The book teaches How to Approach Software Debugging As a Reproducible Science. Noting in life is certain except death, taxes, and software bugs. Effective debugging involves for more than walking through code with a debugger. This book recognized this and teaches a mindset that allows you to reliably find and fix bugs. It sets out to make debugging less baffling, faster, and more effective by providing you with the knowledge and techniques needed to rapidly identify, track down, and repair bugs. It goes further by offering practical tips on minimizing bugs and making them easier to find when they do occur. Learn to use techniques that have been developed over decades by experienced professionals!Chapter 1: Introduction to DebuggingChapter 2: Case Studies of Famous (and Not So Famous) BugsChapter 3: What are Bugs?Chapter 4: Life Cycle of a BugChapter 5: A Bug TaxonomyChapter 6: Detective WorkChapter 7: Debugging Tools and When to Use ThemChapter 8: The General Process of DebuggingChapter 9: Debugging TechniquesChapter 10: Debugging Different Application TypesChapter 11: Post DebuggingChapter 12: PrebuggingChapter 13: TestingChapter 14: MaintenanceChapter 15: Debugging as a Profession

Every software developer and IT professional understands the crucial importance of effective debugging. Often, debugging consumes most of a developer’s workday, and mastering the required techniques and skills can take a lifetime. In Effective Debugging, Diomidis Spinellis helps experienced programmers accelerate their journey to mastery, by systematically categorizing, explaining, and illustrating the most useful debugging methods, strategies, techniques, and tools. Drawing on more than thirty-five years of experience, Spinellis expands your arsenal of debugging techniques, helping you choose the best approaches for each challenge. He presents vendor-neutral, example-rich advice on general principles, high-level strategies, concrete techniques, high-efficiency tools, creative tricks, and the behavioral traits associated with effective debugging. Spinellis’s 66 expert techniques address every facet of debugging and are illustrated with step-by-step instructions and actual code. He addresses the full spectrum of problems that can arise in modern software systems, especially problems caused by complex interactions among components and services running on hosts scattered around the planet. Whether you’re debugging isolated runtime errors or catastrophic enterprise system failures, this guide will help you get the job done—more quickly, and with less pain. Key features include High-level strategies and methods for addressing diverse software failures Specific techniques to apply when programming, compiling, and running code Better ways to make the most of your debugger General-purpose skills and tools worth investing in Advanced ideas and techniques for escaping dead-ends and the maze of complexity Advice for making programs easier to debug Specialized approaches for debugging multithreaded, asynchronous, and embedded code Bug avoidance through improved software design, construction, and management

When the pressure is on to resolve an elusive software or hardware glitch, what’s needed is a cool head courtesy of a set of rules guaranteed to work on any system, in any circumstance. Written in a frank but engaging style, this book provides simple, foolproof principles guaranteed to help find any bug quickly. Recognized tech expert and author David Agans changes the way you think about debugging, making those pesky problems suddenly much easier to find and fix. Agans identifies nine simple, practical rules that are applicable to any software application or hardware system, which can help detect any bug, no matter how tricky or obscure. Illustrating the rules with real-life bug-detection war stories, Debugging shows you how to: Understand the system: how perceiving the ""roadmap"" can hasten your journey Quit thinking and look: when hands-on investigation can’t be avoided Isolate critical factors: why changing one element at a time can be an essential tool Keep an audit trail: how keeping a record of the debugging process can win the day Whether the system or program you’re working on has been designed wrong, built wrong, or used wrong, Debugging helps you think correctly about bugs, so the problems virtually reveal themselves.

Debugging is crucial to successful software development, but even many experienced programmers find it challenging. Sophisticated debugging tools are available, yet it may be difficult to determine which features are useful in which situations. The Art of Debugging is your guide to making the debugging process more efficient and effective. The Art of Debugging illustrates the use three of the most popular debugging tools on Linux/Unix platforms: GDB, DDD, and Eclipse. The text-command based GDB (the GNU Project Debugger) is included with most distributions. DDD is a popular GUI front end for GDB, while Eclipse provides a complete integrated development environment. In addition to offering specific advice for debugging with each tool, authors Norm Matloff and Pete Salzman cover general strategies for improving the process of finding and fixing coding errors, including how to: –Inspect variables and data structures –Understand segmentation faults and core dumps –Know why your program crashes or throws exceptions –Use features like catchpoints, convenience variables, and artificial arrays –Avoid common debugging pitfalls Real world examples of coding errors help to clarify the authors’ guiding principles, and coverage of complex topics like thread, client-server, GUI, and parallel programming debugging will make you even more proficient. You'll also learn how to prevent errors in the first place with text editors, compilers, error reporting, and static code checkers. Whether you dread the thought of debugging your programs or simply want to improve your current debugging efforts, you'll find a valuable ally in The Art of Debugging.

Object relationships in modern software systems are becoming increasingly numerous and complex, and program errors due to violations of object relationships are difficult to detect. Programmers need new tools that allow them to explore objects in a large system more efficiently and to detect broken object relationships instantaneously. Such tools incorporate approaches used in such areas as data visualization, pattern matching and extraction, database querying, active databases, and rule-based programming. The query-based debugging approach developed by the author of this book is another powerful yet efficient tool to be added to the developer's tool chest. Advanced Debugging Methods presents practice and tools for debugging computer programs. This book proposes new powerful approaches that simplify the daunting task of debugging complex software systems. Although debugging has been addressed in numerous research papers, many of its methods have yet to be explored in a book-length format. This book helps to fill this gap by presenting an overview of existing debugging tools with motivating examples and case studies, as well as presenting new, state-of-the-art debugging methods. Advanced Debugging Methods will be of use to software developers looking for tools to be applied in cutting edge practice; system architects looking at the relationship between software design and debugging; tools and programming language researchers looking for new ideas in run-time tool implementation as well as detailed descriptions of advanced implementations; and university professors and graduate students who will use this book as supplementary reading for graduate courses in programming tools, language implementation, and advanced object-oriented systems. Advanced Debugging Methods is also a handy reference of currently existing debugging methodologies as well as a springboard for cutting-edge research to simplify the difficult task of debugging and to facilitate the development of more robust software systems.

Debugging by Thinking: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach is the first book to apply the wisdom of six disciplines-logic, mathematics, psychology, safety analysis, computer science, and engineering-to the problem of debugging. It uses the methods of literary detectives such as Sherlock Holmes, the techniques of mathematical problem solving, the results of research into the cognitive psychology of human error, the root cause analyses of safety experts, the compiler analyses of computer science, and the processes of modern engineering to define a systematic approach to identifying and correcting software errors. * Language Independent Methods: Examples are given in Java and C++ * Complete source code shows actual bugs, rather than contrived examples * Examples are accessible with no more knowledge than a course in Data Structures and Algorithms requires * A "thought process diary" shows how the author actually resolved the problems as they occurred

The only two eternals of software development are writing the code - and then debugging it. Effective debugging involves far more than walking through code with a debugger. This book recognizes that and sets out to make debugging less baffling, faster, and more effective by providing readers with the knowledge, tips, and techniques needed to rapidly identify, track down, and repair bugs. It goes further by offering practical tips on minimizing bugs and making them easier to find when they do occur. It includes chapters on testing and maintenance as they relate to debugging. Each chapter concludes with a "bug problem" and answers to these problems are provided in the last chapter. Above all, this is a book written by developers who've spent years tracking down bugs and offers practical, hands-on advice to make that task more predictable.

You get huge development advantages with Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET 2003—but you need a new bag of debugging tricks to take full advantage of them in today’s .NET and Win32® development worlds. Learn lethally effective, real-world application debugging techniques for .NET Framework 1.1 and Windows with this fully updated programming guide. Debugging expert John Robbins expands the first edition of his classic debugging book with all-new scenarios and bug-killing tools, tips, and techniques. You’ll see every .NET and Windows debugging scenario here—from XML Web services and Microsoft ASP.NET to Windows services and exceptions. Along with John’s expert guidance, you get more than 6 MB of his battle-tested source code—for the tools and tactics you need to ship better software faster! Topics covered include: Where bugs come from and how to think about solving them Debugging during coding Operating system debugging support and how Win32 debuggers work Advanced debugger usage and .NET debugging with Visual Studio .NET Advanced native code techniques with Visual Studio .NET and WinDBG Extending the Visual Studio .NET integrated development environment Managed exception monitoring Flow tracing and performance Finding source and line information with just a crash address Crash handlers Debugging Windows services and DLLs that load into services Multithreaded deadlocks Automated testing The Debug C run-time library A high-performance tracing tool for server applications Smoothing the working set Appendixes: Reading Dr. Watson log files, plus resources for .NET and Windows developers CD-ROM features: 6+ MB of professional-level source code samples written in Microsoft Visual C++®, Visual C#®, and Visual Basic® .NET Debugging Tools for Windows Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 SDK Windows Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) A Note Regarding the CD or DVD The print version of this book ships with a CD or DVD. For those customers purchasing one of the digital formats in which this book is available, we are pleased to offer the CD/DVD content as a free download via O'Reilly Media's Digital Distribution services. To download this content, please visit O'Reilly's web site, search for the title of this book to find its catalog page, and click on the link below the cover image (Examples, Companion Content, or Practice Files). Note that while we provide as much of the media content as we are able via free download, we are sometimes limited by licensing restrictions. Please direct any questions or concerns to [email protected].

A total guide to debuggers: what they do, how they work, and how to use them to produce better programs "Debuggers are the magnifying glass, the microscope, the logic analyzer, the profiler, and the browser with which a program can be examined."-Jonathan B. Rosenberg Debuggers are an indispensable tool in the development process. In fact, during the course of the average software project, more hours are spent debugging software than in compiling code. Yet, not many programmers really know how to constructively interpret the results they get back from debuggers. And even fewer know what makes these complex suites of algorithms and data structures tick. Now in this extremely accessible guide, Jonathan B. Rosenberg demystifies debuggers for programmers and shows them how to make better use of debuggers in their next projects. Taking a hands-on, problem-solving approach to a complex subject, Rosenberg explains how debuggers work and why programmers use them. Most importantly, he provides practical discussions of debugger algorithms and procedures for their use, accompanied by many practical examples. The author also discusses a wide variety of systems applications, from Microsoft's Win32 debug API to a large parallel architecture. Visit our Web site at: http://www.wiley.com/compbooks/

Debugging Embedded and Real-Time Systems: The Art, Science, Technology and Tools of Real-Time System Debugging gives a unique introduction to debugging skills and strategies for embedded and real-time systems. Practically focused, it draws on application notes and white papers written by the companies who create design and debug tools. Debugging Embedded and Real Time Systems presents best practice strategies for debugging real-time systems, through real-life case studies and coverage of specialized tools such as logic analysis, JTAG debuggers and performance analyzers. It follows the traditional design life cycle of an embedded system and points out where defects can be introduced and how to find them and prevent them in future designs. It also studies application performance monitoring, the execution trace recording of individual applications, and other tactics to debug and control individual running applications in the multitasking OS. Suitable for the professional engineer and student, this book is a compendium of best practices based on the literature as well as the author's considerable experience as a tools' developer. - Provides a unique reference on Debugging Embedded and Real-Time Systems - Presents best practice strategies for debugging real-time systems - Written by an author with many years of experience as a tools developer - Includes real-life case studies that show how debugging skills can be improved - Covers logic analysis, JTAG debuggers and performance analyzers that are used for designing and debugging embedded systems