Nnd – a TUI debugger alternative to GDB, LLDB
Published on: 2025-07-24 07:58:03
A debugger for Linux. Partially inspired by RemedyBG.
Mom, can we have RAD Debugger on Linux? No, we have a debugger at home. Debugger at home:
Properties:
Fast.
TUI.
Not based on gdb or lldb, implemented mostly from scratch.
Works on large executables. (Tested mostly on 2.5 GB ClickHouse.)
What we mean by "fast":
Operations that can be instantaneous should be instantaneous. I.e. snappy UI, no random freezes, no long waits. (Known exception: if the program has >~2k threads things become pretty slow. This will be improved.)
Operations that can't be instantaneous (loading debug info, searching for functions and types) should be reasonably efficient, multi-threaded, asynchronous, cancellable, and have progress bars.
Limitations:
Linux only
x86 only
64-bit only
for native code only (e.g. C++ or Rust, not Java or Python)
TUI only (no REPL, no GUI)
no remote debugging (but works fine over ssh)
single process (doesn't follow forks)
no record/replay or backwards stepping
Dev
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