How to develop a (golang) debugger

You can read this book (Chinese version) here: https://www.hitzhangjie.pro/debugger101.io/ .

Introduction

This project aims to introduce how to develop a (golang) debugger, including Operating System's support, how to coordinate work between compiler, linker and debugger, debugging information standard, mapping between machine instruction and source code, etc.

Thanks to delve and the author derek parker and other contributors. I learned a lot from them. I want to share the knowledge to develop a (golang) debugger. I hope this project can be useful for developers interested in debugging topic.

To develop a symbolic debugger need to combine the knowledge of CPU instruction (like instruction patching), Operating System (like linux ptrace and OS scheduler), compilers, linkers, loaders, debuggers (how to coordinate the work between them), executable file format (how to store debugging information), debugging information format (how to describe source code, how to map between instruction and source, vice versa), and features of different programming languages (like goroutine concept), so I think it's also a good chance to improve the understanding of computer technology.

I think it's very helpful, So I am really excited to write this documents.

Samples

The project "golang-debugger-book" also provides a repository "golang-debugger-lessons" which contains sample code. Readers can view the sample code according to the chapter correspondence. The directory "0-godbg" provides a relatively complete implementation of a symbol-level debugger for go language.

Of course, there have been some debuggers for the Go language, such as gdb, dlv, etc. To develop a debugger from scratch is not just to develop a new debugger, but to use the debugger as an entry point, that could help us integrate relevant knowledge. The technical points here involve the go language itself (type system, goroutine scheduling), the cooperation between the compiler and the debugger (DWARF), the operating system kernel (virtual memory, task scheduling, system calls, instructions patching) and processor-related instructions, etc.

In short, I hope to start with the development of a go language debugger as an entry point to help beginners quickly get started with go language development, and gradually understand the mechanisms behind operating system, compiler, debugger, and processor, so we could deepen the overall understanding of the computer system.

I hope that this book and related samples can be smoothly completed. It can be regarded as a way for me to hone my temperament and improve myself. It would be great if it can really help everyone.

Read the Book locally

1. run git to clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/hitzhangjie/golang-debugger-book

2. run gitbook to serve the book

If you have installed gitbook-cli by npm or homebrew, you could run the following command to serve the book:

# read the chinese version
cd book.zh
gitbook install && gitbook serve

# read the english version
cd book.en
gitbook install && gitbook serve

Though gitbook-cli is deprecated offically, it is still a very popular EBook generator. If trying to install gitbook-cli today, we may encounter some errors, because the nodejs, graceful-fs has broken some compatibility with gitbook-cli. Because of this, I have built a docker image hitzhangjie/gitbook-cli:latest, you could pull and use this docker image instead of installing by npm or homebrew package manager.

# read the english version
rm book.en/_book
docker run --name gitbook --rm -v ${PWD}/book.en:/root/gitbook hitzhangjie/gitbook-cli:latest gitbook install .
docker run --name gitbook --rm -v ${PWD}/book.en:/root/gitbook -p 4000:4000 -p 35729:35729 hitzhangjie/gitbook-cli:latest gitbook serve .


# read the chinese version
rm book.zh/_book
docker run --name gitbook --rm -v ${PWD}/book.zh:/root/gitbook hitzhangjie/gitbook-cli:latest gitbook install .
docker run --name gitbook --rm -v ${PWD}/book.zh:/root/gitbook -p 4000:4000 -p 35729:35729 hitzhangjie/gitbook-cli:latest gitbook serve .

We put the commands into Makefile, you can just run make chinese or make english to read the relevant version.

Contact

Please email me hit.zhangjie@gmail.com, I will respond as soon as possible.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.