What is chisel?

Chisel is a set of extra commands for LLDB, which is the built-in debugger that Xcode uses when you are developing iOS or Mac apps. When an app is paused at a breakpoint, LLDB lets you inspect what is happening inside it. Chisel extends that capability with additional commands that are specifically useful for inspecting visual elements like views, layers, and colors on screen. The commands cover a range of practical tasks. You can print a tree of all the visible interface elements in the current window, show or hide a specific element without restarting the app, add a colored border around a view to see exactly where it is on screen, open an image object directly in Preview on your Mac, find views whose class names match a search pattern, or set a watchpoint on a specific variable inside an object. Many of these actions are things that would otherwise require writing code and recompiling, so having them as debugger commands saves time during development. Installing Chisel requires Homebrew, which is a package manager for Mac. After installation, you add one line to a configuration file that LLDB reads at startup, and the commands become available every time Xcode launches. The repository also explains how to write your own custom commands using Python and load them through the same mechanism. Chisel was created by Facebook and is released under the MIT license. It is aimed at iOS and Mac developers who use Xcode and want a faster way to diagnose layout problems and inspect the state of their app while it is running.