore, by necessity, debuggers change the operation of the program they are debugging. And this can lead to unexpected and unwanted differences. It has happened so often that the term “Heisenbugs” (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heisenbug) was coined to describe the situation where the addition of the use of a debugger (among other possibilities) changes behavior of the program so that the bug doesn’t manifest itself anymore.

There is another way to get into the debugger which adds no overhead or slowdown until you reach the point at which you want to start debugging. However here you must change the script and make an explicit call to the debugger. Because the debugger isn’t involved before the first call, there is no overhead and the script will run at the same speed as if there were no debugger.

There are three parts to calling the debugger from inside the script, “requiring” the debugger code, telling the debugger to start tracking things and then making the call calling the debugger to stop.

To get the debugger class accessible from your Ruby program:

require 'rubygems'
require 'ruby-debug'

(It is very likely that you’ve already require’d rubygems. If so, you don’t have to do that again.) These commands need to be done only once.

After require 'ruby-debug', it’s possible to set some of the debugger variables influence preferences. For example if you want to have rdebug run a list command every time it stops you set the variable Debugger.settings[:autolist]. see section Debugger.settings has a list of variable settings and the default values. Debugger settings can also be set in .rdebugrc as debugger commands. see section Command files

To tell the debugger to start tracking things:

Debugger.start

There is also a Debugger.stop to turn off debugger tracking. If speed is crucial, you may want to start and stop this around certain sections of code. Alternatively, instead of issuing an explicit Debugger.stop you can add a block to the Debugger.start and debugging is turned on for that block. If the block of code raises an uncaught exception that would cause the block to terminate, the stop will occur. See Using the Debugger.start with a block.

And finally to enter the debugger:

debugger

As indicated above, when debugger is run a .rdebugrc profile is read if that file exists.

You may want to do enter the debugger at several points in the program where there is a problem you want to investigate. And since debugger is just a method call it’s possible enclose it in a conditional expression, for example:

debugger if 'bar' == foo and 20 == iter_count

Although each step does a very specific thing which offers great flexibility, in order to make getting into the debugger easier the three steps have been rolled into one command:

require "ruby-debug/debugger"

4. ruby-debug Command Reference

4.1 Command Interfaces

There are several ways one can talk to ruby-debug and get results. The simplest way is via a command-line interface directly talking to the debugger. This is referred to below as a “Local Interface”. It’s also possible to run the debugger and set up a port by which some other process can connect and control the debug session. This is called a “Remote Interface”. When you want to gain access to a remote interface you need to run ruby-debug using a “Control Interface”. This interface might not be the same process as the process running the debugged program and might not even be running on the same computer.

Other front-ends may use one of these and build on top and provide other (richer) interfaces. Although many of the commands are available on all interfaces some are not. Most of the time in this manual when we talk about issuing commands describing the responses elicited, we’ll assume we are working with the local interface.

4.2 Command Syntax

Usually a command is put on a single line. There is no limit on how long it can be. It starts with a command name, which is followed by arguments whose meaning depends on the command name. For example, the command step accepts an argument which is the number of times to step, as in step 5. You can also use the step command with no arguments. Some commands do not allow any arguments.

Multiple commands can be put on a line by separating each with a semicolon (;). You can disable the meaning of a semicolon to separate commands by escaping it with a backslash.

For example, if you have autoeval (Set/Show auto-eval) set, you might want to enter the following code to compute the 5th Fibonacci number:

# Compute the 5 Fibonaci number
(rdb:1) set autoeval on
(rdb:1) fib1=0; fib2=1; 5.times {|temp| temp=fib1; fib1=fib2; fib2 += temp }
SyntaxError Exception: compile error
/usr/bin/irb:10: syntax error, unexpected $end, expecting '}'
 5.times {|temp| temp=fib1
                          ^
(rdb:1) fib1=0\; fib2=1\; 5.times {|temp| temp=fib1\; fib1=fib2\; fib2 += temp }
5
(rdb:1) fib2
fib2
8

You might also consider using the irb command, Run irb (‘irb’), and then you won’t have to escape semicolons.

A blank line as input (typing just <<RET>>) means to repeat the previous command.

In the “local” interface, the Ruby Readline module is used. It handles line editing and retrieval of previous commands. Up arrow, for example moves to the previous debugger command; down arrow moves to the next more recent command (provided you are not already at the last command). Command history is saved in file .rdebug_hist. A limit is put on the history size. You can see this with the show history size command. See Command History Parameters for history parameters.

4.3 Command Output

In the command-line interface, when ruby-debug is waiting for input it presents a prompt of the form (rdb:x). If debugging locally, x will be the thread number. Usual the main thread is 1, so often you’ll see (rdb:1). In the control interface though x will be ctrl and in post-mortem debugging post-mortem.

In the local interface, whenever ruby-debug gives an error message such as for an invalid command, or an invalid location position, it will generally preface the message with ***. However if annotation mode is on that the message is put in a begin-error annotation and no *** appears.

4.4 Getting help (‘help’)

Once inside ruby-debug you can always ask it for information on its commands, using the command help.

help

h

You can use help (abbreviated h) with no arguments to display a short list of named classes of commands:

(rdb:1) help ruby-debug help v0.10.5 Type 'help <command-name>' for help on a specific command Available commands: backtrace delete enable help method putl set trace break disable eval info next quit show undisplay catch display exit irb p reload source up condition down finish kill pp restart step var continue edit frame list ps save thread where

help command

With a command name as help argument, ruby-debug displays short information on how to use that command.

(rdb:1) help list ruby-debug help v0.10.5 l[ist] list forward l[ist] - list backward l[ist] = list current line l[ist] nn-mm list given lines * NOTE - to turn on autolist, use 'set autolist' (rdb:1)

4.4.1 Help on Subcommands

A number of commands have many sub-parameters or subcommands. These include info, set, show, enable and disable.

When you ask for help for one of these commands, you will get help for all of the subcommands that that command offers. Sometimes you may want help that subcommand and to do this just follow the command with its subcommand name. For example help set annotate will just give help about the annotate command. Furthermore it will give longer help than the summary information that appears when you ask for help. You don’t need to list the full subcommand name, but just enough of the letters to make that subcommand distinct from others will do. For example, help set an is the same as help set annotate.

Some examples follow.

(rdb:1) help info
Generic command for showing things about the program being debugged.
-- 
List of info subcommands:
--  
info args -- Argument variables of current stack frame
info breakpoints -- Status of user-settable breakpoints
info catch -- Exceptions that can be caught in the current stack frame
info display -- Expressions to display when program stops
info file -- Info about a particular file read in
info files -- File names and timestamps of files read in
info global_variables -- Global variables
info instance_variables -- Instance variables of the current stack frame
info line -- Line number and file name of current position in source file
info locals -- Local variables of the current stack frame
info program -- Execution status of the program
info stack -- Backtrace of the stack
info thread -- List info about thread NUM
info threads -- information of currently-known threads
info variables -- Local and instance variables of the current stack frame

(rdb:1) help info breakpoints
Status of user-settable breakpoints.
Without argument, list info about all breakpoints.  With an
integer argument, list info on that breakpoint.

(rdb:1) help info br
Status of user-settable breakpoints.
Without argument, list info about all breakpoints.  With an
integer argument, list info on that breakpoint.

4.5 Controlling the debugger (‘quit’, ‘restart’, ‘interrupt’, ‘source’)

4.5.1 Quit (‘quit’)

quit [unconditionally]

exit

q

To exit ruby-debug, use the quit command (abbreviated q), or alias exit.

A simple quit tries to terminate all threads in effect.

Normally if you are in an interactive session, this command will prompt to ask if you really want to quit. If you don’t want any questions asked, enter the “unconditionally”.

4.5.2 Restart (‘restart’)

restart

R

Restart the program. This is is a re-exec - all debugger state is lost. If command arguments are passed those are used. Otherwise the last program arguments used in the last invocation are used.

In not all cases will you be able to restart the program. First, the program should have been invoked at the outset rather than having been called from inside your program or invoked as a result of post-mortem handling.

Also, since this relies on the the OS exec call, this command is available only if your OS supports that exec; OSX for example does not (yet).

4.5.3 Interrupt (‘interrupt’)

interrupt

i

Interrupt the program. Useful if there are multiple threads running.

4.5.4 Running Debugger Commands (‘source’)

source filename

Execute the command file filename.

The lines in a command file are executed sequentially. They are not printed as they are executed. If there is an error, execution proceeds to the next command in the file. For information about command files that get run automatically on startup, see section Command files.

4.6 Executing expressions on stop (‘display’, ‘undisplay’)

If you find that you want to print the value of an expression frequently (to see how it changes), you might want to add it to the automatic display list so that ruby-debug evaluates a statement each time your program stops or the statement is shown in line tracing. Each expression added to the list is given a number to identify it; to remove an expression from the list, you specify that number. The automatic display looks like this:

(rdb:1) display n
1: n = 3

This display shows item numbers, expressions and their current values. If the expression is undefined or illegal the expression will be printed but no value will appear.

(rdb:1) display undefined_variable
2: undefined_variable =
(rdb:1) display 1/0
3: 1/0 = 

Note: this command uses to_s to in expressions; for example an array [1, 2] will appear as 12. For some datatypes like an Array, you may want to call the inspect method, for example display ARGV.inspect rather than display ARGV.

display expr

Add the expression expr to the list of expressions to display each time your program stops or a line is printed when linetracing is on (see section Executing expressions on stop (‘display’, ‘undisplay’)).

display

Display the current values of the expressions on the list, just as is done when your program stops.

undisplay [num]

delete display num

Remove item number num from the list of expressions to display.

info display

Show all display expressions

disable display dnums…

Disable the display of item numbers dnums. A disabled display item is not printed automatically, but is not forgotten. It may be enabled again later.

enable display dnums…

Enable display of item numbers dnums. It becomes effective once again in auto display of its expression, until you specify otherwise.

4.7 Evaluating and Printing Expressions (‘p’, ‘pp’, ‘putl’, ‘ps’, ‘irb’)

One way to examine and change data in your script is with the eval command (abbreviated p). A similar command is pp which tries to pretty print the result. Finally irb is useful when you anticipate examining or changing a number of things, and prefer not to have to preface each command, but rather work as one does in irb.

4.7.1 Printing an expression (‘eval’, ‘p’)

eval expr

p expr

Use eval or p to evaluate a Ruby expression, expr, same as you would if you were in irb. If there are many expressions you want to look at, you may want to go into irb from the debugger.

(rdb:p) p n 3 (rdb:1) p "the value of n is #{n}" "the value of n is 3" (rdb:1)

4.7.2 Pretty-Printing an expression (‘pp’, ‘putl’, ‘ps’))

pp

Evaluates and pretty-prints expr

(rdb:1) p $LOAD_PATH ["/home/rocky/lib/ruby", "/usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8", "/usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/i586-linux", "/usr/lib/ruby/1.8"] (rdb:1) pp $LOAD_PATH ["/home/rocky/lib/ruby", "/usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8", "/usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/i586-linux", "/usr/lib/ruby/1.8"]

putl

If the value you want to print is an array, sometimes a columnized list looks nicer:

(rdb:1) putl $LOAD_PATH /home/rocky/lib/ruby /usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8 /usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/i586-linux /usr/lib/ruby/1.8

Note however that entries are sorted to run down first rather than across. So in the example above the second entry in the list is /usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/i586-linux and the third entry is /usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8.

If the value is not an array putl will just call pretty-print.

ps

Sometimes you may want to print the array not only columnized, but sorted as well. The list of debugger help commands appears this way, and so does the output of the method commands.

(rdb:1) ps Kernel.private_methods Digest initialize y Pathname initialize_copy Rational location_of_caller active_gem_with_options method_added alias_method method_removed append_features method_undefined attr module_function attr_accessor private attr_reader protected attr_writer public class_variable_get remove_class_variable class_variable_set remove_const define_method remove_instance_variable extend_object remove_method extended singleton_method_added gcd singleton_method_removed gem_original_require singleton_method_undefined include timeout included undef_method

If the value is not an array, ps will just call pretty-print. See also the methods.

4.7.3 Run irb (‘irb’)

irb

Run an interactive ruby session (irb) with the bindings environment set to the state you are in the program.

Inside irb, method dbgr is available to run debugger commands. You give dbgr a String: the command to run.

When you leave irb and go back to the debugger, the the file, line and text position are shown again. If you issue a list without location information, the default location used is the current line rather than the position may have gotten updated via a prior list command.

triangle.rb:4 def triangle(n) (rdb:1) list [-1, 8] in /home/rocky/ruby/triangle.rb 1 #!/usr/bin/env ruby 2 # Compute the n'th triangle number - the hard way 3 # triangle(n) == (n * (n+1)) / 2 => 4 def triangle(n) 5 tri = 0 6 0.upto(n) do |i| 7 tri += i 8 end irb >> (0..6).inject{|sum, i| sum +=i} => 21 >> dbgr 'list' [9, 12] in /src/external-vcs/ruby-debug/trunk/doc/triangle.rb 9 return tri 10 end 11 12 puts triangle(3) => 9 >> exit triangle.rb:4 def triangle(n) (rdb:1) list # Note we get the same line range as before going into irb [-1, 8] in /home/rocky/ruby/triangle.rb 1 #!/usr/bin/env ruby 2 # Compute the n'th triangle number - the hard way 3 # triangle(n) == (n * (n+1)) / 2 => 4 def triangle(n) 5 tri = 0 6 0.upto(n) do |i| 7 tri += i 8 end

If you find yourself wanting to go into irb every time you enter the debugger, you can do this with the command “set autolist” Execute “list” Command on Every Stop.

4.8 Printing Variables (‘var’, ‘method’)

var const object

Show the constants of object. This is basically listing variables and their values in object.constant.

var instance object

Show the instance variables of object. This is basically listing object.instance_variables.

info instance_variables

Show instance_variables of @self

info locals

Show local variables

info globals

Show global variables

info variables

Show local and instance variables of @self

method instance object

Show methods of object. Basically this is the same as running ps object.instance_methods(false) on object.

method iv object

Show method instance variables of object. Basically this is the same as running

obj.instance_variables.each do |v| puts "%s = %s\n" % [v, obj.instance_variable_get(v)] end

on object.

signature object

Show procedure signature of method object. This command is available only if the nodewrap is installed.

def mymethod(a, b=5, &bock) end (rdb:1) method sig mymethod Mine#mymethod(a, b=5, &bock)

on object.

method class-or-module

Show methods of the class or module, class-or-module. Basically this is the same as running ps object.methods on class-or-module. on class-or-module.

4.9 Examining Program Source Files (‘list’)

ruby-debug can print parts of your script’s source. When your script stops, ruby-debug spontaneously prints the line where it stopped and the text of that line. Likewise, when you select a stack frame (see section Selecting a frame (‘up’, ‘down’, ‘frame’)) ruby-debug prints the line where execution in that frame has stopped. Implicitly there is a default line location. Each time a list command is run that implicit location is updated, so that running several list commands in succession shows a contiguous block of program text.

You can print other portions of source files by giving an explicit position as a parameter to the list command.

If you use ruby-debug through its Emacs interface, you may prefer to use Emacs facilities to view source.

To print lines from a source file, use the list command (abbreviated l). By default, ten lines are printed. Fewer may appear if there fewer lines before or after the current line to center the listing around.

There are several ways to specify what part of the file you want to print. Here are the forms of the list command.

list line-number

l line-number

Print lines centered around line number line-number in the current source file.

list

l

Print more lines. If the last lines printed were printed with a list command, this prints lines following the last lines printed; however, if the last line printed was a solitary line printed as part of displaying a stack frame (see section Stack frames), this prints lines centered around that line.

list -

l -

Print lines just before the lines last printed.

list first-last

Print lines between first and last inclusive.

list =

Print lines centered around where the script is stopped.

Repeating a list command with <RET> discards the argument, so it is equivalent to typing just list. This is more useful than listing the same lines again. An exception is made for an argument of ‘-’; that argument is preserved in repetition so that each repetition moves up in the source file.

4.10 Editing Source files (‘edit’)

To edit the lines in a source file, use the edit command. The editing program of your choice is invoked with the current line set to the active line in the program. Alternatively, you can give a line specification to specify what part of the file you want to print if you want to see other parts of the program.

You can customize to use any editor you want by using the EDITOR environment variable. The only restriction is that your editor (say ex), recognizes the following command-line syntax:

ex +number file

The optional numeric value +number specifies the number of the line in the file where to start editing. For example, to configure ruby-debug to use the vi editor, you could use these commands with the sh shell:

EDITOR=/usr/bin/vi
export EDITOR
gdb …

or in the csh shell,

setenv EDITOR /usr/bin/vi
gdb …

edit [line specification]

Edit line specification using the editor specified by the EDITOR environment variable.

4.11 Examining the Stack Frame (‘where’, ‘up’, ‘down’, ‘frame’)

When your script has stopped, one thing you’ll probably want to know is where it stopped and some idea of how it got there.

Each time your script performs a function or sends a message to a method, or enters a block, information about this action is saved. The frame stack then is this a history of the blocks that got you to the point that you are currently stopped at.(6)

One entry in call stack is selected by ruby-debug and many ruby-debug commands refer implicitly to the selected block. In particular, whenever you ask ruby-debug to list lines without giving a line number or location the value is found in the selected frame. There are special ruby-debug commands to select whichever frame you are interested in. See section Selecting a frame.

When your program stops, ruby-debug automatically selects the currently executing frame and describes it briefly, similar to the frame command.

After switching frames, when you issue a list command without any position information, the position used is location in the frame that you just switched between, rather than a location that got updated via a prior list command.

4.11.1 Stack frames

The block stack is divided up into contiguous pieces called stack frames, frames, or blocks for short; each frame/block has a scope associated with it; It contains a line number and the source-file name that the line refers. If the frame/block is the beginning of a method or function it also contains the function name.

When your script is started, the stack has only one frame, that of the function main. This is called the initial frame or the outermost frame. Each time a function is called, a new frame is made. Each time a function returns, the frame for that function invocation is eliminated. If a function is recursive, there can be many frames for the same function. The frame for the function in which execution is actually occurring is called the innermost frame. This is the most recently created of all the stack frames that still exist.

ruby-debug assigns numbers to all existing stack frames, starting with zero for the innermost frame, one for the frame that called it, and so on upward. These numbers do not really exist in your script; they are assigned by ruby-debug to give you a way of designating stack frames in ruby-debug commands.

4.11.2 Backtraces (‘where’)

A backtrace is essentially the same as the call stack: a summary of how your script got where it is. It shows one line per frame, for many frames, starting with the place that you are stopped at (frame zero), followed by its caller (frame one), and on up the stack.

where

Print the entire stack frame; info stack is an alias for this command. Each frame is numbered and can be referred to in the frame command; up and down add or subtract respectively to frame numbers shown. The position of the current frame is marked with -->.

(rdb:1) where --> #0 Object.gcd(a#Fixnum, b#Fixnum) at line /tmp/gcd.rb:6 #1 at line /tmp/gcd.rb:19

4.11.3 Selecting a frame (‘up’, ‘down’, ‘frame’)

Commands for listing source code in your script work on whichever stack frame is selected at the moment. Here are the commands for selecting a stack frame; all of them finish by printing a brief description of the stack frame just selected.

up [n]

Move n frames up the stack. For positive numbers n, this advances toward the outermost frame, to higher frame numbers, to frames that have existed longer. Using a negative n is the same thing as issuing a down command of the absolute value of the n. Using zero for n does no frame adjustment, but since the current position is redisplayed, it may trigger a resynchronization if there is a front end also watching over things.

n defaults to one. You may abbreviate up as u.

down [n]

Move n frames down the stack. For positive numbers n, this advances toward the innermost frame, to lower frame numbers, to frames that were created more recently. Using a negative n is the same as issuing a up command of the absolute value of the n. Using zero for n does no frame adjustment, but since the current position is redisplayed, it may trigger a resynchronization if there is a front end also watching over things.

n defaults to one.

frame [n] [thread thread-num]

The frame command allows you to move from one stack frame to another, and to print the stack frame you select. n is the the stack frame number or 0 if no frame number is given; frame 0 then will always show the current and most recent stack frame.

If a negative number is given, counting is from the other end of the stack frame, so frame -1 shows the least-recent, outermost or most “main” stack frame.

Without an argument, frame prints the current stack frame. Since the current position is redisplayed, it may trigger a resynchronization if there is a front end also watching over things.

If a thread number is given then we set the context for evaluating expressions to that frame of that thread.

4.12 Stopping and Resuming Execution

One important use of a debugger is to stop your program before it terminates, so that if your script runs into trouble you can investigate and find out why. However should your script accidentally continue to termination, it can be arranged for ruby-debug to not to leave the debugger without your explicit instruction. That way, you can restart the program using the same command arguments.

Inside ruby-debug, your script may stop for any of several reasons, such as a signal, a breakpoint, or reaching a new line after a debugger command such as step. You may then examine and change variables, set new breakpoints or remove old ones, and then continue execution.

4.12.1 Breakpoints (‘break’, ‘catch’, ‘delete’)

A breakpoint makes your script stop whenever a certain point in the program is reached. For each breakpoint, you can add conditions to control in finer detail whether your script stops.

You specify the place where your script should stop with the break command and its variants.

ruby-debug assigns a number to each breakpoint when you create it; these numbers are successive integers starting with one. In many of the commands for controlling various features of breakpoints you use the breakpoint number to say which breakpoint you want to change. Each breakpoint may be enabled or disabled; if disabled, it has no effect on your script until you enable it again.

break

Set a breakpoint at the current line.

break linenum

Set a breakpoint at line linenum in the current source file. The current source file is the last file whose source text was printed. The breakpoint will stop your script just before it executes any of the code on that line.

break filename:linenum

Set a breakpoint at line linenum in source file filename.

What may be a little tricky when specifying the filename is getting the name recognized by the debugger. If you get a message the message “No source file named ...”, then you may need to qualify the name more fully. To see what files are loaded you can use the info files or info file commands. If you want the name rdebug thinks of as the current file, use info line.

Here’s an example:

$ rdebug ~/ruby/gcd.rb 3 5 /home/rocky/ruby/gcd.rb:4 # Note this is the file name def gcd(a, b) (rdb:1) break gcd.rb:6 *** No source file named gcd.rb (rdb:1) info line Line 4 of "/home/rocky/ruby/gcd.rb" (rdb:1) break /home/rocky/ruby/gcd.rb:6 Breakpoint 1 file /home/rocky/ruby/gcd.rb, line 6 (rdb:1) break ~/ruby/gcd.rb:10 # tilde expansion also works Breakpoint 2 file /home/rocky/ruby/gcd.rb, line 10 (rdb:1) info file gcd.rb File gcd.rb is not cached (rdb:1) info file /home/rocky/ruby/gcd.rb File /home/rocky/ruby/gcd.rb 19 lines

break class:method

Set a breakpoint in class class method method. You can also use a period . instead of a colon :. Note that two colons :: are not used. Also note a class must be specified here. If the method you want to stop in is in the main class (i.e. the class that self belongs to at the start of the program), then use the name Object.

catch [exception] [ on | 1 | off | 0 ]

Set catchpoint to an exception. Without an exception name show catchpoints.

With an “on” or “off” parameter, turn handling the exception on or off. To delete all exceptions type “catch off”.

delete [breakpoints]

Delete the breakpoints specified as arguments.

If no argument is specified, delete all breakpoints (ruby-debug asks confirmation. You can abbreviate this command as del.

info breakpoints [n]

info break [n]

Print a table of all breakpoints set and not deleted, with the following columns for each breakpoint:

Breakpoint Numbers (‘Num’)

Enabled or Disabled (‘Enb’)

Enabled breakpoints are marked with ‘1’. ‘0’ marks breakpoints that are disabled (not enabled).

File and Line (‘file:line’)

The filename and line number inside that file where of breakpoint in the script. The file and line are separated with a colon.

Condition

A condition (an arithmetic expression) which when true causes the breakpoint to take effect.

If a breakpoint is conditional, info break shows the condition on the line following the affected breakpoint; breakpoint commands, if any, are listed after that.

info break with a breakpoint number n as argument lists only that breakpoint.

Examples:

(rdb:1) info break Breakpoints at following places: Num Enb What 1 y gcd.rb:3 2 y gcb.rb:28 if n > 1 (rdb:1) info break 2 2 y gcb.rb:28 if n > 1

4.12.2 Disabling breakpoints (‘disable’, ‘enable’)

Rather than deleting a breakpoint, you might prefer to disable it. This makes the breakpoint inoperative as if it had been deleted, but remembers the information on the breakpoint so that you can enable it again later.

You disable and enable breakpoints and catchpoints with the enable and disable commands, optionally specifying one or more breakpoint numbers as arguments. Use info break to print a list of breakpoints and catchpoints if you do not know which numbers to use.

A breakpoint or catchpoint can have any different states of enablement:

• Enabled. The breakpoint stops your program. A breakpoint set with the break command starts out in this state.
• Disabled. The breakpoint has no effect on your program.

You can use the following commands to enable or disable breakpoints and catchpoints:

disable breakpoints

Disable the specified breakpoints—or all breakpoints, if none are listed. A disabled breakpoint has no effect but is not forgotten. All options such as ignore-counts, conditions and commands are remembered in case the breakpoint is enabled again later. You may abbreviate disable as dis.

enable breakpoints

Enable the specified breakpoints (or all defined breakpoints). They become effective once again in stopping your program.

Breakpoints that you set are initially enabled; subsequently, they become disabled or enabled only when you use one of the commands above. (The command until can set and delete a breakpoint of its own, but it does not change the state of your other breakpoints; see Resuming Execution.)

4.12.3 Break conditions (‘condition’)

The simplest sort of breakpoint breaks every time your script reaches a specified place. You can also specify a condition for a breakpoint. A condition is just a Ruby expression.

Break conditions can be specified when a breakpoint is set, by using ‘if’ in the arguments to the break command. A breakpoint with a condition evaluates the expression each time your script reaches it, and your script stops only if the condition is true. They can also be changed at any time with the condition command.

condition bnum expression

Specify expression as the break condition for breakpoint bnum. After you set a condition, breakpoint bnum stops your program only if the value of expression is true (nonzero).

condition bnum

Remove the condition from breakpoint number bnum. It becomes an ordinary unconditional breakpoint.

The debugger does not actually evaluate expression at the time the condition command (or a command that sets a breakpoint with a condition, like break if …) is given, however.

Examples;

condition 1 x>5   # Stop on breakpoint 0 only if x>5 is true.
condition 1       # Change that! Unconditionally stop on breakpoint 1.

4.12.4 Resuming Execution (‘step’, ‘next’, ‘finish’, ‘continue’)

A typical technique for using stepping is to set a breakpoint (see section Breakpoints (‘break’, ‘catch’, ‘delete’)) at the beginning of the function or the section of your script where a problem is believed to lie, run your script until it stops at that breakpoint, and then step through the suspect area, examining the variables that are interesting, until you see the problem happen.

Continuing means resuming program execution until your script completes normally. In contrast, stepping means executing just one more “step” of your script, where “step” may mean either one line of source code. Either when continuing or when stepping, your script may stop even sooner, due to a breakpoint or a signal.

4.12.4.1 Step (‘step’)

step [+-] [count]

Continue running your program until the next logical stopping point and return control to ruby-debug. This command is abbreviated s.

Like, the programming Lisp, Ruby tends implemented in a highly expression-oriented manner. Therefore things that in other languages that may appear to be a single statement are implemented in Ruby as several expressions. For example, in an “if” statement or looping statements a stop is made after the expression is evaluated but before the test on the expression is made.

So it is common that a lines in the program will have several stopping points where in other debuggers of other languages there would be only one. Or you may have several statements listed on a line.

When stepping it is not uncommon to want to go to a different line on each step. If you want to make sure that on a step you go to a different position, add a plus sign (‘+’).

Note: step+ with a number count is not the same as issuing count step+ commands. Instead it uses count-1 step commands followed by a step+ command. For example, step+ 3 is the same as step; step; step+, not step+; step+; step+

If you find yourself generally wanting to use step+ rather than step, you may want to consider using set different, (see section Set/Show Different Line Forcing on Step/Next).

If you have different set on but want to temporarily disable it for the next step command, append a minus, or step-.

With a count, step will continue running as normal, but do so count times. If a breakpoint is reached, or a signal not related to stepping occurs before count steps, stepping stops right away.

4.12.4.2 Next (‘next’)

next [+] [count]

This is similar to step, but function or method calls that appear within the line of code are executed without stopping. As with step, if you want to make sure that on a step you go to a different position, add a plus sign (‘+’). Similarly, appending a minus disables a different temporarily, and an argument count is a repeat count, as for step.

4.12.4.3 Finish (‘finish’)

finish [frame-number]

Execute until selected stack frame returns. If no frame number is given, we run until the currently selected frame returns. The currently selected frame starts out the most-recent frame or 0 if no frame positioning (e.g up, down or frame) has been performed. If a frame number is given we run until frame frames returns.

If you want instead to terminate the program and debugger entirely, use quit (see section Quitting the debugger).

Note: Releases before Ruby version 1.8.7 show the return line as the first line of the method. Starting with version 1.8.7, the last line executed will be shown as the return line. http://rubyforge.org/tracker/?func=detail&atid=22040&aid=18749&group_id=426

4.12.4.4 Continue (‘continue’)

continue [line-specification]

c [line-specification]

Resume program execution, at the address where your script last stopped; any breakpoints set at that address are bypassed.

The optional argument line-specification allows you to specify a line number to set a one-time breakpoint which is deleted when that breakpoint is reached.

Should the program stop before that breakpoint is reached, for example, perhaps another breakpoint is reached first, in a listing of the breakpoints you won’t see this entry in the list of breakpoints.

4.13 ruby-debug settings (‘set args’, ‘set autoeval’..)

You can alter the way ruby-debug interacts with you using set commands.

The various parameters to set are given below. Each parameter name needs to to be only enough to make it unique. For example set diff is a suitable abbreviation for set different. The letter case is not important, so set DIFF or set Diff are also suitable abbreviations.

Many set commands are either “on” or “off”, and you can indicate which way you want set by supplying the corresponding word. The number 1 can be used for “on” and 0 for “off”. If none of these is given, we will assume “on”. A deprecated way of turning something off is by prefacing it with “no”.

Each set command has a corresponding show command which allows you to see the current value.

4.13.1 Set/Show args

set args [parameters]

Specify the arguments to be used if your program is rerun. If set args has no arguments, restart executes your program with no arguments. Once you have run your program with arguments, using set args before the next restart is the only way to run it again without arguments.

show args

Show the arguments to give your program when it is started.

4.13.2 Set/Show auto-eval

set autoeval [ on | 1 | off | 0 ]

Specify that debugger input that isn’t recognized as a command should be passed to Ruby for evaluation (using the current debugged program namespace). Note however that we first check input to see if it is a debugger command and only if it is not do we consider it as Ruby code. This means for example that if you have variable called n and you want to see its value, you could use p n, because just entering n will be interpreted as the debugger “next” command.

See also Run irb (‘irb’) and Set/Show auto-irb.

When autoeval is set on, you’ll get a different error message when you invalid commands are encountered. Here’s a session fragment to show the difference

(rdb:1) stepp Unknown command (rdb:1) set autoeval on autoeval is on. (rdb:1) stepp NameError Exception: undefined local variable or method `stepp' for ...

show args

Shows whether Ruby evaluation of debugger input should occur or not.

4.13.3 Set/Show auto-irb

set autoirb [ on | 1 | off | 0 ]

When your program stops, normally you go into a debugger command loop looking for debugger commands. If instead you would like to directly go into an irb shell, set this on. See also Set/Show auto-eval or Run irb (‘irb’) if you tend to use debugger commands but still want Ruby evaluation occasionally.

show autoirb

Shows whether the debugger will go into irb on stop or not.

4.13.4 Execute “list” Command on Every Stop

set autolist [ on | 1 | off | 0 ]

Normally, before prompting for debugger commands, the location and line text are displayed. However many people find it nicer to show more context around the line the program is stopped at. This can be done via the list command. See section Examining Program Source Files (‘list’).

However if you would like a list command to get run the program stops turn this setting on.

show autolist

Shows whether the debugger will list lines on stop or not.

4.13.5 Set/Show auto-reload

Set this on if the debugger should check to see if the source has changed since the last time it reread in the file if it has.

4.13.6 Set/Show basename

set basename [ on | 1 | off | 0 ]

Source filenames are shown as the shorter “basename” only. (Directory paths are omitted). This is useful in running the regression tests and may useful in showing debugger examples as in this text. You may also just want less verbose filename display.

By default filenames are shown as with their full path.

show basename

Shows the whether filename display shows just the file basename or not.

4.13.7 Set/Show Call Style

Sets how you want call parameters displayed; short shows just the parameter names; tracked is the most accurate but this adds overhead. On every call, scalar values of the parameters get saved. For non-scalar values the class is saved.

4.13.8 Set/Show Different Line Forcing on Step/Next

set different [ on | 1 | off | 0 ]

Due to the interpretive, expression-oriented nature of the Ruby Language and implementation, each line often contains many possible stopping points, while in a debugger it is often desired to treat each line as an individual stepping unit.

Setting “different” on will cause each step or next command to stop at a different line number. See also Step (‘step’) and Next (‘next’).

show different

Shows whether “set different” is in effect or not.

4.13.9 Set/Show Frame Full Path

4.13.10 Command History Parameters

show commands

Display the last ten commands in the command history.

show commands n

Print ten commands centered on command number n.

show history filename

Show the filename in which to record the command history (the list of previous commands of which a record is kept).

set history save [ on | 1 | off | 0 ]

Set whether to save the history on exit.

show history save

Show saving of the history record on exit.

set history size number

Set the maximum number of commands to save in the history.

show history size

Show the size of the command history, i.e. the number of previous commands to keep a record of.

4.13.11 Save Frame Binding on each Call

4.13.12 Set/Show Line Tracing

set linetrace [ on | 1 | off | 0 ]

Setting linetrace on will cause lines to be shown before run.

show linetrace

Shows whether line tracing is in effect or not.

4.13.13 Set/Show Line Tracing Style

set linetrace+ [ on | 1 | off | 0 ]

Setting linetrace+ on will cause consecutive trace lines not to be a duplicate of the preceding line-trace line. Note however that this setting doesn’t by itself turn on or off line tracing.

show linetrace

Shows whether the line tracing style is to show all lines or remove duplicates linetrace lines when it is a repeat of the previous line.

4.13.14 Set/Show Number of Lines Shown in a List Command

set listsize number-of-lines

Set number of lines to try to show in a list command.

show listsize

Shows the list-size setting.

4.13.15 Show Post-mortem Handling

Shows wither post-mortem debugging is in effect. Right now we don’t have the ability to change the state inside the debugger.

4.13.16 Display stack trace when ’eval’ raises exception

4.13.17 Set/Show Line Width

set width column-width

Set number of characters the debugger thinks are in a line. We also change OS environment variable COLUMNS.

show width

Shows the current width setting.

4.14 Program Information (‘info’)

This info command (abbreviated i) is for describing the state of your program. For example, you can list the current parameters with info args, or list the breakpoints you have set with info breakpoints or info watchpoints. You can get a complete list of the info sub-commands with help info.

info args

Method arguments of the current stack frame.

info breakpoints

Status of user-settable breakpoints

info display

All display expressions.

info files

Source files in the program.

info file filename [all|lines|mtime|sha1]

Information about a specific file. Parameter lines gives the number of lines in the file, mtime shows the modification time of the file (if available), sha1 computes a SHA1 has of the data of the file. all gives all of the above information.

info line

Line number and file name of current position in source.

info locals

Local variables of the current stack frame.

info program

Display information about the status of your program: whether it is running or not and why it stopped. If an unhandled exception occurred, the exception class and to_s method is called.

info stack

Backtrace of the stack. An alias for where. See section Backtraces (‘where’).

info thread [thread-number] [ terse | verbose]

If no thread number is given, we list info for all threads. terse and verbose options are possible. If terse, just give summary thread name information. See information under info threads for more detail about this summary information.

If verbose is appended to the end of the command, then the entire stack trace is given for each thread.

info threads

List information about currently-known threads. This information includes whether the thread is current (+), if it is suspended ($), or ignored (!); the thread number and the top stack item. If verbose is given then the entire stack frame is shown. Here is an example:

(rdb:7) info threads 1 #<Thread:0xb7d08704 sleep> ./test/thread1.rb:27 !2 #<Debugger::DebugThread:0xb7782e4c sleep> 3 #<Thread:0xb777e220 sleep> ./test/thread1.rb:11 4 #<Thread:0xb777e144 sleep> ./test/thread1.rb:11 5 #<Thread:0xb777e07c sleep> ./test/thread1.rb:11 6 #<Thread:0xb777dfb4 sleep> ./test/thread1.rb:11 + 7 #<Thread:0xb777deec run> ./test/thread1.rb:14 (rdb:1)

Thread 7 is the current thread since it has a plus sign in front. Thread 2 is ignored since it has a !. A “verbose” listing of the above:

(rdb:7) info threads verbose 1 #<Thread:0xb7d08704 sleep> #0 Integer.join at line test/thread1.rb:27 #1 at line test/thread1.rb:27 !2 #<Debugger::DebugThread:0xb7782e4c sleep> 3 #<Thread:0xb777e220 sleep> #0 sleep(count#Fixnum) at line test/thread1.rb:11 #1 Object.fn(count#Fixnum, i#Fixnum) at line test/thread1.rb:11 #2 at line test/thread1.rb:23 4 #<Thread:0xb777e144 sleep> #0 sleep(count#Fixnum) at line test/thread1.rb:11 #1 Object.fn(count#Fixnum, i#Fixnum) at line test/thread1.rb:11 #2 at line test/thread1.rb:23 5 #<Thread:0xb777e07c sleep> #0 sleep(count#Fixnum) at line test/thread1.rb:11 #1 Object.fn(count#Fixnum, i#Fixnum) at line test/thread1.rb:11 #2 at line test/thread1.rb:23 6 #<Thread:0xb777dfb4 sleep> #0 sleep(count#Fixnum) at line test/thread1.rb:11 #1 Object.fn(count#Fixnum, i#Fixnum) at line test/thread1.rb:11 #2 at line test/thread1.rb:23 + 7 #<Thread:0xb777deec run> #0 Object.fn(count#Fixnum, i#Fixnum) at line test/thread1.rb:14 #1 at line test/thread1.rb:23

info variables

Local and instance variables.

5. Post-Mortem Debugging

It is also to possible enter the debugger when you have an uncaught exception that is about to terminate our program. This is called post-mortem debugging. In this state many, of the debugger commands for examining variables and moving around in the stack still work. However some commands, such as those which imply a continuation of running code, no longer work.

The most reliable way to set up post-mortem debugging is to use the ‘--post-mortem’ option in invoking rdebug. See Options you can pass to rdebug. This traps/wraps at the debugger “load” of your Ruby script. When this is done, your program is stopped after the exception takes place, but before the stack has been unraveled. (Alas, it would be nice to if one could allow resetting the exception and continuing, but details of code in Ruby 1.8’s eval.c prevent this.)

If however you haven’t invoked rdebug at the outset, but instead call ruby-debug from inside your program, to set up post-mortem debugging set the post_mortem key in Debugger.start. Here’s an example modified from http://www.datanoise.com/articles/2006/12/20/post-mortem-debugging:

    $ cat t.rb 
    require 'rubygems'
    require 'ruby-debug' ; Debugger.start(:post_mortem => true)

    def t1
      raise 'test'
    end
    def t2
      t1
    end
    t2

    $ ruby t.rb 
    t.rb:8: raise 'test'
    (rdb:post-mortem) l=
    [3, 12] in t.rb
       3  
       4  Debugger.start
       5  Debugger.post_mortem
       6  
       7  def t1
    => 8    raise 'test'
       9  end
       10  def t2
       11    t1
       12  end
    (rdb:post-mortem)

Alternatively you can call Debugger.post_mortem() after rdebug has been started. The post_mortem() method can be called in two ways. Called without a block, it installs a global at_exit() hook that intercepts exceptions not handled by your Ruby script. In contrast to using the ‘--post-mortem’ option, when this hook occurs after the call stack has been rolled back. (I’m not sure if this in fact makes any difference operationally; I’m just stating it because that’s how it works.)

If you know that a particular block of code raises an exception you can enable post-mortem mode by wrapping this block inside a Debugger.post_mortem block

def offender
  1/0 
end
...
require "ruby-gems"
require "ruby-debug"
Debugger.post_mortem do
  ...
  offender
  ...
end

Once inside the debugger in post-mortem debugging, the prompt should be (rdb:post-mortem).

6. The Debugger Module and Class

6.1 The Debugger Module

6.1.1 Debugger.start, Debugger.started?, Debugger.stop, Debugger.run_script

In order to provide better debugging information regarding the stack frame(s) across all threads, ruby-debug has to intercept each call, save some information and on return remove it. Possibly, in Ruby 1.9 possibly this will not be needed. Therefore one has to issue call to indicate start saving information and another call to stop. Of course, If you call ruby-debug from the outset via rdebug this is done for you.

Debugger.start([options]) [block]

Turn on add additional instrumentation code to facilitate debugging. A system even table hook is installed and some variables are set up to access thread frames.

This needs to be done before entering the debugger; therefore a call to the debugger issue a Debugger.start call if necessary.

If called without a block, Debugger.start returns true if the debugger was already started. But if you want to know if the debugger has already been started Debugger.started? can tell you.

If a block is given, the debugger is started and yields to block. When the block is finished executing, the debugger stopped with the Debugger.stop method. You will probably want to put a call to debugger somwhere inside that block

But if you want to completely stop debugger, you must call Debugger.stop as many times as you called Debugger.start method.

The first time Debugger.start is called there is also some additional setup to make the restart command work. In particular, $0 and ARGV are used to set internal debugger variables.

Therefore you should make try to make sure that when Debugger.start is called neither of these variables has been modified. If instead you don’t want this behavior you can pass an options has and set the :init key to false. That is

Debugger.start(:init => false) # or Debugger.start({:init => false})

If you want post-mortem debugging, you can also supply :post_mortem => true in Debugger.start.

Debugger.started?

Boolean. Return true if debugger has been started.

Debugger.stop

Turn off instrumentation to allow debugging. Return true is returned if the debugger is disabled, otherwise it returns false. Note that if you want to stop debugger, you must call Debugger.stop as many times as you called the Debugger.start method.

Debugger.run_script(debugger-command-file, out = handler.interface)

Reads/runs the given file containing debugger commands. .rdebugrc is run this way.

Debugger.last_exception

If not nil, this contains $! from the last exception.

6.1.2 Debugger.context

As mentioned previously, Debugger.start instruments additional information to be obtained about the current block/frame stack. Here we describe these additional Debugger.context methods.

Were a frame position is indicated, it is optional. The top or current frame position (position zero) is used if none is given.

Debugger.context.frame_args [frame-position=0]

If track_frame_args? is true, return information saved about call arguments (if any saved) for the given frame position.

Debugger.context.frame_args_info [frame-position=0]

Debugger.context.frame_class [frame-position=0]

Return the class of the current frame stack.

Debugger.context.frame_file [frame-position=0]

Return the filename of the location of the indicated frame position.

Debugger.context.frame_id [frame-position=0]

Same as Debugger.context.method.

Debugger.context.frame_line [frame-position=0]

Return the filename of the location of the indicated frame position.

Debugger.context.frame_method [frame-position=0]

Symbol of the method name of the indicated frame position.

Debugger.context.stack_size

Return the number the size of the frame stack. Note this may be less that the actual frame stack size if debugger recording (Debugger.start) was turned on at after some blocks were added and not finished when the Debugger.start was issued.

6.1.3 Debugger.settings

Symbols listed here are keys into the Array Debugger.settings. These can be set any time after the ruby-debug is loaded. For example:

  require "ruby-debug/debugger"
  Debugger.settings[:autoeval] = true  # try eval on unknown debugger commands
  Debugger.listsize = 20  # Show 20 lines in a list command

:argv

Array of String. argv[0] is the debugged program name and argv[1..-1] are the command arguments to it.

:autoeval

Boolean. True if auto autoeval on. See section Set/Show auto-eval.

:autoirb

Fixnum: 1 if on or 0 if off. See section Set/Show auto-irb.

:autolist

Fixnum: 1 if on or 0 if off.

:basename

Boolean. True if basename on. See section Set/Show basename.

:callstyle

Symbol: :short or :last. See section Set/Show Call Style.

:debuggertesting

Boolean. True if currently testing the debugger.

:force_stepping

Boolean. True if stepping should go to a line different from the last step. See section Set/Show Different Line Forcing on Step/Next.

:full_path

Boolean. See section Set/Show Frame Full Path.

:listsize

Fixnum. Number of lines to show in a list command. See section Set/Show Number of Lines Shown in a List Command.

:reload_source_on_change

Boolean. True if we should reread the source every time it changes. See section Set/Show auto-reload.

:stack_trace_on_error

Boolean. True if we should produce a stack trace on error. See section Display stack trace when ’eval’ raises exception.

:width

Fixnum. Number of characters the debugger thinks are in a line. See section Set/Show Line Width.

6.2 The Debugger Class

add_breakpoint(file, line, expr)

Adds a breakpoint in file file, at line line. If expr is not nil, it is evaluated and a breakpoint takes effect at the indicated position when that expression is true. You should verify that expr is syntactically valid or a SyntaxError exception, and unless your code handles this the debugged program may terminate.

remove_breakpoint(bpnum)

When a breakpoint is added, it is assigned a number as a way to uniquely identify it. (There can be more than one breakpoint on a given line.) To remove a breakpoint, use remove_breakpoint with breakpoint number bpnum.

breakpoints

Return a list of the breakpoints that have been added but not removed.

6.2.1 The Debugger::Breakpoint Class

Breakpoint are objects in the Debugger::Breakpoint class.

enabled?

Returns whether breakpoint is enabled or not.

enabled=

Sets whether breakpoint is enabled or not.

expr

Expression which has to be true at the point where the breakpoint is set before we stop.

expr=

hit_condition

hit_condition=

hit_count

Returns the hit count of the breakpoint.

hit_value

Returns the hit value of the breakpoint.

hit_value=

Sets the hit value of the breakpoint.

id

A numeric name for the breakpoint which is used in listing breakpoints and removing, enabling or disabling the breakpoint

pos

Returns the line number of this breakpoint.

pos=

Sets the line number of this breakpoint.

source

Returns the file name in which the breakpoint occurs.

source=

Sets the file name in which the breakpoint occurs.

6.2.2 The Debugger::Context Class

Callbacks in Debugger:Context get called when a stopping point or an event is reached. It has information about the suspended program which enable a debugger to inspect the frame stack, evaluate variables from the perspective of the debugged program, and contains information about the place the debugged program is stopped.

at_line(file, line)

This routine is called when the debugger encounters a “line” event for which it has been indicated we want to stop at, such as by hitting a breakpoint or by some sort of stepping.

at_return(file, line)

This routine is called when the debugger encounters a “return” event for which it has been indicated we want to stop at, such as by hitting a finish statement.

debug_load(file, stop-initially)

This method should be used to debug a file. If the file terminates normally, nil is returned. If not a backtrace is returned.

The stop-initially parameter indicates whether the program should stop after loading. If an explicit call to the debugger is in the debugged program, you may want to set this false.

6.2.3 The Debugger::Command Class

Each command you run is in fact its own class. Should you want to extend ruby-debug, it’s pretty easy to do since after all ruby-debug is Ruby.

Each Debugger#Command class should have the a regexp method. This method returns regular expression for command-line strings that match your command. It’s up to you to make sure this regular expression doesn’t conflict with another one. If it does, it’s undefined which one will get matched and run

In addition the instance needs these methods:

execute

Code which gets run when you type a command (string) that matches the commands regular expression.

help

A string which gets displayed when folks as for help on that command

help_command

A name used the help system uses to show what commands are available.

Here’s a small example of a new command:

module Debugger
  class MyCommand < Command
  def regexp
    /^\s*me$/ # Regexp that will match your command
  end

  def execute
    puts "hi" # What you want to happen when your command runs
  end
  class << self
    def help_command
      'me' # String name of command
    end
    def help(cmd)
   # Some sort of help text.
   %{This does whatever it is I want to do}
   end
  end
end

Now here’s an example of how you can load/use it:

  require 'rubygems'
  require 'ruby-debug'
  require '/tmp/mycmd.rb' # or wherever
  Debugger.start
  x=1
  debugger
  y=2

And now an example of invoking it:

ruby /tmp/testit.rb:
/tmp/testit.rb:7
y=2
(rdb:1) help
ruby-debug help v0.10.5
Type 'help <command-name>' for help on a specific command
Available commands:
backtrace delete  enable help method putl    set    trace
break     disable eval   info next   quit    show   undisplay
catch     display exit   irb  p      reload  source up
condition down    finish list pp     restart step   var
continue edit     frame  me   ps     save    thread where
                         ^^ This is you

(rdb:1) help me
This does whatever it is I want to do
(rdb:1) me
hi
(rdb:1) 

6.3 Additions to Kernel

6.3.1 debugger

Kernel::debugger [steps=1]

Enters the debugger in the current thread after a stepping steps line-event steps. Before entering the debugger startup script is read.

Setting steps to 0 will cause a break in the debugger subroutine and not wait for eany line event to occur. This could be useful you want to stop right after the last statement in some scope.

Consider this example:

$ cat scope-test.rb require 'rubygems' require 'ruby-debug' ; Debugger.start 1.times do a = 1 debugger # implied steps=1 end y = 1 $ scope-test.rb:8 y = 1 (rdb:1) p a NameError Exception: undefined local variable or method `a' for main:Object (rdb:1)

The debugger will get at the line event which follows ‘a=1’. This is outside the do block scope where a is defined. If instead you want to stop before leaving the do loop it is possibly to stop right inside the debugger; call with 0 zero parameter:

$ cat scope-test.rb require 'rubygems' require 'ruby-debug' ; Debugger.start 1.times do a = 1 debugger(0) end y = 1 $ scope-test.rb:8 ../lib/ruby-debug-base.rb:175 Debugger.current_context.stop_frame = 0 (rdb:1) where --> #0 Kernel.debugger(steps#Fixnum) at line ../lib/ruby-debug-base.rb:175 #1 at line scope-test.rb:6 #2 at line scope-test.rb:4 (rdb:1) up #1 at line scope-test.rb:6 (rdb:1) p a 1 (rdb:1)

As seen above you will have to position the frame up one to be back in your debugged program rather than in the debugger.

6.3.2 breakpoint

breakpoint [steps=1]

An alias for debugger.

6.3.3 binding_n

binding_n [n=0]

Returns a ‘binding()’ for the n-th call frame. Note however that you need to first call ‘Debugger.start’ before issuing this call.

Here is an example showing its use to introspect what is going on inside irb (a Ruby program). One could put the require’s and Debugger.start inside your own Ruby code as well.

Here this an example showing use inside irb:

$ irb ruby-1.8.7-p302 > require 'rubygems' => true ruby-1.8.7-p302 > require 'ruby-debug-base' => true ruby-1.8.7-p302 > Debugger.start => true ruby-1.8.7-p302 > puts caller /tmp/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.8.7-p302/lib/ruby/1.8/irb/workspace.rb:52 :i n `irb_binding' /tmp/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.8.7-p302/lib/ruby/1.8/irb/workspace.rb:52 => nil ruby-1.8.7-p302 > eval "main", binding_n(2) => #<Object:0xb7762958 @prompt={:PROMPT_I=>"ruby-1.8.7-p302 > ", :PROMPT_N=>" ruby-1.8.7-p302 ?> ", :PROMPT_S=>"ruby-1.8.7-p302%l> ", :PROMPT_C=>"ruby-1.8.7-p302 > ", :AUTO_INDENT=>true, :RETURN=>" => %s \n"}> ruby-1.8.7-p302 >

A. Building and Installing from rubyforge’s Subversion Repository

Here are Unix-centric instructions. If you have Microsoft Windows or OSX some of the below may need adjusting.

A.1 Prerequisites: To build the package you’ll need at a minimum:

• Ruby (of course). Currently only version 1.8.6 and above but not version 1.9.x work.
• Ruby development headers. This typically includes a file called ‘ruby.h’
• A C compiler like GNU C (gcc)
• Rake
• Subversion (svn).

If you want to build the documentation and install Emacs files, you’ll also need:

• a POSIX shell like bash
• autoconf
• automake
• GNU Make
• texinfo

A.2 Basic Package Checkout and Installation

Check out the trunk of repository following the instructions at http://rubyforge.org/scm/?group_id=1900 For example on a Unixy system, this may work:

  mkdir ruby-debug
  cd ruby-debug
  svn checkout svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/ruby-debug/trunk trunk

In order to make the Ruby gems, ruby-debug and ruby-debug-base, get yourself into the trunk directory after the code has been checked out and run:

  cd trunk # This is the same trunk checked out above.
  rake package

If all goes well you should have some gem files put in the directory pkg. Use the gem command to install that.

  sudo gem install ruby-debug-*.gem   # See gem help for other possibilities

If all goes well the rdebug script has been installed ruby-debug is now ready to run. But if everything goes well you might want to run the built-in regression tests to make sure everything is okay. See step 3 below.

If the gem install didn’t work,’t there may be a problem with your C compiler or the Ruby headers are not installed.

A.3 Trying Out without Installing

You don’t have to build a gem file to try out ruby debug. In fact when developing new features for ruby-debug, developers often you want to try it out before installing. If you have a problem in the latter part of step 1 you may want to try this approach since we go into a little more detail as to what happens under the covers when you do the gem install.

Run (from trunk)

  rake lib

This creates a Makefile and builds the ruby-debug shared library. (On Unix the name is ruby_debug.so).

Once this is done you can run the debugger as you would rdebug using the script runner.sh. For example (again from trunk)

  ./runner.sh ~/my-ruby-program.rb

A.4 Running the Regression Tests

We’ve put together some basic tests to make sure ruby-debug is doing what we think it should do. To run these (from trunk):

  rake test

If you didn’t build the ruby-debug shared library and skipped step 2, don’t worry rake test will do step 2 for you. You should see a line that ends something like:

  Finished in 2.767579 seconds.

  12 tests, 35 assertions, 0 failures, 0 errors

The number of seconds, tests, and assertions may be different from the above. However you should see exactly “0 failures, 0 errors.”

A.5 Building the Documentation and Testing/Installing Emacs Files

Of course, I recommend you read the ruby-debug manual that comes with the package. If you have the prerequisites described above, run this once:

  sh ./autogen.sh

Then run:

  ./configure
  make
  make test           # Runs Emacs regression tests
  sudo make install   # Or arrange to do this as root

A.6 Building for Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is “special” and building ruby-debug-base on it requires extra care. A problem here seems to be that the “One-click” install is compiled using Microsoft Visual Studio C, version 6 which is not sold anymore and is rather old.

Instead I suggest building via mingw/msys. http://eigenclass.org/hiki.rb?cmd=view&p=cross+compiling+rcovrt&key=mingw has instructions on how to do. Some amendments to these instructions.

First, those instructions are a little GNU/Linux centric. If you are using Ubuntu or Debian, then this should be the easiest to follow the instructions. On Ubuntu or Debian there is a mingw3 Debian package. Installing that will give you the cross compiler that is a prerequisite. Alternatively if you are running MS Windows I notice that cygwin also has a mingw package. Or possibly you could use MinGW directly. For other OS’s you might have to build a cross-compiler, i.e. gcc which emits win32 code and can create a win32 DLL.

After you have a cross compiler you need to download the Ruby source and basically build a ruby interpreter. The cross-compile.sh script works although when I downloaded it, it had lots of blank space at the beginning which will mess up the Unix magic interpretation. That is remove the blanks in front of #/bin/sh.

On my system, this script fails in running make ruby because the fake.rb that got created needed to have a small change:

	    ALT_SEPARATOR = "\"; \

should be:

	    ALT_SEPARATOR = "\\"; \

After fixing this, run make ruby. Also, I needed to run make rubyw.

And then make install as indicated.

Once all of that’s in place, the place you want be is in ruby-debug/trunk/ext/win32, not ruby-debug/ext.

So let’s say you’ve installed the cross-compiled install ruby in /usr/local/ruby-mingw32/. Here then are the commands to build ruby-debug-base-xxx-mswin32.gem:

   cd .../ruby-debug/trunk/ext/win32 
   ruby -I /usr/local/ruby-mingw32/lib/ruby/1.8/i386-mingw32 ../extconf.rb
   make # Not rake
   cd ../..   # back in ruby-debug/trunk
   rake win32_gem

Class, Module Method Index

Command Index