Paper Details

@InProceedings{RitsonSimpson08,
  title = "{V}irtual {M}achine {B}ased {D}ebugging for occam-\π",
  author= "Ritson, Carl G. and Simpson, Jonathan",
  editor= "Welch, Peter H. and Stepney, S. and Polack, F.A.C and Barnes, Frederick R. M. and McEwan, Alistair A. and Stiles, G. S. and Broenink, Jan F. and Sampson, Adam T.",
  pages = "293--307",
  booktitle= "{C}ommunicating {P}rocess {A}rchitectures 2008",
  isbn= "978-1-58603-907-3",
  year= "2008",
  month= "sep",
  abstract= "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,
     \textlessq\textgreater\textlesscode\textgreaterprintf\textless/code\textgreater style\textless/q\textgreater.
     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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