Attaching and Detaching
Debug processes normally connect to Wing automatically during startup. However, Wing can also attach to debug processes that are not already connected with the IDE. There are two cases where this is useful:
(1) When an externally launched process that uses wingdbstub (as described in section Debugging Externally Launched Code) cannot reach the IDE at startup, for example because the IDE is not yet running or was not configured to accept debug connections.
(2) When a process attached to the IDE is disconnected using Detach from Process in the Debug > Processes sub-menu.
Detaching
Detach from Process in the Debug > Processes sub-menu detaches from the current debug process. Detach from All Processes detaches from all currently connected debug processes.
Whenever a process is detached, it continues to run outside of the debugger, without stopping at any breakpoints or exceptions. If a process is paused in the debugger when it is detached, the process will start running again immediately after the IDE disconnects.
Attaching
Attach to Process in the Debug > Processes sub-menu displays a dialog that contains known processes that were previously attached to Wing, and any additional host/port pairs given with the Debugger > Network > Common Attach Hosts preference. You may also type in a host/port value here (see Identifying Processes below).
Once you are attached to a process, it continues running until it reaches a breakpoint, unhandled exception, or Pause is used.
Identifying Processes
When debugging externally launched code in Wing Pro, the kAttachPort constant in wingdbstub.py sets the port on which the debug process will listen for attach requests from Wing.
If there are multiple concurrent processes and the specified port is in use then a random port number will be used instead. This port number will be communicated to the IDE if the debug process succeeds in connecting to it at startup, so the process can be listed in the Attach to Process dialog. Otherwise, you must use a unique value for the kAttachPort for each process.
Access Control
Wing creates a security token that is used to control who can attach to debug processes. As long as your debug process is running as the same user and on the same host as the IDE, attach and detach should work without any additional configuration.
If you run your debug process as a different user, or on a different machine than the IDE, Wing will initially refuse the connection and ask you to accept the security token from the other account or host. After accepting it, attaching again should succeed.
To preauthorize the debug connection, you can copy the file wingdebugpw from the Settings Directory where Wing is running into the Settings Directory for the other user or host, or into the same directory as wingdbstub.py if you are using that to initiate debug.
