Add your useful tools here -- editors, debuggers and other utils that really help with the process.:
Debuggers
Name |
Platform |
Notes |
All |
The standard library debugger, part of all Python installations. |
|
Unix,Mac OS X |
A visual, console-based, full-screen debugger, designed as a more comfortable drop-in replacement for pdb. (also supports IPython) |
|
All (CPython) |
A REPL-first debugger where breakpoint drops into a >>> prompt at the current execution state. Debugging is done directly in the REPL, with !commands for stepping and frame control. Changes to variables and function definitions persist across execution. |
|
All |
A .pdbrc for Python's standard debugger, pdb, which allows you to run arbitrary Python commands on pdb startup. |
|
gdb |
*nix |
See DebuggingWithGdb |
Unix, Windows, Mac OS X |
A rewrite of pdb/pydb with closer compliance to gdb . This is the only debugger that I (rocky) am aware of that uses decompilation technology (also written by me), so that you can debug CPython bytcode files where no source code is available. Decompilation is also used to provide sensible debugging inside exec strings, and more accurate position information when stopped or in showing a stack trace. In addition to the features of pdb/pydb, the debugger supports syntax coloring (via pygments), has extensive on-line help (in rendered reStructuredText), readthedocs documentation, command completion, a smarter eval, debugger macros written in Python, and more. |
|
Unix, Windows, Mac OS X |
An extension of the pdb module of the standard library. It is meant to be fully compatible with its predecessor, yet it introduces a number of new features to make your debugging experience as nice as possible. |
|
Unix, Windows, Mac OS X |
A set of debugging decorators which respects Django's settings in case the package is withing a Django project. It allows a user to PDB into a function, do a Line profiler, inspect an object and Disasemble the function. Archived/abandoned by author in 2023 |
|
Windows, Linux |
Fork of winpdb after it went unmaintained. Project released a v2.0 which supports Python 3, but has not released anything since 2020. |
|
All |
Improved version of pdb that is part of IPython but also can be used separately |
|
linux, python>=3.7 |
fully-featured remote debugger: attaching to running programs, especially usefull to debug programms with TUI |
Debuggers that are no longer maintained:
Name |
Platform |
Notes |
Windows |
A python IDE with remote debugging capability. |
|
Unix,Linux,Windows |
An advanced python debugger, with support for smart breakpoints, multiple threads, namespace modification, embedded debugging, encrypted communication and speed of up to 20 times that of pdb. |
|
Unix, Windows, OS X |
Obsolete. An expanded version of pdb loosely based on the gdb command set. The debugger supports thread debugging, signal handling, non-interactive tracing, and much more. This was written in the era of Python 2.4-2.6. See trepan3k below. |
|
Unix |
pdb extension with curses module that adds console window with source code. |
|
Mac OS X, OS/2, Unix, VMS and Windows |
Both a CPYTHON and a JPYTHON(JYTHON) debugging framework which has been integrated inside Jedit as a standard jedit pluggin. |
|
Unix,Windows |
Debugger for Python programs with a graphical user interface. It uses bdb (part of stdlib) but adds a GUI and has some powerful features like object browser, windows for variables, classes, functions, exceptions, stack, conditional breakpoints, etc. |
|
Unix, Windows,Mac OS X |
(Predecessor of rpdb2 and winpdb) rpdb.py improves pdb's usability and adds support for remote debugging, multiple threads debugging, post mortem of unhandled exceptions, and for debugging of embedded scripts. |
|
Unix |
Graphical front-end for command-line debuggers such as GDB, DBX, WDB, Ladebug, JDB, XDB, the Perl debugger, the bash debugger, GNU Make debugger, or the Python debugger. DDD displays data structures as graphs and plots. A deprecated version of pydb comes with this package. For GNU make debugging, use ddd-test5 |
|
*nix, Windows |
Pyclewn allows you to use Vim as a front end to a debugger. Pyclewn currently supports gdb and pdb. |
IDEs with Debug Capabilities
Since debugging is one of the the functions that usually helps make up the "Integrated" in "Integrated Development Environment", expect that most IDEs will have debugging capability even if not listed explicitly here (see IntegratedDevelopmentEnvironments).
Mac OS X, Linux, Windows |
For teaching/learning programming. Focused on program runtime visualization. Provides stepping both in statements and expressions, no-hassle variables view, separate mode for explaining references etc. |
|
Mac OS X, Linux, Windows |
Allows debugging multiple threads in Jython and Python (It is featured as a 'Python IDE' plugin for Eclipse). |
|
Mac OS X, Linux, Windows |
An IDE that can debug multiple threads and multiple processes, including code launched from the IDE or code launched externally, running under CPython and Stackless Python. The GUI includes a Debug Probe, which is a Python shell running in the context of the paused debug process. The IDE's debugger also features value watching (by symbolic path, object reference, or a combination), conditional breakpoints, move program counter, debugging of tests running in the integrated unit testing tool, special support for Django, and How-Tos for debugging code running under Flask, web3py, Django, Google App Engine, wxPython, PyQt, Tkinter, Blender, Maya, NUKE, and many other packages. |
|
Mac OS X, Linux, Windows |
ActiveState have retired Komodo, the code is open sourced at https://github.com/ActiveState/OpenKomodoIDE |
|
Mac OS X, Linux, Windows |