What's the easiest way to debug the native compile...

# kotlin-native

[Marc Knaup]

What's the easiest way to debug the native compiler (in a multiplatform project)?

[kpgalligan]

The compiler or debug native code?

[Marc Knaup]

The compiler. I get so many exceptions with little info and it takes quite a while to comment out code until I can pin down the cause 😅
I hope that debugging the compiler gives context and helps me speed that up.

[Marc Knaup]

That one alone took me four hours to resolve all causes:
https://github.com/JetBrains/kotlin-native/issues/3019

[kpgalligan]

I don’t know how you’d “debug” it. I think it’s a combo of experience and the compiler stabilizing over time. I started around version 0.6, and would get problems quite often. I get them rarely now, but I generally do what I’d call a “binary compiler search”. Remove a large chunk of code (ideally “half”). If it still fails, remove more, if it compiles, add back and remove half of the suspect batch.

[Marc Knaup]

That's what I'm doing but it's slow.

What I'd like to do is to set a breakpoint at the location where the compiler exception is thrown and just check the variables/properties to get a hint which variable/function/class of the source code is causing the exception.

[kpgalligan]

Well, I think I can help, oddly enough. Hold on…

[kpgalligan]

I made a blog post, in case anybody else wants to do it.

[kpgalligan]

https://medium.com/@kpgalligan/debugging-kotlin-natives-compiler-3cba9daec076

[Marc Knaup]

Thanks, will check it out!