A system for debugging software uses a portable debug environment-independent client debugger object and at least one non-portable server debugger object with platform-specific debugging logic. The client debugger object has a graphic user interface which allows a user to control and manipulate the server debugger object with debug environment-independent debug requests. The server debugger object performs a platform-specific debug operation on the software to be debugged. The platform-specific results generated by the debugging operation are translated to debug environment-independent results and returned to the client debugger object. This operation allows the same client debugger object to be used with one or more server debugger objects running on different platforms.