LLDB has matured a lot in the last year and can be used for C, C++ and Objective C development for x86_64, i386 and ARM debugging. The entire public API is exposed though a framework on Mac OS X which is used by Xcode, the lldb command line tool, and can also be used by python. The entire public API is exposed through script bridging which allows LLDB to use an embedded python script interpreter, as well as having a python module named "lldb" which can be used from python on the command line. This allows debug sessions to be scripted. It also allows powerful debugging actions to be created and attached to a variety of debugging workflows.

What works well:

  • Process control, including external process control via debugserver (which is included as part of the lldb project)
  • Breakpoints: Source-line, symbolic, C++ mangled names, module scoping
  • Symbol reading and object file introspection
  • Script bridging
  • Thread inspection and stepping
  • Disassembly of i386, x86-64, & ARM/Thumb machine code
  • Backtracing of i386, x86-64, & ARM/Thumb machine code
  • libedit powers the command line prompt and input
  • Objective-C 2.0 Support: Printing properties, synthetic properties, Objective-C expressions, KVO, dynamic types, dot syntax, runtime data
  • C++ support: method access, template support, dynamic types
  • The public API to the library
  • Expression evaluation
  • Objective-C support: stepping into/over, printing the description of an object ("po")