delve VS debug-adapter-protocol

At a recent job, we had slightly different containers for local dev; our backend containers (for a Go app) had Air [1] installed for live reloading, plus Delve [2] running inside the container for VS Code's debugger to connect to. We also had a frontend container for local dev, which didn't get deployed as a container, just as static files.

[1] https://github.com/cosmtrek/air

[2] https://github.com/go-delve/delve/

https://github.com/go-delve/delve/releases/tag/v1.21.2 Thanks Derek and the rest of the team for helping us to debug in a normal way!

My employer has a commercial solution for this but Delve does supports `rr` traces natively for this purpose, which gives a complete open-source solution (https://github.com/go-delve/delve/blob/master/Documentation/usage/dlv_replay.md).

delve and related IDE integrations

For time travel debugging in Go:

The Delve debugger for Go supports debugging rr traces: https://github.com/go-delve/delve/blob/master/Documentation/...

Undo (who I work for) maintain a fork that debugs our LiveRecorder recordings: https://docs.undo.io/GoDelve.html

Either rr (https://rr-project.org/) or our UDB debugger (https://undo.io/solutions/products/udb/) can do some time travel debugging of Go programs via GDB's built-in support for Go. I believe its weakness is in support for goroutines, since they don't map well onto its idea of how programs run.

So in my case I use https://github.com/leoluz/nvim-dap-go (which itself calls out to the CLI tool https://github.com/go-delve/delve).

Clone https://github.com/go-delve/delve.git

> There's a strange dance of IDEs coming and going, with their idiosyncracies and partial plugins.

The Language Server Protocol [1] is the best thing to happen to text editors. Any editor that speaks it gets IDE features. Now if only they'd adopt the Debug Adapter Protocol [2]...

[1] https://microsoft.github.io/language-server-protocol/

[2] https://microsoft.github.io/debug-adapter-protocol/

Wonder if they've got support for Debug Adapter Protocol? https://microsoft.github.io/debug-adapter-protocol/

> Debuggers need to do more things

It's true that coming up with an interface for an abstract debugger is harder, but it's not impossible. Microsoft create Debug Adapter Protocol (https://microsoft.github.io/debug-adapter-protocol/), which is conceptually similar for LSP. It's not perfect, but covers most basic operations pretty well, while leaving to the debugger to deal with the implementation details.

Most languages also include support for the Debug Adapter Protocol, and Haskell is no exception, so if you are so inclined, you can hook up your favorite editor/IDE and go to town.

They're working on the Debug Adapter Protocol but it doesn't have critical mass/adoption yet. And yeah, I end up having a fair share of dbg!(foo). It's not so bad since dbg!() also returns its value, so you don't have to mess with your code too much.

TL;DR: What would it take to implement a Debug Adapter Protocol (DAP)-based step debugger?

RDP is the Windows Remote Desktop Protocol that was in use for decades before VSCode; VSCode's own remoting doesn't use it.

I'd say that, in addition to LSP, the other big thing that came out of VSCode is DAP: https://microsoft.github.io/debug-adapter-protocol.

The most important part is the JDT Languag Server, it will give you the Java tooling for writing code. I think it has DAP support as well, so with a DAP client like nvim-dap you should be able to debug as well.