LowOverhead Interactive Debugging via Dynamic Instrumentation with DISE.pdfVIP

Low-Overhead Interactive Debugging via Dynamic Instrumentation with DISE∗ Marc L. Corliss E Christopher Lewis Amir Roth Department of Computer and Information Science University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19104-6389 {mcorliss,lewis,amir}@ the breakpoint/watchpoint criterion is met and a user-specified predicate is true. Breakpoints, watchpoints, and conditionals Abstract reduce the frequency of user-application interaction, easing Breakpoints, watchpoints, and conditional variants of both the intellectual burden on users and accelerating the debug- are essential debugging primitives, but their natural imple- ging process. mentations often degrade performance significantly. Slow- Unfortunately, the natural implementation of breakpoints down arises because the debugger—the tool implementing and watchpoints can be unacceptably inefficient. For safety the breakpoint/watchpoint interface—is implemented in a pro- and simplicity, the debugger and the application it controls cess separate from the debugged application. Since the de- typically reside in different processes [18]. The breakpoint bugger evaluates the watchpoint expressions and conditional and watchpoint logic resides in the debugger, necessitating predicates to determine whethe