Pythonwin Debugger

Existing document:

\Pythonwin\doc\debugger\index.html

Contents:

• Pythonwin Debugger Documentation
  • pywin.debugger package
  • Debugger Interface
  • GUI versus Non-GUI Issues
  • How It Works
• Pythonwin Debugger Tutorial
  • Preparation for the tutorial
  • Starting the Debugger
  • Using the Debugger
  • Setting a Break-point
  • Stepping through the code
  • Examining the current context
  • Post-mortem diagnostics
• Pythonwin Debugger Known Problems

News Flash:

We take full advantage of Scintilla <http://www.scintilla.org/> from Neil Hodgson. This offers a much better interface, including Visual C++/VB type indicators for breakpoints in the left column, etc.

This document gives a general overview of the Pythonwin Debugger package.

• If you are using or looking at this package for the first time, you should check out the Pythonwin Debugger Tutorial.

• For reference information, check out the general Pythonwin Debugger Documentation.

• If something doesn’t work, please read the Pythonwin Debugger Known Problems with the debugger before mailing me!

Introduction

This package is a general-purpose debugger for Python on Win32 platforms. It is a full-blown GUI debugger with the following features:

• Works from almost any Python program - be it inside Pythonwin, a console “Python.exe” program - even from within a COM object hosted by Visual Basic or Microsoft Internet Explorer (but not from a Tkinter app, apparently?)

• MSVC style debugging interface, including breakpoint etc indicators in the margin, and dockable debugging windows.

• Call-stack display lets you see each individual stack entry, and examine the local and global variables.

• Interactive window fully operable in the context of the code being debugged!

There used to be more out-of-date stuff here, but not any more :-) The tutorial is also a little out of date, but is worth following along with (but as you notice the old screen shots, say a praise for Scintilla!)

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For questions or comments about the debugger, send email to MarkH@ActiveState.com (Mark Hammond).