Notes on debugging on the Swift compiler

notes_on_debugging_the_swift_compiler.md

Invoking lldb

• swiftc invokes sub-commands, so you shouldn't run lldb on the swiftc command itself. You can add the -### option to swiftc to see the underlying sub-commands. Pick the correct sub-command, then run lldb -- <command>.

• Usually, we want the first command, so run something like:

  lldb -- `swiftc file.swift | head -n 1`
  

• Use --one-line r to run immediately after loading, without having to set breakopints - great for debugging crashes

  lldb --one-line r -- `swiftc crash.swift | head -n 1`
  

Using lldb

• When dumping a type, use type.dump(), not type->dump()

• If you want to look inside llvm collections, you can't always dump them or see their size (possibly because the collection code is inlined). You can still iterate over it from the lldb shell:

  e -- for (auto item: collection) { item.dump(); printf("\n"); }