Building a Debugger: Write a Native x64 Debugger From Scratch
24 points by ahelwer
24 points by ahelwer
It’s a thick book, and I’m excited to dig in. Sy’s blog series on building a debugger[0] was a helpful jumping off point for me understanding how debuggers work, and inspired me to start work on making my own (although it’s very far from being ready for real-world use). However, there’s a ton more detail to building a debugger than what’s discussed in the blog series, so I’m glad there’s a full book now!
Congrats on the release! I just got mine delivered today!
[0] https://blog.tartanllama.xyz/writing-a-linux-debugger-setup/
I just ordered this. Maybe someday when I have thousands and thousands of hours of extra free time I can build the Rust debugger I’ve always wanted.
I intend to tackle this book as soon as I find enough spare time, but I’m also curious to hear other people’s experiences with the book before I do. How does it compare to e.g. Crafting interpreters or Writing a C compiler?
Well Writing a C compiler is a pretty small task.
One can write one in a couple hours in assembly if one was so inclined (it took me about 12 hours since I was also using an assembler I wrote myself in hex2 and there were some bugs that needed to get solved)
I meant “Writing the C compiler” which is a book by Nora Sandler. My implementation of that compiler spans across more than 18k LoC and I still haven’t implemented enums, typedef, unions, and a couple data types, so not exactly a “pretty small task”.
(link for other curious people: https://norasandler.com/2022/03/29/Write-a-C-Compiler-the-Book.html )