Live Debugger quick start

Latest Dynatrace

To enable Observability for Developers (Live Debugger), ensure that your OneAgent is up to date and deployed correctly and that your admin enables the Observability for Developers feature in the settings page.

To use the Live Debugger app, ensure that your OneAgent is up to date and correctly deployed, and that your administrator has enabled the Observability for Developers feature.

For details, see Enable Observability for Developers.

To start using the Live Debugger:

Open Live Debugger through the applications page. If Live Debugger is not displayed, install it from Dynatrace Hub.

To start your debugging session, open the Customize your debug session page by selecting the Debug Configuration edit button in the upper-left corner of the application.

You'll need to select one or more filters from either the Facets/Categories or by using the free search box to scope the instances you would like to debug. Filters can also be set through the Facets/Categories right pane, which can be opened by selecting a specific instance item in the list.

Each debug session contains the source code you want to debug. The Live Debugger application lets you quickly load sources from your local file system and Git provider. When you integrate your source code into Live Debugger, it remains between your code repository and your local browser.

There are two main ways to import your source code:

Automatic fetching

Live Debugger can connect to a repository and automatically fetch the source code for the selected instance.

  • Your repository may be automatically fetched for the selected instance based on your git permissions, if it has already been set up by your admin.
  • To learn more about automatic fetching, see Integrate with your Version Control.

Manual fetching

Live Debugger lets you easily load your relevant source code into the application.

  • Select the + icon on the upper-right corner of the Set up your session page to open a list with the supported git providers you're able to fetch sources from.
  • Live Debugger includes a desktop application that can access source repositories from your local file system. This enables you to fetch source code from locally hosted Git providers. You can find the desktop application's installation file in the Live Debugger app, when selecting your source code.

Live Debugger integrates directly to the cloud editions of the following Git providers, both on-premises and SaaS:

  • Github
  • BitBucket
  • GitLab
  • Azure DevOps

To enable Live Debugger to integrate with your Git provider

  1. Go to Settings > Dynatrace Apps > Git On-Premise Servers.
  2. Select Add item. Git Provider: specify your Git provider. Server URL: provide the HTTP/HTTPS URL of your server.
  3. Select Save changes.
    • To use BitBucket On-Premises, you need to install the desktop application (see the Manual Fetching section above).

To get real-time code-level data

  1. Select the service you want to debug.
  2. Navigate to the file system.
  3. Set a non-breaking breakpoint on the line of code you want to debug.

Non-breaking breakpoints are reference breakpoints for the lines of code from which you want to collect debug data. These breakpoints will not stop your code from running; instead, they will carry the debug data collection request. Placing these breakpoints and receiving the derived snapshots will not affect your application or its users.

After placing a non-breaking breakpoint, make sure your code has been triggered, so that the data will be collected and appear immediately in the application.

Once the non-breaking breakpoint is triggered, the collected data will be displayed as snapshot items in the lower-left panel. By selecting a specific snapshot, you can view

  • All local variables and their values
  • Process information
  • The complete stack trace leading to the breakpoint
  • Tracing information from the running application.

You can also debug code up the stack from the stack trace view, including third-party components.