An interactive high-level debugger for control-flow optimized programs (Summary)

ABSTRACT

The transformations performed by an optimizing compiler have traditionally impeded interactive debugging in source language terms. A prototype system called Navigator has been developed for debugging optimized programs written in Cedar, an Algol-like language. Navigator can be used to monitor program execution flow in the presence of two optimizations: inline procedure expansion and cross-jumping (merging identical tails of code paths that join). This paper describes the problems that these two optimizations create for debugging and Navigator's solutions to these problems. The selected approach collects extra information during the optimization phases of compilation. At runtime, Navigator uses the additional information to hide the effects of the optimizations from the programmer.

REFERENCES

• 1: Allen, F. E., and Cocke, J. A catalogue of optimizing transformations. In Design and Optimization of Compilers, Rustin, R. (Ed.), Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1972, 1-30.
• 2: Alfred V. Aho , Jeffrey D. Ullman, Principles of Compiler Design (Addison-Wesley series in computer science and information processing), Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, 1977
• 3: Evans, T. G., and Darley, D.L. On-line debugging techniques: A survey. AFIPS FJCC Proceedings Vol. 29, 1966, 37-50.
• 4: Charles Matthew Geschke, Global program optimizations., 1973
• 5: W. H. Harisson, Position paper on optimizing compilers, Proceedings of the 8th ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming languages, p.88-89, January 26-28, 1981, Williamsburg, Virginia [doi>10.1145/567532.567541]
• 6: John Hennessy, Symbolic Debugging of Optimized Code, ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS), v.4 n.3, p.323-344, July 1982 [doi>10.1145/357172.357173]
• 7: Mark Scott Johnson, A software debugging glossary, ACM SIGPLAN Notices, v.17 n.2, p.53-70, February 1982 [doi>10.1145/947902.947908]
• 8: David B. Loveman, Program Improvement by Source-to-Source Transformation, Journal of the ACM (JACM), v.24 n.1, p.121-145, Jan. 1977 [doi>10.1145/321992.322000]
• 9: Mitchell, J. G., Maybury, W., and Sweet, R. Mesa language manual, version 5.0. Report CSL-79-3, Xerox PARC, Palo Alto, CA, April 1979.
• 10: Myers, B. A. Displaying data structures for interactive debugging. Report CSL-80-7, Xerox PARC, Palo Alto, CA, June 1980.
• 11: Teeple, D. W. L., Personal communication. November 26, 1981.
• 12: Teeple, D. W. L., and Anderson, J. C. The debugging of optimized code. Unpublished manuscript, MacDonald, Dettwiler & Associates Ltd., Richmond, B.C., Canada, March 1980.
• 13: Warren, H. S., Jr. Personal communication. March 3, 1982.
• 14: Warren, H. S., Jr., and Schlaeppi, H. P. Design of the FDS interactive debugging system. Report RC7214, IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown, NY, June 1978.
• 15: William Allan Wulf , Richard K. Johnsson , Charles B. Weinstock , Steven O. Hobbs , Charles M. Geschke, The Design of an Optimizing Compiler, Elsevier Science Inc., New York, NY, 1975
• 16: Zellweger, P.T. An interactive high-level debugger for control-flow optimized programs. Report CSL-83-1, Xerox PARC, Palo Alto, CA, January 1983.
• 17: Zellweger, P.T. Interactions between high-level debugging and optimized code. Ph.D. Dissertation, Computer Science Division—EECS, University of California, Berkeley, to appear in 1983.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.6 Programming Environments
          Subjects: Interactive environments

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.5 Testing and Debugging
          Subjects: Debugging aids
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
      D.3.4 Processors
          Subjects: Optimization; Compilers

General Terms:
Design, Languages, Performance, Verification