Squash: A Debugger for Kubernetes Apps

Squash is a tool for debugging distributed applications. Most cloud native applications written today follow the microservice architecture. These applications are distributed by nature, and therefore …

Squash is a tool for debugging distributed applications. Most cloud native applications written today follow the microservice architecture. These applications are distributed by nature, and therefore hard to debug. Microservice engineers debug their applications by printing values of select variables into log files. This leaves them with the daunting task of sorting through reams of log data, which at best provide a partial view of the state of application. This approach is cumbersome, time consuming and works better with “easy” bugs. Many advanced tools to debug monolitic applications exist in the market, and provide users with powerful ways to dissect their programs and to interact with them on the fly. However, these tools cannot be used directly for debugging applications that follow the microservice architecture pattern. Squash is designed to bring the strength of modern debuggers and the convenience of their IDEs to microservices developers. Squash uses popular, powerful and mature debuggers (gdb, dlv, java debugging) and integrates them seamlessly with Kubernetes. This allows devs to use the debugger of their choice, and the IDEs that support it, to develop microservices on any platform.