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1<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> 2<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> 3<head> 4<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" /> 5<link href="style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> 6<title>LLDB Homepage</title> 7</head> 8 9<body> 10 <div class="www_title"> 11 The <strong>LLDB</strong> Debugger 12 </div> 13 14<div id="container"> 15 <div id="content"> 16 17 <!--#include virtual="sidebar.incl"--> 18 19 <div id="middle"> 20 <div class="post"> 21 <h1 class ="postheader">What is LLDB?</h1> 22 <div class="postcontent"> 23 <p>LLDB is a next generation, high-performance debugger. It is built as a set 24 of reusable components which highly leverage existing libraries in the 25 larger LLVM Project, such as the Clang expression parser and LLVM 26 disassembler.</p> 27 <p>LLDB is the default debugger in Xcode on Mac OS X and supports 28 debugging C, Objective-C and C++ on the desktop and iOS devices and simulator.</p> 29 30 <p>All of the code in the LLDB project is available under the standard 31 <a href="http://llvm.org/docs/DeveloperPolicy.html#license">LLVM 32 License</a>, an open source "BSD-style" license.</p> 33 </div> 34 <div class="postfooter"></div> 35 </div> 36 37 <div class="post"> 38 <h1 class ="postheader">Why a new debugger?</h1> 39 <div class="postcontent"> 40 <p>In order to achieve our goals we decided to start with a fresh architecture 41 that would support modern multi-threaded programs, handle debugging symbols 42 in an efficient manner, use compiler based code knowledge and have plug-in 43 support for functionality and extensions. Additionally we want the debugger 44 capabilities to be available to other analysis tools, be they scripts or 45 compiled programs, without requiring them to be GPL.</p> 46 </div> 47 <div class="postfooter"></div> 48 </div> 49 50 <div class="post"> 51 <h1 class ="postheader">Compiler Integration Benefits</h1> 52 <div class="postcontent"> 53 <p>LLDB currently converts debug information into clang types so that 54 it can leverage the clang compiler infrastructure. 55 This allows LLDB to support the latest C, C++, Objective C and Objective C++ 56 language features and runtimes in expressions without having to reimplement <b>any</b> 57 of this functionality. It also leverages the compiler to take care of all ABI 58 details when making functions calls for expressions, when disassembling 59 instructions and extracting instruciton details, and much more. 60 <p>The major benefits include:</p> 61 <ul> 62 <li>Up to date language support for C, C++, Objective C</li> 63 <li>Multi-line expressions that can declare local variables and types</li> 64 <li>Utilitize the JIT for expressions when supported</li> 65 <li>Evaluate expression Intermediate Representation (IR) when JIT can't be used</li> 66 </ul> 67 </div> 68 </div> 69 70 <div class="post"> 71 <h1 class ="postheader">Reusability</h1> 72 <div class="postcontent"> 73 <p>The LLDB debugger APIs are exposed as a C++ object oriented interface in a shared library. 74 The <b>lldb</b> command line tool links to, and uses this public API. On Mac OS X the shared library 75 is exposed as a framework named <b>LLDB.framework</b>, and unix systems expose it as <b>lldb.so</b>. 76 The entire API is also then exposed through Python script bindings which allow the API to be used 77 within the LLDB embedded script interpreter, and also in any python script that loads the <b>lldb.py</b> 78 module in standard python script files. See the <a href="python-reference.html">Python Reference</a> page for more details on how 79 and where Python can be used with the LLDB API.</p> 80 <p>Sharing the LLDB API allows LLDB to not only be used for debugging, but also for symbolication, 81 disassembly, object and symbol file introspection, and much more. 82 </div> 83 </div> 84 85 <div class="post"> 86 <h1 class ="postheader">Platform Support</h1> 87 <div class="postcontent"> 88 89 <p>LLDB is known to work on the following platforms, but ports to new 90 platforms are welcome:</p> 91 <ul> 92 <li>Mac OS X desktop user space debugging for i386 and x86-64</li> 93 <li>iOS simulator debugging on i386</li> 94 <li>iOS device debugging on ARM</li> 95 </ul> 96 </div> 97 <div class="postfooter"></div> 98 </div> 99 100 101 <div class="post"> 102 <h1 class ="postheader">Get it and get involved!</h1> 103 <div class="postcontent"> 104 105 <p>To check out the code, use:</p> 106 107 <ul> 108 <li>svn co http://llvm.org/svn/llvm-project/lldb/trunk lldb</li> 109 </ul> 110 111 <p>Note that LLDB currently only builds out of the box on Mac OS X with 112 Xcode, but patches to improve portability are definitely welcome.</p> 113 114 <p>Discussions about LLDB should go to the <a href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/lldb-dev">lldb-dev</a> mailing 115 list. Commit messages for the lldb SVN module are automatically sent to the 116 <a href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/lldb-commits">lldb-commits</a> 117 mailing list, and this is also the preferred mailing list for patch 118 submissions.</p> 119 </div> 120 <div class="postfooter"></div> 121 </div> 122 </div> 123 </div> 124</div> 125</body> 126</html>