Setting Up Dape in Emacs

Dape allows you to run DAP compatible debuggers in emacs. It’s essentially a replacement for dap-mode. I use Doom Emacs, so you’ll see some Doom-isms.

Once you install and load the package, you’re basically done. Dape has a fair amount of debuggers configured out of the box, and it maps its keybindings to C-x C-a.

1;; packages.el
2(package! dape)
3
4;; config.el
5(use-package! dape)

Now when you run dape via M-x dape or C-X C-a d, you can type in the name of the debugger you want. You can find the names for all the debuggers using describe-variables and looking for dape-configs. I recommend searching for the mode you want to debug (ie. go-mode).

1;; Excerpt from dape-configs
2 (dlv modes
3      (go-mode go-ts-mode)
4      ensure dape-ensure-command command "dlv" command-args
5      ("dap" "--listen" "127.0.0.1::autoport")
6      command-cwd dape-command-cwd port :autoport :request "launch" :type "debug" :cwd "." :program ".")

As we can see here, the name of the debugger is dlv. When we type that in, we can see the total set of options given to us by dape.

Run adapter: dlv

command-cwd "/var/home/digyx/Code/ric/"
:cwd "."
:program "."

We can change these args by setting them in the Run adapter: line.

Run adapter: dlv command-cwd "/var/uwu" :cwd "/var/home"

command-cwd "/var/uwu"
:cwd "/var/home"
:program "."

Installing codelldb

Codelldb needs to be manually installing due to it actually being a VSCode plugin. Instructions are here.

https://github.com/svaante/dape?tab=readme-ov-file#c-c-and-rust—codelldb

If you use Doom Emacs, you’ll need to extract the file under ~/.emacs.d/.local/cache/debug-adapters/codelldb/ instead of ~/.emacs.d/debug-adapters/codelldb/.

Keybindings

If you want map the keybindings to your leader key, this is my current configuration.

 1(map! :map dap-mode-map
 2      :leader
 3      :prefix ("d" . "dap")
 4      :desc "dap hydra" "h" #'hydra-dap/body
 5
 6      :desc "dap debug"   "s" #'dape
 7      :desc "dap quit"    "q" #'dape-quit
 8      :desc "dap restart" "r" #'dape-restart
 9
10      :desc "dap breakpoint toggle"     "b" #'dape-breakpoint-toggle
11      :desc "dap breakpoint remove all" "B" #'dape-breakpoint-remove-all
12      :desc "dap breakpoint log"        "l" #'dape-breakpoint-log
13
14      :desc "dap continue" "c" #'dape-continue
15      :desc "dap next"     "n" #'dape-next
16      :desc "dap step in"  "i" #'dape-step-in
17      :desc "dap step out" "o" #'dape-step-out
18
19      :desc "dap eval" "e" #'dape-evaluate-expression)

And then the hydra:

 1(require 'hydra)
 2(defhydra hydra-dap (:color pink :hint nil)
 3  "
 4^Dape Hydra^
 5------------------------------------------------
 6_n_: Next       _e_: Eval    _Q_: Disconnect
 7_i_: Step In
 8_o_: Step Out
 9_c_: Continue
10_r_: Restart
11
12"
13  ("n" #'dape-next)
14  ("i" #'dape-step-in)
15  ("o" #'dape-step-out)
16  ("c" #'dape-continue)
17  ("e" #'dape-evaluate-expression)
18  ("r" #'dape-restart)
19  ("q" nil "Quit" :color blue)
20  ("Q" #'dape-quit :color blue))