CSC/ECE 517 Fall 2009/wiki1b 1 ch

Debuggers have been around for at least 35 years, but the debuggers in NetBeans and Eclipse took debugging to a new level by integrating it with a large number of facilities for writing code. Describe the advances in debugging during this decade, taking into account (i) the academic literature, (ii) debugging in commercial development environments, and (iii) debugging and open source.

Background

Debugging has been an important part of software development life cycle ever since the first computer program being introduced. However, programmers often find debugging to be a difficult, slow, and tedious process. During the last decade, debugging techniques and tools have advanced immensely. The most popular tools used by programmers, from beginners to professionals, are probably Eclipse and NetBeans IDE. Both of these tools gained more popularity and success when they became an open-source project, with individuals and companies contributing to the project.

Tools

Debugging is a process of finding and fixing defects in program code. Debugger is a software tool used by software developers to find and eliminate bugs. They allow the developers to examine the code in details, run through them line by line, checking variables' value at a specific point, etc.

Eclipse

IBM developed Eclipse in the late 1990s and turned it over in 2001 to the nonprofit Eclipse Foundation. It became an open-source platform which enabled anyone to build applications using the technology. Eclipse is a popular choice, especially among Java developers, and often compared to NetBeans.

NetBeans

NetBeans is an open-source IDE developed in Java using the NetBeans Platform. NetBeans offer bundles for specific development needs, such as Java EE, Ruby, PHP, and C/C++.

Debugging in Eclipse and NetBeans

Eclipse and NetBeans come with debugging facilities, such as running and stopping the program, setting up breakpoints, keeping track of variables' value, watchpoint, hit count, etc. A nice tutorial for Java debugging with Eclipse can be found here.

Debugging Techniques

Delta Debugging

Delta Debugging, developed by Professor Andreas Zeller's group at Saarland University in Germany, is an automatic and systematic technique that deals with isolation of the source of the failure -- often the developer's longest, most demotivating, and most repetitive activity when carried out manually.<ref>http://www.linux.com/archive/feature/46108</ref> The algorithm isolates the difference between the passing and failing test case hence simplifies the number of test cases needed.

Delta Debugging can be applied to isolate the cause of these different applications:

• Failure-inducing input
• Failure-inducing changes (adding / updating / deleting variables, functions, classes, etc.)
• Failure-inducing states (key presses, button presses, mouse clicks, etc.)

Advanced Debugging Tools

Tarantula

Tarantula is a fault localization tool, which visualizes the suspicions of statements by different colors. The statements that are suspicious will be marked with red color, whereas the innocent statements marked by green color.

Whyline

Whyline is an interactive debugging tool which is designed to help programmers locating the fault by allowing them to ask questions along the source code based on their dependency.

Visual Interactive Debugging Aids (VIDA)

Visual Interactive Debugging Aids (VIDA) is a debugging tool which continuously recommends breakpoints for the programmer based on the analysis of execution information and the gathered feedback from the programmer.

Further Reading

• Andreas Zeller: Why Programs Fail: A Guide to Systematic Debugging, Morgan Kaufmann, 2005. ISBN 1-55860-866-4

External Links

• Delta Debugging: From automated testing to automated debugging
• An Introduction to Delta Debugging