Pony AST explorer

A GDB and LLDB plugin to interactively explore Pony ASTs.

Requirements

One of

• GDB with Python support (Python >= 3.8)
• LLDB with Python support (Python >= 3.8)

How to use

GDB

First, load the explorer inside a GDB session:

source /path/to/checkout/ast_explorer.py

If the script was loaded successfully, there now exists a new interactive command pony-ast. Executing it will look for AST nodes in the current scope and, if there are any, ask you which one to explore.

If you use AST explorer regularly, you might want to consider adding the source line to your .gdbinit.

LLDB

First, load the explorer inside an LLDB session:

command script import /path/to/checkout/ast_explorer.py

If the script was loaded successfully, there now exists a new interactive command pony-ast. Executing it will look for AST nodes in the current scope and, if there are any, ask you which one to explore.

Features

• The AST is drawn in more or less beatiful unicode boxes
• Show some details about a selected node
• Zoom out: set the parent node to the current root's parent
• Zoom in: set the currently selected node as new root node
• Fewer details: limit how far to descend into child nodes
• Jump to data: set a node's data field as new root node
• Print the currently selected node with either ast_print or ast_printverbose.

Note that the mnemonics for the default keymap are currently a bit odd for some commands. This is caused by my unusual keyboard layout and should probably be changed.

Screenshot

License

AST explorer is released under the Apache License, Version 2.0. See LICENSE or http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.html for details.