RAD Debugger is an in-development native graphical debugger for Windows x64 that also connects to a broader toolchain around custom debug info and a high-performance linker.
RAD Debugger is a native, user-mode, multi-process graphical debugger. The project is currently in alpha and, based on the README, its current supported workflow is local-machine Windows x64 debugging with PDB files. The repository also includes related technology efforts: the RAD Debug Info format and the RAD Linker.
It addresses the need for a graphical debugger aimed at local Windows x64 development, especially in situations where projects are large and traditional debug-information handling becomes cumbersome. The README also frames the broader problem of debug-info interoperability by introducing a custom format that can be produced from existing toolchain formats instead of relying only on native PDB or DWARF data.
At a high level, the debugger uses RAD Debug Info as its internal debug-information format. Existing formats are converted on demand into RDI, with the README specifically mentioning conversion from PDB today and future support for PE/ELF with embedded DWARF. The project also includes radbin for converting native debug info into RDI and for producing text dumps, while the RAD Linker can optionally generate RDI directly during linking to avoid later conversion.
It appears to be gaining attention because it combines a debugger, a custom debug-info format, and a fast linker into one ecosystem, which is attractive to developers working on very large codebases. The README also highlights notable performance claims for the linker in huge projects and says the project is actively developed on both Windows x64 and Linux x64 machines, while the repository is still early enough that community issue reports are specifically requested.
The README itself points most directly to existing toolchain formats and tooling rather than to named competing debuggers: PDB is the current supported debug format, and DWARF is mentioned as a future target. For linking, the most explicit comparison is Microsoft’s MSVC-compatible linking flow, since the RAD Linker is described as command-line compatible with MSVC. Beyond that, the README does not name direct debugger alternatives.
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