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>High-quality gdb/lldb debug information with source stepping, type information etc Very nice. Last time I experimented with Nim the lack of this was the singl

>High-quality gdb/lldb debug information with source stepping, type information etc Very nice. Last time I experimented with Nim the lack of this was the single biggest dealbreaker.

gavinray 5y ago
Well there's major drawback here: > nlvm does not: - understand C - as a consequence, header, emit and similar pragmas will not work - neither will the fancy importcpp/C++ features - support all nim compiler flags and features - do file bugs for anything useful that's missing One of the unique and best things about Nim (IMO) beyond being multi-target, is that you can do things like say "emit this exact C/C++ string", or "import this type from an existing header". With this LLVM backend, that doesn't work, and it doesn't support JS (which probably isn't a big deal to most people). That means you can't do stuff like this: type VectorIterator {.importcpp: "std::vector<'0>::iterator".} [T] = object # std::vector<int>::iterator x; var x: VectorIterator[cint] https://nim-lang.org/docs/manual.html#implementation-specific-pragmas-emit-pragma https://nim-lang.org/docs/manual.html#implementation-specifi... https://nim-lang.org/docs/manual.html#foreign-function-interface-importc-pragma https://nim-lang.org/docs/manual.html#foreign-function-inter... https://nim-lang.org/docs/manual.html#implementation-specific-pragmas-importcpp-pragma https://nim-lang.org/docs/manual.html#implementation-specifi...
dsrw 5y ago
With the '--debugger:native' flag, the Nim debugging experience isn't too bad. Not on the level of Java or C#, but you can set breakpoints, step in/over/out of code and inspect or watch variables without having to look at C code. There are some issues with type visualization (to see the contents of a string you have to evaluate something like '(char*)variable->data') but Nim ships with a gdb plugin that should help (I haven't actually tried it). It could definitely be better, and hopefully some day it will be, but I use Nim in a debugger quite frequently and it usually works out pretty well.
- no_time 5y ago
  It was roughly 3-4 years ago the last time I tried it. Happy to hear they made good progress since then.

>High-quality gdb/lldb debug information with source stepping, type information etc Very nice. Last time I experimented with Nim the lack of this was the single biggest dealbreaker.

gavinray 5y ago

Well there's major drawback here: > nlvm does not: - understand C - as a consequence, header, emit and similar pragmas will not work - neither will the fancy importcpp/C++ features - support all nim compiler flags and features - do file bugs for anything useful that's missing One of the unique and best things about Nim (IMO) beyond being multi-target, is that you can do things like say "emit this exact C/C++ string", or "import this type from an existing header". With this LLVM backend, that doesn't work, and it doesn't support JS (which probably isn't a big deal to most people). That means you can't do stuff like this: type VectorIterator {.importcpp: "std::vector<'0>::iterator".} [T] = object # std::vector<int>::iterator x; var x: VectorIterator[cint] https://nim-lang.org/docs/manual.html#implementation-specific-pragmas-emit-pragma https://nim-lang.org/docs/manual.html#implementation-specifi... https://nim-lang.org/docs/manual.html#foreign-function-interface-importc-pragma https://nim-lang.org/docs/manual.html#foreign-function-inter... https://nim-lang.org/docs/manual.html#implementation-specific-pragmas-importcpp-pragma https://nim-lang.org/docs/manual.html#implementation-specifi...

dsrw 5y ago

With the '--debugger:native' flag, the Nim debugging experience isn't too bad. Not on the level of Java or C#, but you can set breakpoints, step in/over/out of code and inspect or watch variables without having to look at C code. There are some issues with type visualization (to see the contents of a string you have to evaluate something like '(char*)variable->data') but Nim ships with a gdb plugin that should help (I haven't actually tried it). It could definitely be better, and hopefully some day it will be, but I use Nim in a debugger quite frequently and it usually works out pretty well.

no_time 5y ago
It was roughly 3-4 years ago the last time I tried it. Happy to hear they made good progress since then.