Omniscient Debugging for C...

Bil Lewis bil@bayarea.net
Fri Jun 4 01:40:00 GMT 2004


Dear All,

I was talking with RMS yesterday about some of the work I'm
doing and he suggested I write you.

I've written a new kind of debugger -- it records state changes
and allows the programmer to essentially "go backwards in time."
So now you can ask questions like "What did the value of X USED
to be?"

The results are (IMHO) impressive. Massively difficult bugs
become trivial.

I wrote it in Java (www.LambdaCS.com).

It *could* be written in C/C++/etc. also. This would involve
augmenting the compiler to produce "tracing code" at all 
assignments and function calls. 

I don't know GCC and it's highly unlikely that I shall ever
learn it alone.

But if someone who did know it was interested in doing something
truly extraodinary...

Richard felt that it wouldn't be all that difficult to do.

So, if anyone is interested, drop me a msg & let's talk.

-Bil Lewis




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