Debugging in ruby 1.9

Question

What do you guys use for debugging in ruby 1.9? rdebug doesn't seem to be compatible.. is there anything out there?

Ignore the first answer; `ruby-debug19` is out of date now. – Rob Howard Sep 06 '12 at 01:54 — Rob Howard, Sep 06 '12 at 01:54

score 167 · Answer 1 · edited May 30 '16 at 09:56

167

ruby-debug19 is not maintained anymore. All the other answers are outdated.

But there's an alternative:

debugger to the rescue!

Put this in your Gemfile:

gem 'debugger', group: [:development, :test]

It just works. - And it is included in the rails Gemfile since 3.2.something to replace ruby-debug19. It has the exact same functionality and is actively maintained.

edited May 30 '16 at 09:56

Wasif Hossain

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answered May 02 '12 at 13:41

iblue

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Works nicely. Much better than installing ruby-debug by hand. Thanks. – manu_v Jun 01 '12 at 13:35
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This really needs to be moved up as the top answer. – Matt Zukowski Jul 18 '12 at 23:54
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Yes, really this answer must be the top answer. – Nazar Hussain Aug 09 '12 at 20:37
And how about where this actually goes in the Gemfile. – Rig Aug 13 '12 at 06:25
Does not matter. Put it wherever you like, just not inside a group block (Not in `group :development do ... end` or the like), because it already contains a group. – iblue Aug 13 '12 at 13:51
I did that, but I still get the message "You need to install ruby-debug to run the server in debugging mode. With gems, use 'gem install ruby-debug'". debugger is installed and in gem. any suggestions? – lfagundes Aug 14 '12 at 14:00
This works! Verified with Ruby 1.9.1 by adding `gem 'debugger'` to the `Gemfile`. – Shantanu Kumar Aug 20 '12 at 12:24
Works with RailsInstaller 2.1.0 (ruby 1.9.3p125 (2012-02-16) [i386-mingw32]) on Win XP. Thanks! – Green Mar 10 '13 at 19:36
Can I use with IDE? How? – Sertage Sep 09 '16 at 19:03

tommasop · Answer 2 · 2014-11-17T14:15:37.043

UPDATE FOR RUBY 2.0+ and FOLLOWING

byebug is the currently recommended debugger for Ruby 2.0+

This issue has been documented here, and cldwalker, the author of debugger, notes that debugger will be scoped to Ruby 1.9.2 and 1.9.3.

UPDATE 2

It is true that ruby-debug is not actively maintained even if I can't find anywhere that is not maintained any longer.

You can use the new debugger gem if you need a help to start with the new gem you can see Ryan Bates rails cast.

In your Gemfile put:

gem 'debugger', group: [:development, :test]

You can then add a breakpoint anywhere in your code using the debugger keyword.

YOU CAN STILL USE

linecache19 and ruby-debug-base19 with:

bash < <(curl -L https://raw.github.com/gist/1333785)

OLD ANSWERS

Just an add on about this with rvm, ruby 1.9.1-p378. True story is that even if ruby-debug is 1.9.x ready, linecache-0.43 is not. The solution is to install:

gem install ruby-debug19

This solves the problem for me.

OLD UPDATE

If you are having problems with ruby 1.9.2 and Rails 3 debugging putting:

gem 'ruby-debug-base19', "0.11.24"
gem 'ruby-debug19', "0.11.6"

In your Gemfile and doing a

bundle install

Will make you a happy debugger again.

Thanks, to me that was the more appropriate answer. But maybe this is because you replied almost a year later and things changed for good in that regard. — mark, Jul 23 '10 at 12:12

score 50 · Accepted Answer · edited Dec 29 '12 at 03:42

50

Note: this answer was correct but is now out of date. See the below correct answer. TL;DR: use 'debugger' now.

ruby-debug is now available with Ruby 1.9.x. See http://www.github.com/mark-moseley

To install (using gem on 1.9 Ruby installation):

gem install ruby-debug19

(with perhaps the necessary 'sudo' in front of it).

edited Dec 29 '12 at 03:42

Peter

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answered Jul 26 '09 at 23:14

Mark Moseley

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I made a cursory attempt and it didn't work. Need some more time to look at this. – Mark Moseley Jul 29 '09 at 20:19
ruby-debug-ide is working now - you can get the new gem at http://cloud.github.com/downloads/mark-moseley/ruby-debug/ruby-debug-ide-0.4.7.gem – Mark Moseley Jul 31 '09 at 00:33
nice work :) but could you make a fatgem (containing both 1.8 and 1.9 ruby-debug versions) so we dont have to remember to do rubydebbug19 ? :) – horseyguy Dec 09 '10 at 06:26
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It doesn't seem fair to downvote this just because the passage of time has made it now the wrong answer. SO needs some way of handling such use cases, to allow the *new* right answer to become the first listed, without penalizing authors of older answers that are not useful to anyone anymore. – iconoclast Jul 18 '12 at 20:24

score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 06 '09 at 12:53

Some things you could try

1) run it with ruby’s normal debugger -rdebug [1] kind of slow

2) run it with unroller gem [kind of stinks, way slow]

3) use a lot of print statements fast, kind of less introspection possible

4) drop to an irb prompt and run some code from there.

you could list the code by creating your own “drop to irb prompt” that listed the code around itself [use caller to discover where you where] then drop to a normal irb prompt.

5) maybe jruby in 1.9 compat mode has a debugger?

[1] http://beaver.net/rdebug/index-0.html

score 3 · Answer 5 · edited Feb 06 '11 at 02:01

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If you still have a problem after installing ruby-debug19 try updating ruby-debug-base19. I had errors and couldn't run WEBrick in debug mode until I did that.

gem update ruby-debug-base19

Oh, and thanks Mr. Moseley for all your hard work!

edited Feb 06 '11 at 02:01

SLaks

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answered Aug 22 '10 at 16:55

score 2 · Answer 6 · answered Apr 01 '13 at 01:10

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I used following and it works great for me:

gem 'debugger', group: [:development, :test]

ruby 1.9.3p194 (2012-04-20 revision 35410) [x86_64-linux] rails 3.2.8

answered Apr 01 '13 at 01:10

Mukesh kumar

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score 2 · Answer 7 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:17

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See my answer here : Ruby-debug not working - Stack Overflow

It's about getting Ruby debugging to work with the following setup

Mac OS X Lion 10.7.2
Aptana Studio 3 (Build 3.0.8.201201201658)
Using rvm, in my project working directory I have a .rvmrc stating:
```
rvm use ruby-1.9.3-p0@mygemset
```

I hope this helps!

-- Freddy

edited May 23 '17 at 12:17

Community

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answered Feb 13 '12 at 12:12

Visionscaper

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score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Jul 06 '09 at 14:28

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Netbeans is a good IDE for RoR. Good debugger too.

answered Jul 06 '09 at 14:28

Zepplock

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe the debugger works for Ruby 1.9.1 (C implementation) yet. At least, I have not been successful in getting it to work. – JP Richardson Jul 28 '09 at 16:43

score 0 · Answer 9 · answered Aug 29 '09 at 17:04

The ruby 1.9.1-p243 version is out and compitable ruby-debug-ide is also working properly. Install ruby-debug-ide using the following command:

gem install ruby-debug-ide

This will install the ruby-debug-base19 and ruby-debug-ide gems. But before this make sure you install the mingw successfully by following the Development kit docs available from RubyForge.

score 0 · Answer 10 · answered Oct 02 '09 at 16:35

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Latest features are available in ruby-debug-ide19 gem.

answered Oct 02 '09 at 16:35

score 0 · Answer 11 · answered May 01 '18 at 10:55

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There is a lot of choices, depending on your needs.

I use pry-moves because I can "look back" into what happened inside of previous command by re-executing them in debug mode right from the place.

answered May 01 '18 at 10:55

Daniel Garmoshka

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score -1 · Answer 12 · answered Aug 10 '13 at 00:08

doesn't anyone use: ruby -rdebug script.rb

then you can use: b script.rb:## (where ## is the line number of a valid ruby command) otherwise you are going to maybe be in the middle of rubygems or one of your required chunks of code.

Then you can simply set the next breakpoint as b:##

Debugging in ruby 1.9

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