Xcode Debugging Guide (Tools & Languages: IDEs)

Finding and eliminating bugs in your code is a critical phase of the development process. Xcode provides advanced debugging facilities, which include debugging from the text editor so that you don’t stray far from your code, and using the mini debugger, which provides a graphical debugging experience that is less intrusive on the running application than other methods. You can also use a more traditional, specialized graphical debugger, or the debugger console.

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Xcode lets you analyze your code line by line to view your program’s state at a particular stage of execution. This process is called debugging. To debug a program, you run it under the control of a debugger, which lets you pause programs and examine their state.
Debugging Environments
You can perform debugging operations in several ways:
¦ In the text editor. The text editor allows you to perform many debugging operations, such as stepping through code lines and viewing the contents of variables. Debugging in the text editor lets you be close to your code as you debug it.
¦ In the mini debugger. The mini debugger is a floating window that lets you perform debugging operations in way that is less intrusive to your code than debugging within Xcode. The mini debugger lets you debug your application in an environment that closely resembles the way your customers use your application.
¦ In the debugger. The Xcode graphical debugger provides a rich, traditional debugging experience.
¦ In the console. Some debugging operations produce textual output, which is displayed in the console. This window can also be used to issue commands directly to the GDB (The GNU Project Debugger) instead of through the Xcode graphical debugger.
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