A Stop-the-World Debugger for Erlang and the BEAM

Watch this 34-minute conference presentation from Erlang 2025 that introduces edb, a novel stop-the-world debugger for Erlang and the BEAM virtual machine. Learn how researchers from Meta and Ericsson have addressed the long-standing limitations of Erlang's traditional step-debugger (int) by developing a new debugging API available since OTP release 28. Discover the technical challenges involved in creating an effective debugger for Erlang's concurrent programming model and explore the implementation details of this breakthrough tool. Understand how this debugger bridges the gap between Erlang's excellent production tracing capabilities and the need for more traditional debugging approaches during development cycles. Gain insights into the motivations behind this work and how edb overcomes the ineffectiveness of previous debugging solutions in complex scenarios, making it a valuable addition to the Erlang developer's toolkit.