Debugging Finesse

Errors originating from C code compiled via Cython often do not yield useful error messages. Instead you may encounter segmentation faults without any additional information to point to the error origin. There are a few tools that can help you figure out the error, listed here.

Compile Cython extensions with debug symbols

Code is normally built without debug symbols. This provides a speed benefit but makes it harder to trace error locations. To build Finesse with debug symbols enabled, run make debug instead of just make in the root Finesse directory.

Run the code using a debugger

Unix platforms usually have lldb and gdb available as a system package.

Example debug incantation using gdb:

$ gdb --ex r --args python /path/tp/script.py