This is part 29 of a series on how to approach bash programming in a way that’s safer and more structured than your basic script.

See part 1 if you want to catch the series from the start.

Last time, we discussed tracebacks. This time, let’s talk about debugging bash scripts.

Debugging bash scripts can be challenging. Bash isn’t exactly among the top-tier languages when it comes to, well, anything, but especially for tooling.

Basically with bash, what you see is what you get. Fortuanately, it’s been around for a very long time, so we’re not entirely scraping the bottom of the barrel.

There are, for example, numerous editors and even IDEs which at the very least have syntax highlighting. As recommended in my second post, vim, for one, is a good choice.

Even something as basic as a syntax-highlighting editor can prevent a lot of mistakes from happening to begin with, and prevention is always better than needing a cure. The tracebacks we implemented last time are another good debugging tool.

However, bugs will inevitably occur. When they do, you’ll need some tools in the toolbox.

As far as I can help, it boils down to three things:

Each technique can be useful. I tend toward the quick and dirty before moving on to more sophisticated tools.

Bash’s xtrace

The number one tool I use for debugging scripts is bash’s builtin tracing facility.

Tracing is enabled with the set -x option, which is the short version of set -o xtrace.

To enable tracing on a section of code, add the set -x command before it. Where you want it to stop, use set +x.

xtrace will output each line that will be executed, after resolving expansions. Each line is prefixed with a number of +s (pluses) to show what level of shell the line is executing in. Subshells and sourcing increase the number of pluses.

If you need to see the source lines prior to expansion, you can use set -v instead (short for set -o verbose). I don’t recommend using both at the same time since each line will be shown twice, once before expansion and once after. xtrace is already pretty verbose.

Of the two, I find xtrace the more useful.

The best place to employ tracing is in tests, which are already focused on a single portion of code and are easily triggered. Let’s take one of our earlier ones as an example:

it "outputs a header"
  IFS=$'\n'
  result=$(traceback 2>&1)
  assert equal Traceback: $result
ti

Let’s say we weren’t getting the output we were expecting here. The easiest way to see what’s going on is to add tracing:

it "outputs a header"
  IFS=$'\n'
  set -x
  result=$(traceback 2>&1)
  set +x
  assert equal Traceback: $result
ti

We trigger tracing right before we invoke the function and turn it off right afterward. You don’t want to leave it on when shpec’s assert function runs since tracing generates a lot of output, and you’ll want to be able to scroll back and easily find your code’s output.

Here’s some sample output:

++++ traceback
+++ result='++++ local -i rc=0
++++ echo '\''
Traceback:'\''

Traceback:
++++ return 0'
+++ set +x

You can see that there are already some levels of subshell going on, likely due to shpec. Each line is shown as it executes, along with its output afterward if there is any.

It takes a bit of getting used to reading the output, but it’s easier when it’s your code.

Another useful technique to use in concert with tracing is to call your code from the command-line itself, so you can play around with different arguments more easily. The fact that we have our sourced? && return line in the file makes it easy to source the file and then call our functions directly. Just source the file, then turn on tracing and call the function.

If you’re like me, you may have a fancy prompt which interferes with tracing by putting out a bunch of junk. An easy way to prevent this is start a shell with no bashrc configuration:

bash --norc

Manual tracing

While we’re at it, if we’re running code from the command-line it’s also useful to put in a few extra echos to see the state of important variables. The same technique can be done with xtracing as well.

It’s really up to you to figure out what’s important to see, so I don’t have a lot of tips on this, but here’s one: if you’re generating string values from your functions and you aren’t using the global or indirect variable return methods, then make sure to put your tracing out on stderr rather than stdout. This works for the command line as well as shpec tests.

Bashdb

Finally, there’s bashdb, the actual bash debugger. Bashdb is an open-source tool inspired by gdb’s interface. As such, if you’ve ever worked on a command-line debugger in linux, you’re probably familiar with most of what bashdb is about.

The basic idea is that the debugger loads your code and let’s you step through it live, one command at a time if you wish.

Bashdb is even available in many distro’s repositories, so for example if you’re on ubuntu, you can install it with sudo apt-get install -y bashdb. Otherwise you can also install it easily from source.

Once installed, you run it with:

bashdb myscript script_args

In the debugger, you get a prompt with several possible commands at your disposal:

  • list and “-“ show the code after and before your current execution point, respectively

  • print allows you to print variable values, such as print $n

  • next and step allow you to run the next statement, either skipping over or stepping into functions, respectively

  • finish lets you step out of the current function

  • continue runs until the next breakpoint

Most of these commands can be used with short names like “n” for next. Hitting enter with no command repeats the last command, which can also be convenient.

Bashdb also supports breakpoints, watches and the like. You’ll have to read the documentation for more detail. It’s very functional, and can come in handy when you just can’t find a bug any other way.

With regard to our code, there is one note about bashdb, which is that it won’t work with the sourced? && return line, nor with strict_mode. I just comment those out before debugging.

Lastly, if the ergonomics of command-line debugging just aren’t for you, there’s a graphical interface to bashdb available with Visual Studio Code, which is available on all of the major platforms. You have to install the bashdb plugin to use it.

While I haven’t tried it myself, if there’s any tool I would expect to manage putting a decent front end on bashdb, it would be VSCode.

Continue with part 30 - option parsing