FEATHERS(1)

📦 version 5.4.0, in alpine 3.24, fedora 43, fedora 44, nixos 26.05

🦋 FEATHERS — the General Commands Manual girlies know her 💅

okay so bestie, feathers is a whole manual page (section 1, General Commands Manual, iykyk) and I'm about to make her make sense. sit down, grab a strawberry 🍓, let's go.

✨ NAME ✨

feathers — a simple source-level debugger for CHICKEN Scheme 🐣

like. it's a debugger. for CHICKEN Scheme. source-level. simple. iconic. that's the whole vibe.

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

feathers [OPTION ...] [PROGRAM ARGUMENTS ...]

options first, then the program, then whatever arguments you wanna hand to that program. periodt.

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

so here's the tea: feathers runs a program that was compiled with CHICKEN Scheme, and it lets you do the basic source-level debugging stuff — setting breakpoints, single-stepping, and inspecting procedure arguments and global variables. literally the holy trinity of "wait why is my code like this" 😭

BIG important thing though: the Scheme code must be compiled with debug-level 3 for debugging to even be possible. not 2. not "close enough". three. if you didn't compile it with debug-level 3, bestie, there is no debugging happening, full stop 🙈

the way it talks to you is lowkey cute: communication with the debugger takes place by exchanging messages over a TCP socket. the address and the port for that socket come from the environment variable CHICKEN_DEBUGGER, which holds a connection address shaped like this:

⟨ADDRESS⟩:⟨PORT⟩

and PROGRAM has to be the actual path to the executable you want to run — PATH is not searched. like, don't just say ./myprog and hope, give her the real path. no PATH scavenger hunt today 🧚

the program accepts these following arguments:

  • -help — shows you a list of the supported command-line options. the "help me help you" flag 🫶
  • -n — do not load the default startup file .feathers. skipping the intro, going straight to the show ✨
  • -d — TODO: Document this. yes. that is genuinely what the manpage says. she's a mystery, she's mysterious, we respect her privacy 💀
  • -dir DIRECTORY — adds DIRECTORY to the list of searched paths used for locating source files. more places to look = more chances your source shows up 👑
  • -port PORT — pick a different TCP port instead of the default, which is 9999. changing the venue, keeping the party 🌈

🌿 ENVIRONMENT 🌿

these environment variables change how feathers behaves:

  • CHICKEN_DEBUGGER — should hold a TCP server address and port where the debugger is listening. this variable gets set by the debugger when a program is run from it, and it defaults to localhost:9999. so like, usually you don't even have to touch it, she handles it 💜

⭐ EXIT STATUS ⭐

the feathers utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs. zero means slay, anything above zero means something went sideways 😭

🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

more information can be found in the CHICKEN User's Manual: http://wiki.call-cc.org/manual/index.

go read, bestie, it's giving educational 🎀

👑 AUTHORS 👑

The CHICKEN Team. legends, honestly. ate and left no crumbs.

💀 BUGS 💀

submit bug reports by e-mail to chicken-janitors@nongnu.org. don't be shy, they wanna know 🙈

okay that's the whole page!! this one's from the Debian crew, dated Apr 26, 2017, and it's FEATHERS(1) — so go forth, set a breakpoint, and single-step your way to main character energy 💅✨🦋

📦 where this page comes from