Building a DebuggerSy Brand
Building a Debugger
by Sy Brand · first published 2025
11mentions
8recommended by
8HN commenters
2025–2026first – last mentioned
100% recommend
Why HN recommends it
Hands-on guide to writing a native x86-64 debugger from scratch; suits readers who want to learn how debuggers work by building one, in the same vein as projects-from-scratch books.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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Yeah. My favorite are books that guide you through implementing complex systems projects from scratch, like Nora Sandler's "Writing a C compiler", or Sy Brand's "Building a Debugger". I wish they produced A LOT more of them.
on “The Book of PF, 4th edition” ↗Thanks for the hint. There is a whole 750 page book by the author, and I immediately bought it after checking the sample chapter and TOC: https://nostarch.com/building-a-debugger
on “Writing a Linux Debugger (2017)” ↗For those interested in writing a debugger: There are a series of tutorials on how to write a debugger from scratch for Windows x86-64 using Rust [1]. Additionally, there is a book titled "Building a Debugger - Write a Native x64 Debugger From Scratch" by Sy Brand [2]. [^1]: https://www.timdbg.com/posts/writing-a-debugger-from-scratch... [^2]: https://nostarch.com/building-a-debugger
on “Nnd – a TUI debugger alternative to GDB, LLDB” ↗Aside, but the author of this blog is the author of https://nostarch.com/building-a-debugger A wonderful exploration of an underexplored topic--I've pre-ordered the hard copy and have been following along with the e-book in the interim.
on “Initialization in C++ is bonkers (2017)” ↗And there is a brand new book with more than 700 pages about how to build a debugger by the same Author with a lot of additional information (see https://nostarch.com/building-a-debugger); I recently bought it and can highly recommend it.
on “Demystifying Debuggers” ↗It's really fascinating the different little evaluators that exist in DWARF. I started writing one for the DWARF expression format (https://github.com/tmcgilchrist/durin/pull/7) that I'm integrating with a debugger and free-monad/effect handler style code to lookup the missing data to provide for the Requires* callbacks. Then there is the line number evaluation, which I haven't started on. Build
on “Durin is a library for reading and writing the Dwarf debugging format” ↗There is "Building a Debugger"[0]. [0]: https://nostarch.com/building-a-debugger
on “Ask HN: Best books on building a programming language” ↗I've been watching this space closely and have been on the lookout for new releases. Besides "Building Git", there is also "Building a Debugger"[0], "Writing a C compiler"[1], "Crafting Interpreters"[2], "The Raytracer Challenge"[3], and a few others that I can't vouch for as they appear to be low-quality compared to the ones I listed out. The potential for technical authors in this space is eno
on “Show HN: Learn by rebuilding Redis, Git, a database from scratch” ↗There’s a relevant book from No Starch, highly recommend. The author also has a series of blog posts on the topic. https://nostarch.com/building-a-debugger
on “Writing a Debugger from Scratch” ↗> I’m retired but mentor CS students at two local universities. > I haven’t had a student in two years that was even remotely interested in ring-0, internals, or really understanding a debugger. I know quite a lot of such people (even in student age) who are interested in such topics. I really have a feeling that you chose the wrong students at the wrong universities. Evidence for my point: rat
on “How do functions like alloca allocate memory from the stack?” ↗Sy Brand's Building a Debugger (2025) https://nostarch.com/building-a-debugger
on “Ask HN: What is the next step after Nora Sandler's "Writing a C compiler"?” ↗