Re: What's more important optimisations or debugging?

Colin Paul Gloster wrote:
In news:1180571919.025883.219930@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
timestamped 30 May 2007 17:38:39 -0700, Ryan H <rhapgood@xxxxxxxxx>
posted:
"On May 31, 9:21 am, BubbaGump <BubbaGump@localhost> wrote:
> I don't understand the question. Debugging features in a development
> tool or extra debugging information in executable code?
The question refers to debugging features in a toolsuite. [..]
[..]"


Has anyone experience or impressions of debuggers which allow stepping
backwards in time through program flow, such as apparently provided
for desktops/workstations by UndoDB (
WWW.Undo-Software.com
) and Java (Virtual Machine?) debuggers? If so, for which processors
and with which tools? I imagine it would be possible to pay Undo
Limited to port a version of its debugger which would be compatible
with any of the targets supported by the GNU DeBugger GDB as UndoDB is
a wrapper for GDB.

Curious,
Colin Paul Gloster

Many debuggers can let you look back in time to some extent, by looking at the call stack - this will let you see what called your current function, and the state of local variables in the caller function (and its callers, and so on). But to get true backwards stepping, you need very sophisticated trace buffers. Some processors, combined with expensive hardware debuggers, can give you limited traces (such as indications of program flow), but a full trace requires capturing the databus and all internal data flows. It's easy to do in a simulation, and possible to do in a full hardware emulator, but impossible with modern jtag-type debugging.
.

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