How can I make the Eclipse Python debugger more reliable?

I've found that under some circumstances the Eclipse python debugger can be unreliable. For example, when stepping through a memory-hungry Python program I've found that after a certain point the debugger fails to respond. The entire process hangs with 100% cpu load.

I've heard (unconfirmed) reports from developers that when this occurs it might actually not be a hang but very slow, for example a step which usually takes a micro-second might be taking five minutes.

I've observed this with both the regular eclipse debugger (e.g. when you do debug as->python run) and the pydev network debugger. The point at which things stop working seems quite arbitrary but re-producable. I'm debugging purely numerical functions so there's no obvious socket or tcp activity which could disrupt a network debugger. Nevertheless, the point at which the failure occurs seems to be quite consistent for a given workstation & task.

I get almost exactly the same effect whether I debug using debug as->python run as I might if I use the pydev's network debugger ('import pydevd;pydevd.settrace()') - where one fails the other is also likely to fail.

If I were to run the script normally (no debugger) it executes without any hangs. Furthermore, if I replace the eclipse debugger with the old-skool inline break-point ('import pdb;pdb.set_trace()') everything works just fine. Pdb almost never goes wrong, however there are times I simply cannot use it, for example when I am debugging a python function invoked from Excel - as there is no console present.

I've noticed that this failure never seems to 开发者_如何学Coccur with trivial programs, hence I've tentatively concluded that the fault may be memory related.

So - is anybody aware of what might be causing this unreliability. Are there any tweaks I can make to the debugger or environment that might make the debugger work more reliably?

FYI, running Python 2.4.4 on Windows XP 32bit with the latest Eclipse & Pydev. Psyco (JIT Compiler) is not available.

There are known issues with Python 2.4 (so, if possible, get a newer version), still, if you're unable to get a newer version, at least use threadframe extension (http://pypi.python.org/pypi/threadframe). If None of that's possible, it's really expected that the debugger doesn't work as well as it could (as the debugger needs features that are not available in that version).

Not sure if its related, but I had a scenario where too many debug messages will cause my PC to become very slow. You can try go to Window -> Preferences -> Run/Debug -> Console... tick Limit console output, and reduce Console buffer size (mine is set to 40000).