debugger-from-scratch

This is a very simple debugger that shows how ptrace can be used to set breakpoints and generate stack traces in a target process. You can choose where to breakpoint the target process, and single step or continue to the next breakpoint (or target exit).

Big caveat: it assumes there is only one file in the target!

I fully expect this only to work on Linux.

This is a more detailed version of the code I wrote in my Debuggers From Scratch talk at dotGo Paris. Here are the slides from that talk.

A note on compiling the target executable

You may find it helpful to compile your target excutable with --gcflags="all=-N -l" (--gcflags="-N -l" in Go 1.9 and earlier) to turn off compiler optimization and in-lining (otherwise you might find that the symbol table doesn't appear to know about code where you expect it to be!)