Uscope

Dev tools

debugger

SHOW HN2025

262points
132comments
#220of 3,837 in 2025
Top 6%of 2025 by points

How HN took it

MixedNo clear lean

8 positive, 10 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 5 critical, out of 23 comments about the project. Thread score +0.15.

Idea: 4 for, 4 againstExecution: 0 for, 1 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Excitement about a new Linux debugger

    From 3 comments
    • This is great to see. It'd be lovely if Linux gets a decent debugger. Another project to keep an eye on is https://github.com/EpicGamesExt/raddebugger Although, they haven't…
      tux1968 on HN
    • This is exciting! I use GDB and LLDB, but their TUIs/CLIs make certain things difficult (I feel like debugging seriously benefits from a proper GUI) and graphical front-ends I've…
      mort96 on HN
    • ``` > Build as a library so other people can build other interesting things as well ``` I LOVE this! I firmly believe so much tech has gone to shit because things are no longer…
      godelski on HN

Objections

  • Rewriting gdb is unnecessary; enhancing gdb would be better

    From 2 comments
    • It's not clear to me why we'd need a new debugger instead of GDB enhancements. GDB has an extensible, modern C++ codebase with literal decades of hard earned knowledge baked into…
      quotemstr on HN
    • GDB (I don't use LLDB) is fully programmable and has multiple user interfaces (TUI, Emacs, DDD, graphical frontends and various .gdbinit configurations that emulate SoftICE L&F).…
      armitron on HN
  • Linux kernel debugging interfaces like ptrace are hard to build on

    From 1 comment
    • This is definitely an ambitious project, and I worry that you are biting off more than you can chew in doing so. (I've attempted my fair share of debugger projects in the past).…
      jcranmer on HN

Requests

  • Support debugging multithreaded programs

    From 1 comment
    • This is definitely an ambitious project, and I worry that you are biting off more than you can chew in doing so. (I've attempted my fair share of debugger projects in the past).…
      jcranmer on HN
  • Support Python and C extensions in the same process

    From 1 comment
    • Super supportive as I really value debuggers as tools even tho they are horror shows to use! > Similarly, the following features are non-goals of the project: > Supporting…
      breatheoften on HN
  • Socket-based control interface

    From 1 comment
    • Nice project! One killer feature would be the ability to connect to the debugger via a socket and control it. Gdb has this interface and for some use cases it's great. As one of…
      titzer on HN

Questions

  • Is it built on gdb or gdbserver

    From 1 comment
    • Yay this is awesome! GDB is a buggy (https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=18772 https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=9425) mess and rough code quality, I've…
      IAmLiterallyAB on HN
  • Would it work on FreeBSD

    From 1 comment
    • How entwined is it with Linux specific APIs? Eg, how hard would it be to port to FreeBSD?
      drewg123 on HN

Alternatives named

  • gdb and lldb

    From 2 comments
    • > The available Linux debuggers are gdb and lldb. They both suck. They crash all the time, don't understand the data types I care about, and they don't make the data I need…
      feelamee on HN
    • Everyone here seems to thing GDB is awful. It's been a while for me but I remember using front-ends like Eclipse's CDT or similar and didn't find that experience so bad. Do most…
      zwieback on HN
  • rr and Undo

    From 2 comments
    • If you're willing to deal with enterprise pricing, Undo [0] implements something reasonably comparable to rr without the hardware timer requirements. [0] https://undo.io/
      AlotOfReading on HN
    • rr should work on any remotely modern Intel system, and generally on AMD's Zen CPUs too. Unless you're in a virtualized environment (some of which are supported) or a more…
      khuey on HN
  • raddebugger

    From 2 comments
    • This is great to see. It'd be lovely if Linux gets a decent debugger. Another project to keep an eye on is https://github.com/EpicGamesExt/raddebugger Although, they haven't…
      tux1968 on HN
    • Keep at it! raddbg is one worth watching too (currently only Windows x64) https://github.com/EpicGamesExt/raddebugger
      s3graham on HN

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

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