Erlang provides a graphical debugger with all the things you'd expect -- breakpoints, single-step execution, variable inspection, etc. It doesn't work with Elixir code, however. Herein we'll explore what goes wrong and how to get it working.
You can start the debugger from the shell, and select a source file to debug from the menu, or (as shown), by calling the int module (the debugger's code interpreter)
1> debugger:start().
{ok,<0.39.0>}
2> int:i("./src/mymodule.erl").
{module,mymodule}
Now lets try it with elixir: (Note single-quote erlang-style strings)
Interactive Elixir (0.12.2) - press Ctrl+C to exit (type h() ENTER for help)
iex(1)> :debugger.start()
{:ok, #PID<0.48.0>}
iex(2)> :int.i('./lib/mymodule.ex')
** Invalid beam file or no abstract code: "./lib/mymodule.ex"
:error
Same results if we try loading the .beam file instead:
iex(4)> :int.i('./ebin/Elixir.Qhool.MyModule.beam')
** Invalid beam file or no abstract code: "./ebin/Elixir.Qhool.MyModule.beam"
:error
Looking at int.erl in the otp source, we see:
i(AbsMods) -> i2(AbsMods, local, ok).
which leads us to:
i2(AbsMod, Dist, _Acc) when is_atom(AbsMod); is_list(AbsMod); is_tuple(AbsMod) ->
int_mod(AbsMod, Dist).
which goes to:
int_mod(AbsMod, Dist) when is_atom(AbsMod); is_list(AbsMod) ->
case check(AbsMod) of
Eventually, this winds up loading the source of the module, and attempting to parse it, which fails, because it's elixir. If you pass the module name instead, it fails when it looks for src/Elixir.Qhool.MyModule.erl. (offending code is in check_file/1 and find_src/1, respectively).
Going back to int_mod/2, there's another clause:
int_mod({Mod, Src, Beam, BeamBin}, Dist)
when is_atom(Mod), is_list(Src), is_list(Beam), is_binary(BeamBin) ->
Since the first argument to i/1 passes through unchanged to int_mod, we can call it with this 4-tuple directly. Mod is the module name, Src and Beam are just the filenames, and BeamBin is a binary (aka elixir string) with the contents of the .beam -- all we need to do is load the beam file contents into a variable, and construct the tuple:
iex(9)> {:ok,beam_bin} = File.read("./ebin/Elixir.Qhool.MyModule.beam")
{:ok,
<<70, 79, 82, 49, 0, 0, 7, 84, 66, 69, 65, 77, 65, 116, 111, 109, 0, 0, 0, 113, 0, 0, 0, 11, 21, 69, 108, 105, 120, 105, 114, 46, 81, 104, 111, 111, 108, 46, 77, 121, 77, 111, 100, 117, 108, 101, 8, 95, 95, 105, ...>>}
iex(10)> :int.i({Qhool.MyModule,'./lib/mymodule.ex','./ebin/Elixir.Qhool.MyModule.beam',beam_bin})
{:module, Qhool.MyModule}
And now the module shows up in the debugger. All the usual stuff will now work; you can set breakpoints, step through execution, and so forth.
Here's the same procedure in erlang:
Eshell V5.10.3 (abort with ^G)
1> debugger:start().
{ok,<0.39.0>}
2> Beam = "./ebin/Elixir.Qhool.MyModule.beam".
"./ebin/Elixir.Qhool.MyModule.beam"
3> {ok,BeamBin} = file:read_file(Beam).
{ok,<<70,79,82,49,0,0,7,84,66,69,65,77,65,116,111,109,0,
0,0,113,0,0,0,11,21,69,108,...>>}
4> int:i({'Elixir.Qhool.MyModule',"./lib/mymodule.ex",Beam,BeamBin}).
{module,'Elixir.Qhool.MyModule'}
One interesting thing to note, in the elixir version, you see the bare module name Qhool.MyModule in the input and output to ':int.i()'; elixir is really representing this internally with the atom 'Elixir.Qhool.MyModule' and this is what 'int:i/1' receives, and returns in both versions:
iex(1)> :io.format('~p~n',[Qhool.MyModule])
'Elixir.Qhool.MyModule'
:ok