Chapter 7 Debugging Python
Overview
The Python language is easily extensible with C and C++ code. This enables Python applications to access legacy algorithms, specialized hardware, and to perform highly specialized computing.
C/C++ Python extensions enable developers to "glue" together different parts of a program, creating a mixed language application. Understanding and debugging the interdependencies and data exchange between language barriers in a mixed language application is a real challenge for developers.
TotalView supports debugging Python extensions, shows a clean set of stack frames across the language barriers, and allows both Python and C/C++ variables to be examined and compared.
The debugger does not yet support setting breakpoints and stepping actual Python code as it does with C and C++, but it excels at making it easy to set up your debug session, examine the data exchange between the language barriers, and debug your C/C++ code.
NOTE >> The TotalView installation includes some example Python/C mixed language programs in installdir/toolworks/totalview.version/platform/examples/PythonExamples. The README.TXT file in the PythonExamples subdirectory details requirements and instructions for building and executing these programs.