Debugging microservices applications is a difficult task. The state of the application is spread across multi microservices and it is hard to get the holistic view of the state of the application. Currently debugging of microservices is assisted by openTracing, which helps in tracing of a transaction or workflow for post-mortem analysis, and service mesh like itsio which monitor the network to identify latency problems. These tools however, do not allow to monitor and interfere with the application during run time.

In contrast, "traditional" debuggers of monolitic application provide devs with powerful features like setting breakpoints in their codes, following values of variables on the fly, stepping through the code, and changing these variables during run time.

Squash brings the power of modern popular debuggers to developers of microservices apps that run on container orchestration platforms. Squash bridges between the orchestration platform (without changing it) and IDE. Users are free to choose which containers, pods, services or images they are interested in debugging, and are allowed to set breakpoints in their codes, follow values of their variables on the fly, step through the code while jumping between microservices, and change these values during run time.

Squash is built to be easily extensible, allowing – and encouraging – adding support for more platforms, debuggers and IDEs.

To learn more about the motivation behind project squash, read our blog post or watch a recorded demo. We also encourage you to read squash technical overview blog.

To stay up-to-date with Squash, follow us @GetSoloIO and join us on our slack channel.

• Live debugging cross multi microservices
• Debug container in a pod
• Debug a service
• Set breakpoints
• Step through the code
• View and modify values of variables
• and more ...

In the following demo we debug an application that adds two numbers. As you can see, it currently fails miserably at adding 9 to 99. The applications is composed of two microservices. We set breakpoints in both, then step through the application, while monitoring its variables. At some point we identify the problem, and test it by changing the value of the variable isadd before resuming the exectution of the appliation.

An annotated version of this demo can be found here.

• Installation

  • install squash

• Getting Started

  • debug your microservice

• User Documenation

  • using IDEs to debug
  • using the command line interface
  • Debug your java microservices
  • Debug your NodeJS microservices
  • Debug your pyton microservices with VSCode
  • Debug application using service mesh

• Developer Documentation

  • how to build squash from source
  • technical overview
  • adding debbuger support
  • adding platform support
  • squash's REST API

• gdb
• dlv
• Java
• Nodejs
• Python - ptvsd

• Kubernetes
• Istio

• VS Code

We are looking for community help to add support for more debuggers, platforms and IDEs.

debuggers

• Python

platforms:

• Mesos
• Docker Swarm
• Cloud Foundry

IDEs

• Eclipse
• Intellij

Squash is still experimental! APIs and compatibility are subject to change. We are looking for community support to help identify potential bugs and compatibility issues. Please open a Github issue for any problems you may experience, and join us on our slack channel

Squash would not be possible without the valuable open-source work of projects in the community. We would like to extend a special thank-you to Kubernetes, gdb and dlv.