From d61001ba6a09898d6db6be4be23c16414b9e6e29 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Eric Cousineau <eric.cousineau@tri.global>
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2021 17:05:19 -0500
Subject: [PATCH] Created Debugging segfaults and hard-to-decipher pybind11
 bugs (markdown)

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 create mode 100644 Debugging-segfaults-and-hard-to-decipher-pybind11-bugs.md

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+This is meant to aide in debugging hard-to-decipher pybind11 bugs (or surprises in behavior ;).
+
+## Tracing Python Executions
+
+Generally, it's easiest to get a sense of where things are failing by using the `trace` module. Here's some code that can be copied+pasted. For examples here, assume these functions are defined in `debug.py`:
+
+```py
+"""
+Utilities that should be synchronized with:
+https://drake.mit.edu/python_bindings.html#debugging-with-the-python-bindings
+"""
+
+
+def reexecute_if_unbuffered():
+    """Ensures that output is immediately flushed (e.g. for segfaults).
+    ONLY use this at your entrypoint. Otherwise, you may have code be
+    re-executed that will clutter your console."""
+    import os
+    import shlex
+    import sys
+    if os.environ.get("PYTHONUNBUFFERED") in (None, ""):
+        os.environ["PYTHONUNBUFFERED"] = "1"
+        argv = list(sys.argv)
+        if argv[0] != sys.executable:
+            argv.insert(0, sys.executable)
+        cmd = " ".join([shlex.quote(arg) for arg in argv])
+        sys.stdout.flush()
+        os.execv(argv[0], argv)
+
+
+def traced(func, ignoredirs=None):
+    """Decorates func such that its execution is traced, but filters out any
+     Python code outside of the system prefix."""
+    import functools
+    import sys
+    import trace
+    if ignoredirs is None:
+        ignoredirs = ["/usr", sys.prefix]
+    tracer = trace.Trace(trace=1, count=0, ignoredirs=ignoredirs)
+
+    @functools.wraps(func)
+    def wrapped(*args, **kwargs):
+        return tracer.runfunc(func, *args, **kwargs)
+
+    return wrapped
+```
+
+Usage of this could look like the following:
+
+```sh
+import my_crazy_cool_module  # Say this has bindings buried 3 levels deep.
+
+
+@debug.traced
+def main():
+    my_crazy_cool_module.do_something_weird()
+
+if __name__ == "__main__":
+   debug.reexecute_if_unbuffered()
+   main()
+```
+
+Then you can see where a segfault happens along the actual trace of your code.
+
+## GDB on pybind11 unittests
+
+The easiest way to do this is to use a debug build w/ a debug Python interpreter directly on pybind11 source code. Ideally, if you have an issue in your code base, you can make a min-reproduction as a failing test on the `pybind11` source code.
+
+Here's an example workflow of debugging a specific unittest on CPython 3.8 on Ubuntu 18.04; this assumes the following packages are installed:
+
+```
+sudo apt install cmake build-essential python3.8-dev python3.8-venv python3.8-dbg
+```
+
+Then here's an example of running a unittest with GDB:
+
+```
+cd pybind11
+
+python3.8-dbg -m venv ./venv
+source ./venv/bin/activate
+pip install -U pip wheel
+pip install pytest
+
+mkdir build && cd build
+cmake .. -GNinja \
+    -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug \
+    -DPYTHON_EXECUTABLE=$(which python) \
+    -DPYBIND11_TEST_OVERRIDE=test_multiple_inheritance.cpp
+
+# Get a sense of what is executed using the `-v` flag to ninja.
+env PYTHONUNBUFFERED=1 PYTEST_ADDOPTS="-s -x" ninja -v pytest
+
+# Now reformat it to your usage. For example:
+src_dir=${PWD}/..
+build_dir=${PWD}
+( cd ${build_dir}/tests && gdb --args env PYTHONUNBUFFERED=1 python -m pytest -s -x ${src_dir}/tests/test_multiple_inheritance.py )
+```
+
+If you have a segfault, and are using something like `debug.traced`, you should see something like this (for this example, a fake segfault was injected):
+```
+../../tests/test_multiple_inheritance.py  --- modulename: test_multiple_inheritance, funcname: test_failure_min
+test_multiple_inheritance.py(14):     class MI1(m.Base1, m.Base2):
+ --- modulename: test_multiple_inheritance, funcname: MI1
+test_multiple_inheritance.py(14):     class MI1(m.Base1, m.Base2):
+test_multiple_inheritance.py(15):         def __init__(self, i, j):
+test_multiple_inheritance.py(19):     MI1(1, 2)
+ --- modulename: test_multiple_inheritance, funcname: __init__
+test_multiple_inheritance.py(16):             m.Base1.__init__(self, i)
+
+Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
+0x<crazyaddress> in pybind11::detail::get_type_info (type=0xdeed90) at ../include/pybind11/detail/type_caster_base.h:160
+160                 *value = 0xbadf00d;
+(gdb)
+```
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