Winpdb - A Platform Independent Python Debugger

Someone should slap these guys on the head.

Today I visited the Winpdb Google Group and was shocked to see it was swamped with SPAM. I never got notifications for any of that SPAM. So, I thought what the hell, I will clear the mess in a second. I was in for a surprise. Google Groups admin panel is the worst ever created for a web service. To delete each SPAM message you need to click five (!) links, and if you also want to report the message as SPAM you need to click once more. you can’t select several discussions or messages or delete all message by a bot author.

The team members who created Google Groups should be sent to Siberia and never allowed to touch a computer again.

I just noticed that exception analysis in Winpdb is broken since September, when I made it compatible with Python 3.0. In case you are interested the fix is available in the repository which you can pull if you install Mercurial (Source Control Management System).

To pull the latest version of Winpdb from the repository do the following:

hg init
hg pull http://winpdb.org/cgi-bin/hgweb.cgi
hg update

If no bugs are reported I will soon release the fix officially.
Note that Python 2.6 and Python 3.0 seem to report the wrong line in exception tracebacks.

Tip the author of this program

Would you ever leave a restaurant table without tipping the waiter?
Would you ever pause to enjoy street music without tipping the players?
Would you ever get out of a cab without tipping the driver?

If you don’t think Winpdb is worth a cent or a minute of your time, why use it?

Python 2.6 users, read this:

I posted a new Windows installer for Winpdb 1.4.0 Tychod that installs on Python 2.6. The original installer was built with Python 2.5 and does not install on Python 2.6 (which is the result of a bug in Python). There are no changes to the package files.

Hey, GNU/Linux users: Winpdb runs on GNU/Linux! and is actually being developed on GNU/Linux.

For those of you who like living on the bleeding (and buggy) edge of the software world I have uploaded a version of Winpdb compatible with Python 3.0beta1 and Python 2.6beta1 to the mercurial repository: http://winpdb.org/cgi-bin/hgweb.cgi. Instructions are available at http://winpdb.org/cgi-bin/moin.cgi/WinpdbSource

If you find anything that got broken with this update please let me know.

Keep in mind that you can’t actually run the Winpdb GUI in Python 3.0 since wxPython is not available for that version yet. What you should be able to do is to start the debugged script in Python 3.0 and attach to it from a Winpdb instance running under Python 2.5. On a Windows system you would do it with something of this sort:

c:\python30\python.exe rpdb2.py -d myscript.py
c:\python25\python.exe winpdb.py

For this to work you need to either install the debugger into both Python installations or not install it at all. Remember that you can use Winpdb without installing it. In any case you must not try to run a copy of Winpdb installed into one Python version with the interpreter of another Python version.

Heads up for the Python development team: If you run idle.py in either Python 3 or 2.6 under the control of a debugger (any debugger including pdb.py) an erroneous exception is raised in line 295 of multicall.py due to a bug in the interpreter. I will try to be a good citizen and file a report this week. If I didn’t do it it is probably because the dog ate my notebook.

Would you like to have a usable GUI builder for Python? Do you feel as I do that such a tool is missing? I have been planning it in the past months and an initial document is available at http://winpdb.org/cgi-bin/moin.cgi/GuiBuilder. I would love to have your opinion. I will only be able to develop this project effectively if I can find a sponsor so it is currently being developed rather slowly on my spare time.

Winpdb has always been a little spartan. On purpose actually, since I prefer to invest my available energy on endlessly improving and fixing the debugger engine (rpdb2). In fact, the Winpdb GUI was originally intended as a simple reference front end to rpdb2.

The time, however, has come to make long due usability improvements to the GUI and this is where you can come in.

I am looking for people who are willing to contribute improvements to the Winpdb GUI in a coordinated effort. Contact me if you are interested or comment here.

The other possible way to contribute to the development of Winpdb is to send some MONEY! Or as Richard Stallman put it: “There is a good reason for users of software to feel a moral obligation to contribute to its support. Developers of free software are contributing to the users’ activities, and it is both fair and in the long-term interest of the users to give them funds to continue.”

If you need some further encouragement, try to imagine me as a naked monk sitting on the filthy pavement with an empty cup and a broken keyboard, endlessly clicking its dirty keys composing Python zen poetry that you find useful. Now, focus on the empty cup.

mod_python 3.3 causes a segmentation fault in Apache when evaluating type(req.finfo) where req is the request object passed to a mod_python handler.

In case you wondered who on earth would try to evaluate that expression, Winpdb does, if you try to expand the req object in the namespace viewer.

But don’t you worry, there is a work around available. The latest Winpdb version in the SVN repository tiptoes around that nasty request member. You can get it from: winpdb.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/winpdb/trunk/winpdb/ or with the following command:
svn co https://winpdb.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/winpdb/trunk/winpdb winpdb

Thanks to Greg for reporting this problem in the forum.

A tip of the day for conclusion: When debugging a mod_python script on a forking Apache server, each request may be handled by a different processes. To be able to debug such a script you may need to re-attach Winpdb to the new process with each request or configure your Apache server to use a single process for the purpose of debugging.

If you see too many ‘N/A’ in the name-space viewer try the latest version from the subversion repository:

svn co https://winpdb.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/winpdb/trunk/winpdb winpdb

You can also browse online at:
http://winpdb.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/winpdb/trunk/winpdb/

I keep getting complaints from users who overlooked Winpdb since its name sounds Windows specific. I am scratching my head for a new name for some time now and will welcome your ideas.