C++26: The New Debugging Header

> Implementations are expected to optimize the code generated to be as minimal as possible for the platform. For example, on X86 it’s expected that this produces a single INT3 instruction. The goal in this expectation is to place the debugger as close as possible in the caller of breakpoint() to improve the debugging experience for users.

This is the wrong design on x86 at least with many debuggers. x86’s int3 is a trap and reports the address of the next instruction in the saved register state [0]. Most debuggers are not very clever and just use the saved address to generate the offending line of code and the call stack. But if the trap sequence is just int3, then the saved address could be outside the offending basic block or even outside the function entirely. gdb is certainly in the class of debuggers that get this wrong.

The easy workaround is to generate int3; nop for the breakpoint instead of just int3. The saved address will point to the nop and the debugger will be happy.

[0] FRED also reports the instruction length, allowing one to deduce the trapping address.