Through Browser Debugger

Through Browser Debugger (TBD) is a debugger for the Python language which uses any web browser as the user interface. Simply run TBD with the name of the application to debug and then point your browser at localhost.

Features

• Should work with any web browser (only tested on Firefox so far) and any os (tested on Windows and Linux)
• Provides all standard debugging features:
• Step, Next, Return, Continue
• Display of source code with line numbers
• Setting breakpoints
• Display of Local and Global variables and the stack
• Can be used to debug software on remote machines
• Graphical User Interface without any need for cross platform widget libraries

Screenshot

I have mainly been working on getting the debugging back end working so far so the GUI is extremely crude at the moment. I hope to have it tiddied up very shortly. Here is how it looks so far.

Current Issues

• Under Linux Ctrl-C will exit TDB however the port does not appear to be released for up to 30 seconds
• Under Windows TDB can only be exited by killing the python process in Task Manager

Future plans (suggestions welcome!):

• User interface is still in the early stages
• Ability to view inner details of objects
• Interactive Console
• AJAX support
• Integration with Web application frameworks (eg. Turbogears) for debugging webapps
• Single file with no dependencies vs. dependencies on libraries to make life easier (therefore requiring a full installation)
• Extend (or reimplement) to debug other languages (primarily Ruby)
• Improve everything ;)

Installation

1. Install the Cheetah Template Engine (the only dependency)
2. Download tbd.py (grab it from SVN via the sourceforge project page)
3. Debug your python application with the command:
   python tbd.py your_script.py
4. Open your browser to http://localhost:8000 (or the port number listed by TDB) and your application is ready to debug