ARTICLE AD BOX
I’ve been building an open-source Python debugger called Flatline and wanted to share it here to get feedback from other Python developers.
Flatline is aimed at a specific class of failures that normal debugging workflows often handle badly:
GUI freezes
hung child processes
silent crashes
startup failures
apps that die before they give you a useful traceback
cases where you need parent-side supervision instead of relying on the child to report its own failure cleanly
The basic idea is to run the target application under an external watchdog/debug console so you can still inspect what happened even when the child process is unstable.
Current repo:
https://github.com/tibberous/Flatline
A few things Flatline focuses on:
watchdog / heartbeat monitoring
crash console access
stack and variable dumps
child-process supervision
freeze detection
restart / terminate / force-kill workflow
I originally built it while debugging a larger Python desktop application and then started separating it into its own standalone project.
I’d especially appreciate feedback on:
whether the problem it solves is clearly communicated
whether the current CLI / example usage feels Pythonic
what kinds of debugging workflows you’d most want from a tool like this
whether this seems more useful for desktop apps, subprocess-heavy tools, or both
Example repo again:
https://github.com/tibberous/Flatline
Thanks — especially if you’ve dealt with ugly freeze / hang / shutdown-race bugs before.
