I really like debugging in a simple shell (à la gdb) so this would really be nice for my workflow.
[0] https://pyrasite.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ [1] https://github.com/prompt-toolkit/ptpython
I'm working on a live coding environment for python[0], based on emacs' SLIME mode for common lisp. It's quite new and I haven't written documentation yet, but all the main SLIME features not covered by LSP are working.
- All results printed in the repl are presentations that can be inspected, copied around and used again -- as the actual object, not just it's str or repr text like in most repls.
- On any uncaught exception you get an interactive backtrace buffer where you can jump to source, see arguments and local variables for each frame, and eval code or open a repl in the context of any stack frame. And the arguments and local variables aren't just text but presentations you can open in the object inspector, copy to the repl and use, etc.
- A thread viewer where you can view stats on all threads, get the backtrace of any thread, spawn a repl in the context of any of it's stack frames, etc.
- An async task viewer with somewhat more limited functionality as async tasks don't keep a full stack.
- A pretty documentation browser using mmontone's slime-doc-contribs.
- The ability to trace functions, where again their arguments and return values aren't just printed as text, but as presentations, that you can open in the inspector, copy to the repl, etc.
- I took some code from IPython's autoreload extension, so interactive development without restarting and losing state mostly works.
If you want to collaborate or just talk ideas that'd be fantastic, I don't have any experience with the Pharo/Smalltalk world.
BossingAround•7h ago
- It'll be possible to print stack traces without modifying or stopping the program.
- It'll be possible to exec into a program at runtime without modifying it.
I'm not sure why the author mentions remote_pdb - this has been with Python for some time, and works since Py 2.7? Not sure what changes in 3.14 for remote_pdb.
What I'm hoping though is improved tooling around debugging Python. Currently, in my experience, VSCode (more specifically, debugpy) provides pretty much unmatched remote debugging capabilities, and I'm really hoping we can have a standardized way to connect any IDE to remote Python processes with the same UX as VSCode.
I would love to use something like Zed, but without remote debugging abilities, the IDE is pretty useless for me. Perhaps better devs don't need remote debugging, but I depend on it more than a junior in college CS program depends on AI :)
jasonjmcghee•7h ago