intellij: CLion Fails to Debug `cc_binary` target on macOS

The Problem

I’ve written a hello world cc_binary target, but my attempts to debug it from within CLion fail.

I’ve created a repository, dwtj/clwb-bugs-example, to demonstrate the problem. It includes analogous CMake and Bazel builds of this program.

When I use CLion+CMake, I can debug hello_world just fine, but when I try to debug it with CLion+Bazel, I get a red popup error. The image below shows these two projects side-by-side:

The red popup error says:

Error running ‘Bazel run :hello_world’: Debugger executable not specified Configure

Here, “Configure” is a link to CLion’s “Preferences” > “Build, Execution, Deployment” > “Toolchains”. Here’s what that looks like for me:

There are three choices in the “Debugger” drop-down menu:

• Bundled LLDB
• Bundled GDB
• Custom GDB Executable

Note that there doesn’t seem to be a “Custom LLDB” option. For varying reasons, all of these options fail in my CLion+Bazel project.

Bundled LLDB

As described above, “Bundled LLDB” seems to work fine in CLion+CMake, but it fails with the red popup error in CLion+Bazel.

Bundled GDB

When I chose this option, I get “a file format not recognized error.” This happens for both CLion+CMake and CLion+Bazel.

I guess this makes sense, since my Clang/LLVM toolchain is building the program in either case, and evidently GDB won’t work on a Clang-built executable. Here’s the image:

Custom GDB Executable:

I don’t have GCC/GDB installed on my system, so I don’t have a “Custom GDB Executable” to select.

However, if I try to use /usr/bin/lldb as a Custom GDB Executable, I get an error: lldb: unrecognized option '-interpreter=mi2'. As you might expect, this happens for both CLion+CMake and CLion+Bazel. Here’s the image:

My Testing Environment

• macOS 10.14.2 (Mojave)
• CLion v2018.2.7 (Though CLion v2018.3.0+ are more recent, they don’t seem to be compatible with the latest versions of the plugin.)
• Two versions of the plugin, https://github.com/bazelbuild/intellij:
  • v2018.12.03.0.2 (latest pre-built release, retrieved within CLion)
  • 0f45ef4 (built from source)
• File System: APFS (Case-sensitive, Encrypted)

$ xcodebuild -version
Xcode 10.1
Build version 10B61
$ c++ --version
Apple LLVM version 10.0.0 (clang-1000.11.45.5)
Target: x86_64-apple-darwin18.2.0
Thread model: posix
InstalledDir: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin
$ bazel version
WARNING: --batch mode is deprecated. Please instead explicitly shut down your Bazel server using the command "bazel shutdown".
INFO: Invocation ID: d1b8eba4-dc65-4103-9351-c84a51b0c384
Build label: 0.21.0
Build target: bazel-out/darwin-opt/bin/src/main/java/com/google/devtools/build/lib/bazel/BazelServer_deploy.jar
Build time: Wed Dec 19 12:57:09 2018 (1545224229)
Build timestamp: 1545224229
Build timestamp as int: 1545224229

Questions

• Is it possible that my Clang/LLVM/LLDB toolchain just isn’t yet supported by the plugin?
• If that is the case, how can I work around this?
• Do I need to instead use a GCC/GDB toolchain?
• If so, how should I configure my Bazel workspace, a cc_binary target, and a cc_library target to use another toolchain?
• Is this related to bazelbuild/bazel#6327? When I use CLI lldb on my hello_world project, I see the same kind of thing in that issue. Might switching to a GCC/GDB toolchain at least let me use CLI gdb on my Bazel cc_binary targets?