Here, we have a debugger for Bash 5.2 and higher.
Other branches in this repository support earlier versions of Bash. For example, use branch 4.1 for Bash version 4.1.
The command syntax generally follows that of the zsh debugger , trepanning debuggers, and, more generally, GNU debugger gdb.
There are 3 ways to get into the debugger. If bash (with debugger support enabled, which is the default) is installed, and the debugger is installed properly. Then:
bash --debugger -- bash-script-name script-arg1 script-arg2...
If bash isn't installed in a way that will find bashdb, then:
bashdb [bashdb-opts] -- bash-script-name script-arg1 script-arg2...
The downside here is that $0 will be "bashdb" not bash-script-name. Also acall stack will show the invocation to bashdb.
Finally, to invoke the debugger from the script
# my script
# work, work, work, ...
# Load debugger support
source <bashdb-installation>/bashdb-trace -L <bashdb-installation>
# work, work, work or not...
_Dbg_debugger; : # Calls the debugger at the line below
stop_here
An advantage of the above is that there is no overhead until you invoke the debugger. Typically, for large bash programs like configuration scripts, this is a big win.
IMPORTANT NOTE IF YOU USE THE ABOVE TO DEBUG CONFIGURE SCRIPTS...
stdin is closed by configure early on. This causes the debugger to quit. You can get around this by invoking a command script that sets up the debugger input and output. Run tty to figure out what the terminal tty is set to.
$ tty
/dev/pts/3
$
Above it came out to /dev/pts/3. Let's go with that. Put the following in a file say /tmp/bashdb-configure
source /dev/pts/3
tty /dev/pts/3
Now arrange to read that configuration file using the -x or --eval-command switch:
source <bashdb-installation>/bashdb-trace -L <bashdb-installation> -x /tmp/bashdb-configure
See INSTALL for installation instructions from a released tarball.
See README-git.md for installing from git on github.