←back to thread

Show HN: Unbug – Rust macros for programmatically invoking breakpoints

(github.com)
88 points BrainBacon | 1 comments | 20 Nov 24 13:33 UTC | HN request time: 0.218s | source

This project is inspired by some of the asserts in Unreal engine.

Due to reliance on core_intrinsics it is necessary to develop using nightly Rust, but there are stubs in place so a production build will not require nightly.

I recently released version 0.2 which includes no_std support and adds optional log message arguments to the ensure macro.

Show context
JoshTriplett ◴[20 Nov 24 14:10 UTC] No.42194057[source]▶
You could potentially build on stable Rust by emitting the breakpoint instructions yourself, at least on popular platforms. For instance, `core::arch::asm!("int3")` on x86, or `core::arch::asm!("brk #1")` on ARM.

Also, this is providing motivation to want to stabilize a breakpoint mechanism, perhaps `core::arch::breakpoint()`. I'm going to propose an API Change Proposal (ACP) to the libs-api team to see if we can provide that in stable Rust.

replies(3): >>42194435 #>>42195778 #>>42197034 #
1. estebank ◴[20 Nov 24 18:58 UTC] No.42197034[source]▶
Having a feature like this will significantly increase the demand of better incremental compilation, potentially with the need for patching specific items on existing binaries for speed. At that point you could get very close to an IDE debugging experience/speed with only rustc, a text editor and a debugger. (Inserting a bunch of NOPs on every function and supporting patching of JMPs in their place would likely go a long way for this.)