Cross-platform remote Python debugging

Overview

Python Tools already provides a number of facilities to debug apps launched from the IDE itself, as well as attaching to existing Python processes on both local and remote machines. However, these all only work if the process being debugged is running on a Windows PC, and attaching remotely also requires the Visual Studio Remote Debugging Monitor (MSVSMon) to be running on the remote PC. For situations when your app is running on a different operating system, such as Linux or OS X, or when you do not have permissions to install or run MSVSMon on a Windows machine, Python Tools 2.0 adds an alternative remote debugging option that does not require any separate processes, and runs on any OS capable of running Python itself.

In this mode, the Python script being debugged also hosts the debug server to which the IDE then attaches over TCP. Consequently, it requires the source code of your script to be modified to import the debug server package and launch the server.

Preparing the script for debugging

The following Python script will be used for demonstration purposes (taken without modifications from the Python wiki):

import random

guesses_made = 0
name = raw_input('Hello! What is your name?\n')
number = random.randint(1, 20)
print 'Well, {0}, I am thinking of a number between 1 and 20.'.format(name)

while guesses_made < 6:
    guess = int(raw_input('Take a guess: '))
    guesses_made += 1
    if guess < number:
        print 'Your guess is too low.'
    if guess > number:
        print 'Your guess is too high.'
    if guess == number:
        break
if guess == number:
    print 'Good job, {0}! You guessed my number in {1} guesses!'.format(name, guesses_made)
else:
    print 'Nope. The number I was thinking of was {0}'.format(number)