v0.4.0: tracexec can now be used as a debugger launcher!

I am very excited to share that tracexec can now be used as a debugger launcher.

It's usually not trivial or convenient to debug a program executed by a shell/python script(which can use pipes as stdio for the program).
The following video shows how to use tracexec to launch gdb to debug two simple programs piped together by a shell script.

gdb-launcher.mp4

Solves:

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5048112/use-gdb-to-debug-a-c-program-called-from-a-shell-script
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1456253/gdb-debugging-with-pipe
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/455544/how-to-load-program-reading-stdin-and-taking-parameters-in-gdb
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/65936457/debugging-a-specific-subprocess

To learn more about it, read the gdb-launcher example.

Changes since v0.3.1:

Added

• Breakpoints.
  • The breakpoints can be set in CLI(--add-breakpoint/-b) and TUI.
• Managing breakpoint hits.
  • in CLI: option --default-external-command
  • in TUI: Hit Manager
  • Detach, Resume, or Detach, stop and run external command
• --tracer-delay option for setting the polling delay of the tracer, in microseconds. The default is 500 when seccomp-bpf is enabled, otherwise 1.

Changed

• Docs: make the description of --seccomp-bpf more clear

v0.3.1

tracexec v0.3.1 released!

Changes since v0.3.0:

Fixed

• TUI: Fix a bug that the event list is not refreshed when new events are available in some cases.

v0.3.0

tracexec v0.3.0 released!

Changes since v0.2.2:

Added

• Shell completions are now available for bash, elvish, fish, powershell and zsh!
  • Run tracexec generate-completions <SHELL> to get the completion file to install for your favorite shell.
  • Or generate completions when packaging tracexec so that users don't need to install the completions themselves.
• TUI: Toggle showing/hiding CWDS by pressing W.
• Musl builds are now available for x86_64 and aarch64.
• TUI: Add Ctrl+U key binding to bottom help text, which clears the text in the search bar when editing it.

Changed

• TUI: To optimize memory usage(avoiding storing a contiguous string separately),
  the internal regex implementation is switched to regex-cursor from regex.
• TUI: The order of the key bindings in the bottom help text is changed.

Fixed

• Fix build issues on musl.
• TUI: Fix search result not being updated after toggling show/hide CWD/Env.
• TUI: Stop following when navigating through the search results.
• TUI: Fix incorrect wrapping behavior of the bottom key binding help text by updating ratatui and use NBSPs.
• TUI: Fix crash when resizing the terminal by updating ratatui.

Performance

• Store more information as cached arcstr to reduce memory usage.
• Other optimizations to reduce memory usage.

v0.3.0-alpha.1

tracexec v0.3.0-alpha.1 released!

Changes since v0.2.2:

Added

• Shell completions are now available for bash, elvish, fish, powershell and zsh!
  • Run tracexec generate-completions <SHELL> to get the completion file to install for your favorite shell.
• TUI: Toggle showing/hiding CWDs by pressing W.
• Musl builds are now available for x86_64 and aarch64.

Fixed

• Fix build issues on musl.

v0.2.2

tracexec v0.2.2 released!

Changes since v0.2.1:

Fixed

• Fix a race condition in the communication between the tracer and the TUI.
• TUI: Change the modifier key that toggles case sensitivity and regex/plain text in the search bar from Ctrl to Alt
  because in most terminals, Ctrl+I is equivalent to Tab thus the toggle is not working as expected.
• Clarify that the license is GPL-2.0-or-later in Cargo.toml(was GPL-2.0).

Performance

• Keep a global cache of env keys/values to reduce memory usage.

Other

• Mark tests that need to be run single-threaded with serial_test crate so that we don't need to set RUST_TEST_THREADS=1 when running tests.

v0.2.1

tracexec v0.2.1 released!

Changes since v0.2.0:

• TUI: Fix a bug that when switching to follow mode, the event list is not scrolled to the bottom immediately.

v0.2.0

tracexec v0.2.0 released!

Changes since v0.1.0:

Added

• TUI: The events can now be searched from a search bar(Ctrl+F).
  • Both case-sensitive and case-insensitive(default) are supported.
  • Both plain text(default) and regex search are supported.
• TUI: Show status icons for events.
• TUI: Show process status for exec events in details popup.
• TUI: More help text in the help dialog (F1).

Changed

• Tracer: Automatically resolve /proc/self/exe symlink filename. (Use --no-resolve-proc-self-exe to disable)
• Log Mode: Control whether to set terminal foreground process group with --foreground/--no-foreground.
• TUI: don't show terminal cursor when terminal is not focused.
• Tweak log levels.

Fixed

• Tracer: handle pid reuse correctly.
• TUI: Correctly handle unicode in the event list.
• TUI: Don't crash when inputting some control codes into the pseudo terminal(e.g. Ctrl+4).
• Log Mode: print new child with green pid.
• Don't set terminal foreground process group in tests.
• Add missing help text for --no-decode-errno.
• Fix CI for publishing to crates.io (excluding /sceeenshots from the package because it's too large)

v0.2.0-rc.0

tracexec v0.2.0-rc.0 released!

Changes since v0.1.0:

Added

• TUI: The events can now be searched from a search bar(Ctrl+F).
  • Both case-sensitive and case-insensitive(default) are supported.
  • Both plain text(default) and regex search are supported.
• TUI: Show status icons for events.

Changed

• Tracer: Automatically resolve /proc/self/exe symlink filename. (Use --no-resolve-proc-self-exe to disable)
• Log Mode: Control whether to set terminal foreground process group with --foreground/--no-foreground.
• TUI: don't show terminal cursor when terminal is not focused.
• Tweak log levels.

Fixed

• Tracer: handle pid reuse correctly.
• TUI: Correctly handle unicode in the event list.
• TUI: Don't crash when inputting some control codes into the pseudo terminal(e.g. Ctrl+4).
• Log Mode: print new child with green pid.
• Don't set terminal foreground process group in tests.
• Add missing help text for --no-decode-errno.
• Fix CI for publishing to crates.io (excluding /sceeenshots from the package because it's too large)

v0.1.0

tracexec v0.1.0 is now finally released! 🎉🎉🎉

This release includes TUI feature and many improvements and bug fixes.

Notable changes since v0.0.5

Added

• An awesome TUI built with awesome ratatui.
• Tracing and diffing file descriptors to easily catch fd leaks and figure out inherited fds.
  • [Experimental] Try to construct cmdline that reproduces the same fds/stdio. (--stdio-in-cmdline/--fd-in-cmdline)
• Add --user option to run as a different user. (This is mostly useful for tracing setuid/setgid binaries. Thanks to strace for the idea.)
  • Automatically disable seccomp-bpf when using --user because seccomp-bpf enforces no-new-privs.
• Add -C option to change the working directory of tracexec.
• Add --filter{,-include,-exclude} and --show-all-events option to filter events.
• Warn on bad envp/argv/filename and empty argv.
• TUI: Now tracexec can be themed at compile-time by changing src/tui/theme.rs.

Fixed

• Fix hang when root child is stopped by other signals before ptrace is setup
• Log mode: The formatting of interpreters now correctly respects color settings(e.g. NO_COLOR).
• Fix the logic of argv[0] handling for both logging and TUI mode.
• Log mode: Don't crash if tcsetpgrp returns ENOTTY.
• Some typos.

Changed

• Use BTreeMap to make environment variables sorted and deterministic.
• Internal logs are now logged to $XDG_DATA_HOME/tracexec/tracexec.log.
• Tracer thread now is named tracer.
• Some colors are changed in log mode.
• --verbose/--quiet is removed from CLI. Use --filter{,-include,-exclude} and --show-all-events instead.
• Log mode: --show-cmdline no longer implies --successful-only.

Other

• Add a few tests and CI.
• Enable LTO for release builds.
• Use opt-level=1 for debug builds.

Changes since v0.1.0-rc.1

• TUI: improve the message of tracee spawn/exit.
• TUI: don't omit tracee spawn event.

v0.1.0-rc.1

tracexec v0.1.0-rc.1 released!

Changes since v0.1.0-rc.0:

Added

• Enable LTO for release builds.
• TUI: Handle F1-F12 keys and Alt+key in pseudo terminal.
• TUI: Now tracexec can be themed at compile-time by changing src/tui/theme.rs.

Changed

• Set max tracing level to info for release builds.
• Remove log dependency.
• Use opt-level=1 for debug builds.
• Documentation update.
• Log: disable diff-fd by default when stdio-in-cmdline is enabled.

Fixed

• Fix some typos.
• TUI: Don't handle key event when there are modifers but shouldn't.
• docs: update install command for cargo install to avoid installing fixtures.
• Don't show O_CLOEXEC fds in cmdline.