al13n321/nnd: A debugger for Linux

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

Development status:

• Essential features are there. But different people consider different features essential, and probably many of them are not implemented. Let me know.
• I use it every day and find it very helpful.
• Not widely tested – I only tried it on a few machines and a few real executables.

Distributed as a single 6 MB executable file with no dependencies.

“Installation”:

curl -L -o nnd 'https://github.com/al13n321/nnd/releases/latest/download/nnd'
chmod +x nnd
# try `./nnd --help` to get started

Or build from source:

# Prerequisites:
#  1. Install Rust.
#  2. Install musl target:
rustup target add x86_64-unknown-linux-musl
#  3. Install musl-tools
sudo apt install musl-tools

# Build:
cargo build --profile dbgo --bin nnd

# The executable is at target/x86_64-unknown-linux-musl/dbgo/nnd

Run nnd --help for documentation.

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