pdbcolor 0.4.0

A simple package to add code highlighting to the python debugger (PDB).

PDB Color

Add some color to the python debugger.

Using PDB:

Using PDB Color:

Installation

Install with pip.

pip install pdbcolor

Setup

Python can be configured to use PDB Color by changing the PYTHONBREAKPOINT environment variable. To use PDB Color temporarily, add the PYTHONBREAKPOINT=pdbcolor.set_trace prefix before running your python script:

PYTHONBREAKPOINT=pdbcolor.set_trace python3 main.py

To make PDB Color the default for all Python sessions, set the PYTHONBREAKPOINT environment variable to pdbcolor.set_trace. On Mac and Linux, you can do this with the export command:

export PYTHONBREAKPOINT=pdbcolor.set_trace

Add this line to your terminal configuration file (e.g. .bashrc or .zshrc) to ensure the setting persists across terminal settings.

Autocomplete

PDB Color also has autocompletion by default which can be triggered using the TAB key. For example:

$ python3 main.py
> /home/alex/documents/pdbcolor/main.py(9)<module>()
-> y = 2
(Pdb) str.
str.capitalize(    str.isalpha(       str.ljust(         str.rpartition(
str.casefold(      str.isascii(       str.lower(         str.rsplit(
str.center(        str.isdecimal(     str.lstrip(        str.rstrip(
str.count(         str.isdigit(       str.maketrans(     str.split(
str.encode(        str.isidentifier(  str.mro()          str.splitlines(
str.endswith(      str.islower(       str.partition(     str.startswith(
str.expandtabs(    str.isnumeric(     str.removeprefix(  str.strip(
str.find(          str.isprintable(   str.removesuffix(  str.swapcase(
str.format(        str.isspace(       str.replace(       str.title(
str.format_map(    str.istitle(       str.rfind(         str.translate(
str.index(         str.isupper(       str.rindex(        str.upper(
str.isalnum(       str.join(          str.rjust(         str.zfill(
(Pdb) str.

Post-mortem debugging

PDB can can be triggered post-mortem (after an exception has been raised) with the following command:

python3 -m pdb -c continue main.py

PDB Color can be used instead by replacing pdb with pdbcolor.

python3 -m pdbcolor -c continue main.py

Pytest

To use PDB Color with pytest, use --pdbcls=pdbcolor:PdbColor. For example:

python3 -m pytest --pdbcls=pdbcolor:PdbColor

This drops you into PDB Color when a breakpoint is reached.

If you get a pytest OS error such as:

OSError: pytest: reading from stdin while output is captured!  Consider using `-s`.

Using the -s flag stops the error but, for those interested, the error is usually caused by setting PYTHONBREAKPOINT=pdbcolor.set_trace. Changing this back to its default value should stop the error without needing the -s flag. For example:

PYTHONBREAKPOINT=pdb.set_trace python3 -m pytest --pdbcls=pdbcolor:PdbColor

To save on typing, consider adding the following aliases to your terminal configuration file:

alias pdb='PYTHONBREAKPOINT=pdb.set_trace'
alias pdc='PYTHONBREAKPOINT=pdbcolor.set_trace'

The previous command then becomes:

pdb python3 -m pytest --pdbcls=pdbcolor:PdbColor