Debugging

To debug Pitivi, you need an IDE with the ability to attach its debugger to a remote process. Out of the box, Pitivi supports the debugger used in VS Code, but it can be modified to work with the Professional version of PyCharm, for example.

Visual Studio Code

Assuming you have already installed the Python extension, install debugpy and open VS Code:

(ptv-flatpak) $ ptvenv python3 -m pip install --upgrade debugpy
[...]
(ptv-flatpak) $ code .

In VS Code, click the Run and Debug section on the left (or press Ctrl+Shift+D). Press Create a launch.json file, select Python and then Remote Attach from the list. Leave the hostname and port as default.

The launch.json file should open afterwards with the generated configuration. Save the file and launch Pitivi with the PITIVI_VSCODE_DEBUG environment variable set to 1:

(ptv-flatpak) $ PITIVI_VSCODE_DEBUG=1 pitivi
[...]
Waiting for the debugger to attach...

Press F5 in VS Code. If the Pitivi window shows up, your debugger is working.

Debugging Unit Tests

You can also debug the unit tests by launching the test suite with the PITIVI_VSCODE_DEBUG environment variable set to 1:

(ptv-flatpak) $ PITIVI_VSCODE_DEBUG=1 ptvtests
[...]
Waiting for the debugger to attach...

Note the test suite typically limits how long a test can run and will kill any test reaching the timeout period. Thus, when you set a breakpoint in a test, you may have to increase the timeouts to avoid it being killed while you debug:

(ptv-flatpak) $ PITIVI_VSCODE_DEBUG=1 ptvtests --timeout-factor 1000 [-t test_filename_or_method]
[...]
Waiting for the debugger to attach...