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gerrit-public.fairphone.software / toolchain / llvm-project / 9d3e8e505a8e8acd61dfa196f0ac2b57378224b0 / . / lldb / www / index.html
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Joerg Sonnenberger340a1752013-09-25 10:37:32 +0000[diff] [blame]1<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
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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>
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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"-->
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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
Bruce Mitchener6a7f3332014-06-27 02:42:12 +0000[diff] [blame]59 instructions and extracting instruction details, and much more.
Joerg Sonnenberger340a1752013-09-25 10:37:32 +0000[diff] [blame]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>
Bruce Mitchenerb61f89e2015-09-07 13:03:07 +0000[diff] [blame]64 <li>Utilize the JIT for expressions when supported</li>
Joerg Sonnenberger340a1752013-09-25 10:37:32 +0000[diff] [blame]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 <li>Linux local user-space debugging for i386 and x86-64</li>
96 <li>FreeBSD local user-space debugging for i386 and x86-64</li>
Zachary Turner34d21732014-12-31 00:06:49 +0000[diff] [blame]97 <li>Windows local user-space debugging for i386 (*)</li>
Joerg Sonnenberger340a1752013-09-25 10:37:32 +0000[diff] [blame]98 </ul>
Zachary Turner34d21732014-12-31 00:06:49 +0000[diff] [blame]99 <p>(*) Support for Windows is under active development. Basic functionality
100 is expected to work, with functionality improving rapidly.</p>
Joerg Sonnenberger340a1752013-09-25 10:37:32 +0000[diff] [blame]101 </div>
102 <div class="postfooter"></div>
103 </div>
104
105
106 <div class="post">
107 <h1 class ="postheader">Get it and get involved!</h1>
108 <div class="postcontent">
109
110 <p>To check out the code, use:</p>
111
112 <ul>
113 <li>svn co http://llvm.org/svn/llvm-project/lldb/trunk lldb</li>
114 </ul>
115
Zachary Turner34d21732014-12-31 00:06:49 +0000[diff] [blame]116 <p>Note that LLDB generally builds from top-of-trunk</p>
117 <ul>
118 <li>On Mac OS X with Xcode</li>
119 <li>On Linux and FreeBSD (with clang and libstdc++/libc++)</li>
Kamil Rytarowskie81c1562015-12-05 19:41:37 +0000[diff] [blame]120 <li>On NetBSD (with GCC and clang and libstdc++/libc++)</li>
Zachary Turner34d21732014-12-31 00:06:49 +0000[diff] [blame]121 <li>On Windows with VS 2012 or higher using CMake</li>
122 </ul>
123 <p>See the <a href="build.html">LLDB Build Page</a> for platform-specific build instructions.</p>
Tanya Lattner0b2f3782015-08-05 04:02:43 +0000[diff] [blame]124 <p>Discussions about LLDB should go to the <a href="http://lists.llvm.org/mailman/listinfo/lldb-dev">lldb-dev</a> mailing
Joerg Sonnenberger340a1752013-09-25 10:37:32 +0000[diff] [blame]125 list. Commit messages for the lldb SVN module are automatically sent to the
Tanya Lattner0b2f3782015-08-05 04:02:43 +0000[diff] [blame]126 <a href="http://lists.llvm.org/mailman/listinfo/lldb-commits">lldb-commits</a>
Joerg Sonnenberger340a1752013-09-25 10:37:32 +0000[diff] [blame]127 mailing list, and this is also the preferred mailing list for patch
128 submissions.</p>
Jim Ingham9d3e8e52017-03-02 21:45:39 +0000[diff] [blame^]129 <p>See the <a href="projects.html">Projects</a> page if you are looking for some interesting areas to contribute
130 to lldb.</p>
Joerg Sonnenberger340a1752013-09-25 10:37:32 +0000[diff] [blame]131 </div>
132 <div class="postfooter"></div>
133 </div>
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