Paper Details

%T Virtual Machine Based Debugging for occam\-π
%A Carl G. Ritson, Jonathan Simpson
%E Peter H. Welch, S. Stepney, F.A.C Polack, Frederick R. M. Barnes, Alistair A. McEwan, G. S. Stiles, Jan F. Broenink, Adam T. Sampson
%B Communicating Process Architectures 2008
%X While we strive to create robust language constructs and
   design patterns which prevent the introduction of faults
   during software development, an inevitable element of human
   error still remains.We must therefore endeavor to ease and
   accelerate the process of diagnosing and fixing software
   faults, commonly known as debugging. Current support for
   debugging occam\-π programs is fairly limited.
   At best the developer is presented with a reference to the
   last known code line executed before their program
   abnormally terminated. This assumes the program does in fact
   terminate, and does not instead live\-lock. In cases where
   this support is not sufficient, developers must instrument
   their own tracing support,
   <q><code>printf</code> style</q>. An
   exercise which typically enlightens one as to the
   true meaning of concurrency ...\ \ In this paper we
   explore previous work in the field of debugging occam
   programs and introduce a new method for run\-time monitoring
   of occam\-π applications, based on the Transterpreter
   virtual machine interpreter. By adding a set of extensions
   to the Transterpreter, we give occam\-π processes the
   ability to interact with their execution environment. Use of
   a virtual machine allows us to expose program execution
   state which would otherwise require non\-portable or
   specialised hardware support. Using a model which bears
   similarities to that applied when debugging embedded
   systems with a JTAG connection, we describe debugging
   occam\-π by mediating the execution of one execution
   process from another.

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