Ruby on Rails: debugging rake tasks

Question

When I write debugger it does not start:

NoMethodError: undefined method `run_init_script' for Debugger:Module
from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/ruby-debug-base-0.10.3/lib/ruby-debug-base.rb:239:in `debugger'
from (irb):4

If I run rake my:task --debugger,it returns me to console immediately. How is it possible to debug rake tasks?

Check this if you want to debug from Rubymine. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4401602/rubymine-debugger-with-rake — Akram, Jan 03 '19 at 05:26

score 41 · Accepted Answer · edited Feb 18 '11 at 17:25

41

I found the solution.

$ gem install ruby-debug
$ ruby-debug rake my:task

or on some systems

$ rdebug rake my:task

edited Feb 18 '11 at 17:25

marcgg

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answered Apr 18 '10 at 21:07

Andrey Kuznetsov

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Really though you shouldn't be doing large amounts of logic in a rake task. Most of my rake tasks are one-liners that call a method on a model which is then fully covered with tests. – Robert Speicher Apr 18 '10 at 21:13
I am doing spider based on mechanize and I need debug some lines. All them in methods and not covered by tests yet. Thank you for the reply. – Andrey Kuznetsov Apr 19 '10 at 02:09
@rspeicher, it's useful if you have a seed task – Jakob Cosoroaba Jun 22 '10 at 11:34
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on my system is `rdebug` instead of `ruby-debug` – Jakob Cosoroaba Jun 22 '10 at 13:24
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TIP: Add in the beginning `Debugger.settings[:autoeval] = true` that will cause the typical rails behavior where everything you type runs scoped to the `self` where you put the `debugger` call. – David Pelaez Feb 13 '13 at 22:56
This didn't work for me in Ruby 1.9. See my answer for what did work for me in Ruby 1.9. – Liron Yahdav Mar 08 '13 at 20:47

score 27 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 08 '13 at 20:46

27

Andrey Kouznetsov's answer didn't work for me using Ruby 1.9.3. The ruby-debug gem doesn't seem to support Ruby 1.9. I had to use the debugger gem: https://github.com/cldwalker/debugger.

Add gem 'debugger' to my Gemfile's development group.
Run bundle.
Add require 'debugger' to the top of my rake task.
Add a call to debugger where I wanted a breakpoint in my rake task.
Run the rake task normally from the command line, e.g.: rake my:task.

answered Mar 08 '13 at 20:46

Liron Yahdav

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Another option instead of putting `require 'debugger'` at the top is to put inline `require 'debugger'; debugger`. That way, when you delete the `debugger` statements, you won't forget to delete the `require`. – wisbucky Apr 02 '15 at 16:37

Abram · Answer 3 · 2016-09-27T20:56:40.617

12

I highly recommend pry for this

bundle install pry
require 'pry'
rake ...

In your rake task file:

binding.pry

edited Sep 27 '16 at 20:56

answered Jun 23 '14 at 21:40

Abram

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score 7 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 29 '11 at 20:58

7

This approach did not work for me. I just added this in my code:

require 'ruby-debug'
# ... code ...
debugger

answered Jun 29 '11 at 20:58

Sean McCleary

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score 5 · Answer 5 · answered Oct 22 '16 at 07:31

5

Visual Studio Code has pretty good debugger, built-in. If anybody finds this searching for a way to get it to work with rake, here's a working configuration:

{
    "name": "Debug a rake task",
    "type": "Ruby",
    "request": "launch",
    "useBundler": true,
    "cwd": "${workspaceRoot}",
    "program": "/usr/local/bin/rake",
    "args": ["all"]
}

This would run the rake task all. You may have to change the path to rake, I didn't find way to run the one in PATH.

answered Oct 22 '16 at 07:31

Matthias Winkelmann

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`all` didn't work for me. I used `rvm`s `rake` and I set `args` to the name of my task with a breakpoint on the first line of it and it worked for me. – SomeGuyOnAComputer Aug 22 '18 at 19:54
1

@SomeGuyOnAComputer: Hence the sentence "This would run the rake task all". It's just the name of a task I have (/had two years ago). – Matthias Winkelmann Aug 23 '18 at 17:42
my bad I missed that – SomeGuyOnAComputer Aug 30 '18 at 18:33

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Apr 10 '15 at 00:59

1

ByeBug is another one for 2.0+

https://github.com/deivid-rodriguez/byebug

answered Apr 10 '15 at 00:59

Cody Moniz

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Ruby on Rails: debugging rake tasks

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