winpdb alternatives and similar packages

Note from Philippe Fremy

Port of winpdb-reborn to Python 3 / WxPython 4 is work-in-progress. There are still some rough edges.

Please help by providing bug reports and ideally bug fixes. All pull requests are welcome.

Build Status Linux

Winpdb Reborn - A GPL Python Debugger, reborn from the unmaintained Winpdb

by Philippe Fremy as maintainer, and Nir Aides as initial author

Website: https://github.com/bluebird75/winpdb

Description

Winpdb Reborn is a portable (Windows / Linux / macOS) standalone graphical debugger for Python. It focuses on making debugging easy and does not include any IDE features. It has very little dependencies (only wxPython for the GUI).

Features:

• graphical interface with stack/variable inspection, breakpoints and more
• breakpoints: on lines or functions, with possible conditions, load/save breakpoint info
• multi-threaded debugging
• smart handling of fork, follow parent or child
• remote debugging: GUI on one computer, program to debug on another computer with encrypted communication
• up to 20 times quicker than pdb, the default Python debugger (on which many other debuggers are built)
• debug PyPy scripts

Note: The original Winpdb was no longer maintained since the v1.4.8 release in

1. With the agreement of the author (Nir Aides), I (Philippe Fremy) am providing a maintained version with new functionality under the Winpdb Reborn name.

Requirements

Platform supported:

• Linux
• Windows XP and above
• macOS is probably working but not tested

To run Winpdb Reborn:

• CPython 3.5 or above and wxPython 4

This version is for Python 3 only. A stable version of Winpdb for Python 2 is available on PyPi: https://pypi.org/project/winpdb-reborn/1.5.0/ and in the branch winpdb-reborn-python2 . You will need Python 2.7 and WxPython 3 to run it.

Note that running Winpdb with PyPy is possible, by launching rpdb2.py with pypy and using the Winpdb GUI to connect to it.

Winpdb Reborn is NOT compatible with Jython or IronPython.

Release history

Version 2.0.0.1

• fix packaging mistake which prevented winpdb to run

Version 2.0.0

• port Winpdb to wxPython 4 / Python 3
• the effort is still in progress

Version 1.5.0

• First official release by Philippe Fremy
• Add support for Python 3 GUI (using wxPython Phoenix)
• Allow installation of all dependencies with pip
• Add support for Python 2.7, 3.5 and 3.6
• Drop support for Python 2.5 and wxPython 2.6, min versions are now Python 2.6 and wxPython 3.0
• rpdb2.py is now compatible with Python 3
• Add support for PyPy to Rpdb2
• Can now specify a different Python interpreter for the program under debug, allowing PyPy support
• Avoid crash on Windows when closing debugger
• Support drag’n drop of files to load source code
• Add unit-tests and a functional test suite
• Add a Continuous Integration server with travis CI
• Can adjust behavior of debugger to activate/deactivate the breakpoint before exit
• fix for launching Gnome Terminal properly

Version 1.4.8

Last stable version released by Nir Aides.

Installation

(not working yet until the new version is released).

The standard way to install Winpdb Reborn is with pip, as administrator/root::

# python -m pip install winpdb-reborn

You must also install the wxPython for your version of Python:

• for Python 3, wxPython is automatically installed as a dependency with pip
• for Python 2, check https://sourceforge.net/projects/wxpython/files/wxPython/

Winpdb Reborn is not packaged yet by any Linux distro. If your package manager proposes to install Winpdb, that’s the old unmaintained Winpdb which works neither with Python 2.7 nor with Python 3.

Additional installation methods

To install from a checkout or from an archive::

# python setup.py install -f

No install mode

If you don’t want to install Winpdb Reborn, you can still try it by calling it explicitly with your program to debug::

$ python /the/path/to/winpdb.py my_program.py 

Where do the files go ?

The setup script copies rpdb2.py and winpdb.py modules to the Python site-packages folder. The scripts rpdb2 and winpdb are copied to the Python binaries (scripts) folder. On Linux, this folder is usually /usr/bin and is in the path by default. On Windows, this folder is %PYTHONHOME%\Scripts, where you should see a winpdb.exe and rpdb2.exe .

Usage

If you have installed Winpdb Reborn, the simplest way to launch it is::

$ python -m winpdb my_program.py

or even::

$ winpdb my_program.py

Find out about the other command-line options with –-help .

Documentation

Use the -h or --help command-line flag for command-line help.

Inside Winpdb/Rpdb2 console, use the help command for detailed description of debugger commands.

Online documentation is available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20180724122042/http://www.winpdb.org/docs

An introduction to Winpdb usage, by Pr Norm Matloff: http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/%7Ematloff/winpdb.html

A detailed Winpdb tutorial is also available at: https://code.google.com/archive/p/winpdb/wikis/DebuggingTutorial.wiki

Community

You can ask questions about Winpdb Reborn on the dedicated Google group: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/winpdb

Feel free to raise issues or propose improvements on the GitHub repository: https://github.com/bluebird75/winpdb/issues