Demistifying Rust Debugging
summary
Survey shows >50% still use println, ~31% use IDEs, 10% use GDB/LLDB and 6% never debug, and the talk maps why: debug info comes from DWARF/PDB, debuggers are vanilla GDB/LLDB/WinDBG with UI frontends and Rust-specific behavior is added by rust-lldb/rust-gdb pretty-printers (Python synthetic providers) and private forks, which break when Vec internals change. A working prototype compiles expressions to MIR-based expression eval and ships partial compiler output to the debugger for better runtime evaluation.
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chapters (15)
- 0:00Rust debugging intro
- 1:11Common Rust debugging methods
- 2:58Why print debugging
- 9:05Debugging formats and operating systems
- 10:53Low-level debuggers
- 13:01Vanilla LLDB with Rust
- 16:14Rust debuggers and printers
- 20:55History of debugger forks
- 24:32Pretty printers for Rust
- 27:42LLDB processing Rust vars
- 31:20Debug/display trait limits
- 33:50Evaluating debugger expressions
- 36:16Rust debugging quick guide
- 38:45Interactive debugging benefits
- 40:30Closing remarks
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