Rust Debugging

This covers the full debugging toolkit for Rust: setting up rust-gdb and rust-lldb with pretty-printers so you can actually read String and Vec contents, configuring RUST_BACKTRACE for panic triage, and using tokio-console to debug async tasks that mysteriously stall. The workflow walks through debug builds, breakpoint strategies for panics, and the dbg! macro for quick inspection. What makes it genuinely useful is the async debugging section, since tokio tasks are notoriously hard to reason about without visibility into waker activity and poll durations. If you're moving beyond println! debugging or dealing with production panics, this gives you the GDB commands and tracing setup you need.

skills.sh installs: 597
GitHub stars: 279
last updated: Aug 21, 2026

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Install

$ npx -y skills add mohitmishra786/low-level-dev-skills --skill rust-debugging --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

Files

Rust Debugging

Purpose

Guide agents through debugging Rust programs: GDB/LLDB with Rust pretty-printers, backtrace configuration, panic triage, async debugging with tokio-console, and #[no_std] debugging strategies.

Triggers

"How do I use GDB/LLDB to debug a Rust binary?"
"How do I get a full backtrace from a Rust panic?"
"How do I debug async Rust / Tokio?"
"Rust pretty-printers aren't working in GDB"
"How do I debug a Rust panic in production?"
"How do I use dbg! and tracing in Rust?"

Workflow

1. Build for debugging

# Debug build (default) — full debug info, no optimization
cargo build

# Release with debug info (for profiling real workloads)
cargo build --release --profile release-with-debug
# Or configure in Cargo.toml:
# [profile.release-with-debug]
# inherits = "release"
# debug = true

# Run directly
cargo run
cargo run -- arg1 arg2

2. GDB with Rust pretty-printers

# Use rust-gdb wrapper (sets up pretty-printers automatically)
rust-gdb target/debug/myapp

# Or set up manually in ~/.gdbinit:
# python
# import subprocess, sys
# ...

SKILL.md on GitHub