The Art of Debugging with GDB, DDD, and Eclipse

by Matloff, Norman

• ISBN13: 9781593271749
• ISBN10: 1593271743
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-09-15
• Publisher: No Starch Pr

Summary

Debugging is of central importance to successful software development, and yet many beginning programmers are unaware of the techniques they can use to reduce the time they spend finding and fixing programming errors. GDB, a popular open source debugger, allows a programmer to trace program execution line by line, set breakpoints, inspect variables, and look at what the program is doing at any given time. Using an assortment of real world coding errors "from simple typos to major logical blunders The Art of Debugging with GDB and DDD discusses how to manage memory, understand core dumps, and trace programming errors to their root cause. The book covers topics other debugging books omit "such as threaded, server/client, GUI, and parallel programming "as well as how to avoid common debugging pitfalls. Readers also learn about techniques and tools they can use to prevent errors, saving themselves valuable time and effort.

Author Biography

Norman Matloff, a computer science professor at UC Davis, is the author of several popular public-domain software packages and online tutorials.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xi
Some Preliminaries for Beginners and Pros	p. 1
Debugging Tools Used in This Book	p. 1
Programming Language Focus	p. 2
The Principles of Debugging	p. 2
The Essence of Debugging: The Principle of Confirmation	p. 2
Of What Value Is a Debugging Tool for the Principle of Confirmation?	p. 3
Other Debugging Principles	p. 4
Text-Based vs. GUI-Based Debugging Tools, and a Compromise Between Them	p. 5
Brief Comparison of Interfaces	p. 5
Compromises	p. 12
Main Debugger Operations	p. 14
Stepping Through the Source Code	p. 14
Inspecting Variables	p. 15
Issuing an "All Points Bulletin" for Changes to a Variable	p. 17
Moving Up and Down the Call Stack	p. 17
Online Help	p. 19
Introductory Debugging Session	p. 19
The GDB Approach	p. 22
The Same Session in DDD	p. 36
The Session in Eclipse	p. 38
Use of Startup Files	p. 43
Stopping to Take a Look Around	p. 47
Mechanisms for Pause	p. 47
Overview of Breakpoints	p. 48
Keeping Track of Breakpoints	p. 49
Breakpoint Lists in GDB	p. 49
Breakpoint Lists in DDD	p. 50
Breakpoint Lists in Eclipse	p. 51
Setting Breakpoints	p. 51
Setting Breakpoints in GDB	p. 51
Setting Breakpoints in DDD	p. 55
Setting Breakpoints in Eclipse	p. 56
Extended GDB Example	p. 56
Persistence of Breakpoints	p. 59
Deleting and Disabling Breakpoints	p. 60
Deleting Breakpoints in GDB	p. 61
Disabling Breakpoints in GDB	p. 62
Deleting and Disabling Breakpoints in DDD	p. 62
Deleting and Disabling Breakpoints in Eclipse	p. 63
"Moving" Breakpoints in DDD	p. 64
Undoing/Redoing Breakpoint Actions in DDD	p. 66
More on Viewing Breakpoint Attributes	p. 67
GDB	p. 67
DDD	p. 69
Eclipse	p. 69
Resuming Execution	p. 69
In GDB	p. 70
In DDD	p. 78
In Eclipse	p. 79
Conditional Breakpoints	p. 79
GDB	p. 80
DDD	p. 83
Eclipse	p. 84
Breakpoint Command Lists	p. 85
Watchpoints	p. 89
Setting Watchpoints	p. 90
Expressions	p. 93
Inspecting and Setting Variables	p. 95
Our Main Example Code	p. 95
Advanced Inspection and Setting of Variables	p. 98
Inspection in GDB	p. 98
Inspection in DDD	p. 102
Inspection in Eclipse	p. 103
Inspecting Dynamic Arrays	p. 104
What About C++?	p. 109
Monitoring Local Variables	p. 112
Examining Memory Directly	p. 112
Advanced Options for Print and Display	p. 112
Setting Variables from Within GDB/DDD/Eclipse	p. 113
GDB's Own Variables	p. 113
Making Use of the Value History	p. 114
Convenience Variables	p. 114
When a Program Crashes	p. 117
Background Material: Memory Management	p. 118
Why Does a Program Crash?	p. 118
Program Layout in Memory	p. 118
The Notion of Pages	p. 121
Details on the Role of the Page Table	p. 122
A Slight Memory-Access Bug Might Not Cause a Seg Fault	p. 124
Seg Faults and Unix Signals	p. 125
Other Types of Exceptions	p. 128
Core Files	p. 129
How Core Files Are Created	p. 129
Your Shell May Suppress the Creation of a Core File	p. 130
Extended Example	p. 131
First Bug	p. 135
Don't Leave GDB During a Debugging Session	p. 137
Second and Third Bugs	p. 137
Fourth Bug	p. 139
Fifth and Sixth Bugs	p. 141
Debugging in a Multiple-Activities Context	p. 145
Debugging Client/Server Network Programs	p. 145
Debugging Threaded Code	p. 151
Review of Processes and Threads	p. 151
Basic Example	p. 153
A Variation	p. 159
GDB Threads Command Summary	p. 161
Threads Commands in DDD	p. 161
Threads Commands in Eclipse	p. 161
Debugging Parallel Applications	p. 163
Message-Passing Systems	p. 164
Shared-Memory Systems	p. 170
Extended Example	p. 171
OpenMP Overview	p. 171
OpenMP Example Program	p. 172
Special Topics	p. 185
What If It Doesn't Even Compile or Load?	p. 185
Phantom Line Numbers in Syntax Error Messages	p. 185
Missing Libraries	p. 190
Debugging GUI Programs	p. 194
Debugging Curses Programs	p. 194
Other Tools	p. 205
Making Good Use of a Text Editor	p. 206
Syntax Highlighting	p. 206
Matching Brackets	p. 208
Vim and Makefiles	p. 209
Makefiles and Compiler Warnings	p. 210
Final Thoughts on a Text Editor as an IDE	p. 211
Making Good Use of the Compiler	p. 212
Error Reporting in C	p. 213
Using errno	p. 213
Better Living with strace and Itrace	p. 217
Static Code Checkers: Iint and Friends	p. 219
How to Use splint	p. 221
Last Words	p. 221
Debugging Dynamically Allocated Memory	p. 221
Strategies for Detecting DAM Problems	p. 224
Electric Fence	p. 225
Debugging DAM Problems with GNU C Library Tools	p. 228
Using GDB/DDD/Eclipse for Other Languages	p. 235
Java	p. 236
Direct Use of GDB for Debugging Java	p. 238
Using DDD with GDB to Debug Java	p. 240
Using DDD as a GUI for JDB	p. 241
Debugging Java in Eclipse	p. 241
Perl	p. 242
Debugging Perl via DDD	p. 244
Debugging Perl in Eclipse	p. 246
Python	p. 247
Debugging Python in DDD	p. 249
Debugging Python in Eclipse	p. 250
Debugging SWIG Code	p. 251
Assembly Language	p. 255
Index	p. 259
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