CODEWITHSUNDEEP
iphonedebuggingassert
Claus
Claus

Reputation:

Breaking into the debugger on iPhone

For assert macros in my iPhone project, I'm looking for a way to programmatically break into the debugger. On Windows (MSVC++), I can use __debugbreak() for this purpose. Invoking this function will stop my program, launch the debugger, and display a callstack of the line that called __debugbreak().

Is there anything similar to __debugbreak() for the iPhone? I've tried Debugger(), but that gives me a linker error.

Thanks, Claus

Upvotes: 17

Views: 7185

Answers (8)

Cerniuk
Cerniuk

Reputation: 15208

While an ancient thread, found this while researching same topic for Xcode 7. What solved this for me was a feature called "Create Exception Breakpoint..."

Debug > Breakpoints > Create Exception Breakpoint...

This puts a special breakpoint in the Breakpoint Navigator (under View > Navigators > Show Breakpoint Navigator).

breakpoint navigator pane showing All Exceptions breakpoint

This breaks on the actual throw of the exception:

[ exception raise ]

without terminating your code execution. You can just continue if that is how your code is structured.

Double-clicking the break point marker next to "All Exception" lets you adjust where and how the exception break point stops:

break point navigator showing options on for how and when breakpoint occurs

Upvotes: -1

nielsbot
nielsbot

Reputation: 16031

edit

Turns out this also works:

#define Debugger() { raise( SIGINT ) ; }

I think it's the same principle.

I use this:

#define Debugger() { kill( getpid(), SIGINT ) ; }

I think it works in the simulator and on the device.. no assembly required!

Upvotes: 25

Ohad Kravchick
Ohad Kravchick

Reputation: 1152

If you run your program in debug, your app should launch the debugger when it reaches an invalid assertion.

For it to stop, as Jens Alfke tried to say, you need to enable "Stop on Objective-C Exceptions" (under the Run menu).

For more info about debugging vs. releasing and asserts, read http://myok12.wordpress.com/2010/10/10/to-use-or-not-to-use-assertions/

Upvotes: -1

Claus
Claus

Reputation:

A helpful person on Apple's developer forum gave me the tip to use asm("trap") when running on the device and asm("int3") when running on the simulator. This makes the program break into the debugger if you started your programm in debug mode (Option-Command-Y).

(__builtin_trap() also breaks into the debugger, but you can't continue afterwards. assert(false) terminates the program with a message, but doesn't break into the debugger.)

Upvotes: 6

Brad Larson
Brad Larson

Reputation: 170317

Is there something wrong with the simple assert() macro? Something like

assert(pointerToTest != nil);

will halt your process at that point if the condition is not true. If running under the debugger, you'll be presented with a stack trace of calls that led to the failed assertion. If you want to trigger it every time you hit a certain code path, you could do

assert(false);

I find these assertions extremely useful for verifying that all IBOutlets are non-nil when a window or view is brought up from a NIB.

Upvotes: -1

rpetrich
rpetrich

Reputation: 32336

First Add -DDEBUG to OTHER_CFLAGS on your debug target; this will define the DEBUG symbol when building a debug build.

Then add a simple assert macro to your prefix header:

#ifdef DEBUG
#define MyAssert(val) _MyAssert(val)
#else
#define MyAssert(val) do { } while(0)
#endif

Next create a _MyAssert function in a module somewhere:

#ifdef DEBUG
void _MyAssert(int expression)
{
    if (expression == 0) {
       NSLog(@"Assertion failed!"); // Place breakpoint here
    }
}
#endif

Finally create a breakpoint on the NSLog line.

Upvotes: 1

Dan Lorenc
Dan Lorenc

Reputation: 5394

Check out conditional breakpoints:

http://www.cocoabuilder.com/archive/message/xcode/2008/10/22/25358

Upvotes: -1

Jens Alfke
Jens Alfke

Reputation: 1981

I just set a breakpoint at the place I want to stop. Xcode remembers breakpoints persistently, so any time I run the app with gdb, it'll stop at that point.

If you want to break on assertion failures, a good place to set a breakpoint is on the function objc_exception_throw, in the Objective-C runtime, which is what actually throws an exception. Use the Run > Show > Breakpoints window and double-click the "Double-click for symbol" row, then type the name.

Upvotes: -1

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