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Help & Apropos
Written by Derek Selander
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Just like any respectable developer tool, LLDB ships with a healthy amount of documentation. Knowing how to navigate through this documentation — including some of the more obscure command flags — is essential to mastering LLDB.
The “help” command
Open a Terminal window and type lldb. The LLDB prompt will appear. From there, simply type the help command:
(lldb) help
This will dump out all available commands, including the custom commands loaded from your ~/.lldbinit — but more on that later.
There’s quite a few commands one can use with LLDB.
However, many commands have numerous subcommands, which in turn can have subcommands, which also have their own associated documentation. I told you it was a healthy amount of documentation!
Take the breakpoint command for instance. Run the documentation for breakpoint by typing the following:
(lldb) help breakpoint
You’ll see the following output:
Commands for operating on breakpoints (see 'help b' for shorthand.)
Syntax: breakpoint
The following subcommands are supported:
clear -- Delete or disable breakpoints matching the specified source file and line.
command -- Commands for adding, removing and listing LLDB commands executed when a breakpoint is hit.
delete -- Delete the specified breakpoint(s). If no breakpoints are specified, delete them all.
disable -- Disable the specified breakpoint(s) without deleting them. If none are specified, disable all breakpoints.
enable -- Enable the specified disabled breakpoint(s). If no breakpoints are specified, enable all of them.
list -- List some or all breakpoints at configurable levels of detail.
modify -- Modify the options on a breakpoint or set of breakpoints in the executable. If no breakpoint is specified,
acts on the last created breakpoint. With the exception of -e, -d and -i, passing an empty argument clears
the modification.
name -- Commands to manage name tags for breakpoints
read -- Read and set the breakpoints previously saved to a file with "breakpoint write".
set -- Sets a breakpoint or set of breakpoints in the executable.
write -- Write the breakpoints listed to a file that can be read in with "breakpoint read". If given no arguments,
writes all breakpoints.
For more help on any particular subcommand, type 'help <command> <subcommand>'.
From there, you can see several supported subcommands. Look up the documentation for breakpoint name by typing the following:
(lldb) help breakpoint name
You’ll see the following output:
Commands to manage name tags for breakpoints
Syntax: breakpoint name
The following subcommands are supported:
add -- Add a name to the breakpoints provided.
configure -- Configure the options for the breakpoint name provided. If you provide a breakpoint ID, the options will be
copied from the breakpoint, otherwise only the options specified will be set on the name.
delete -- Delete a name from the breakpoints provided.
list -- List either the names for a breakpoint or info about a given name. With no arguments, lists all names
For more help on any particular subcommand, type 'help <command> <subcommand>'.
If you don’t understand breakpoint name at the moment, don’t worry — you’ll become familiar with breakpoints and all of the subsequent commands soon. For now, the help command is the most important command you can remember.
The “apropos” command
Sometimes you don’t know the name of the command you’re searching for, but you know a certain word or phrase that might point you in the right direction. The apropos command can do this for you; it’s a bit like using a search engine to find something on the web.
(lldb) apropos swift
The following commands may relate to 'swift':
swift -- A set of commands for operating on the Swift Language Runtime.
demangle -- Demangle a Swift mangled name
refcount -- Inspect the reference count data for a Swift object
The following settings variables may relate to 'swift':
target.swift-framework-search-paths -- List of directories to be searched when locating frameworks for Swift.
target.swift-module-search-paths -- List of directories to be searched when locating modules for Swift.
target.use-all-compiler-flags -- Try to use compiler flags for all modules when setting up the Swift expression parser, not just the main executable.
target.experimental.swift-create-module-contexts-in-parallel -- Create the per-module Swift AST contexts in parallel.
(lldb) apropos "reference count"
The following commands may relate to 'reference count':
refcount -- Inspect the reference count data for a Swift object
Where to go from here?
It’s easy to forget the onslaught of LLDB commands that will soon come, but try to commit these two commands, help and apropos, to heart. They’re the foundation for querying information on commands and you’ll be using them all the time as you master debugging.