Debugging

When compiling a Flint project with the default flags, like flintc main.ft then the compiler already is in debug mode. This means that the compiler emits debug symbols, for line-stepping, value inspection, breakpoints etc. How debuggers work or how you can debug a program will not be explained here. Just search online for "how to debug C" (or any compiled langauge), the workflow is the exact same.

If you do not want debug symbols you need to change the --optimize / -O flag, for example flintc main.ft -O fast. In any mode other than debug, no debug informations are emitted.

VSCode

If you are debuggin in VSCode, make sure to have the C/C++ Extension Pack installed. You need to set the "type": field in the launch.json to cppdbg when debugging Flint programs. This is because the debug symbols rely on debug expression evaluation, which does not seem to work in clang, so lldb does work for debugging itself, but the values on display might be missing, empty or have weird content shown, so it is recommended to use cppdbg as the debug adapter instead.