[Python-Dev] pdb: should next command be extended?

Fri Aug 12 03:18:30 CEST 2005

On Aug 11, 2005, at 3:02 PM, Anthony Baxter wrote:
> On Monday 08 August 2005 20:13, Ilya Sandler wrote:
>>>> At OSCON, Anthony Baxter made the point that pdb is currently one 
>>> of the
>>> more unPythonic modules.
>>>>>>> What is unpythonic about pdb? Is this part of Anthony's presentation
>> online? (Google found a summary and slides from presentation but they
>> don't say anything about pdb's deficiencies)
>>>> It was a lightning talk, I'll put the slides up somewhere at some 
> point.
> My experience with pdb is that it's more or less impossible to 
> extend or
> subclass it in any way, and the code is pretty nasty. In addition, 
> pretty
> much everyone I asked "which modules in the std lib need to be 
> seriously
> fixed" listed pdb first (and sometimes first, second and third).

One thing PDB needs is a mode that runs as a background thread and 
opens up a socket so that another Python process can talk to it, for 
embedded/remote/GUI debugging. This is what IDLE, Wing, and WinPDB 
(haven't tried it yet <http://www.digitalpeers.com/pythondebugger/ 
index.html>) do.
Unfortunately, most of the other Python IDE's run interpreters and 
debuggers in-process, so it makes them unsuitable for developing GUI 
and embedded apps and opens you up for crashing the IDE as well as 
whatever code you're trying to fix.
-bob