Article

Instruction-level reverse execution for debugging

Authors:

Tankut Akgul,

Vincent J. Mooney, IIIAuthors Info & Claims

PASTE '02: Proceedings of the 2002 ACM SIGPLAN-SIGSOFT workshop on Program analysis for software tools and engineering

Pages 18 - 25

https://doi.org/10.1145/586094.586101

Published: 18 November 2002 Publication History

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Abstract

The ability to execute a program in reverse is advantageous for shortening debug time. This paper presents a reverse execution methodology at the assembly instruction-level with low memory and time overheads. The core idea of this approach is to generate a reverse program able to undo, in almost all cases, normal forward execution of an assembly instruction in the program being debugged. The methodology has been implemented on a PowerPC processor in a custom made debugger. Compared to previous work -- all of which use a variety of state saving techniques -- the experimental results show 2.5X to 400X memory overhead reduction for the tested benchmarks. Furthermore, the results with the same benchmarks show an average of 4.1X to 5.7X time overhead reduction.

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Cited By

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Mu DDu YXu JXu JXing XMao BLiu P(2019)POMP++: Facilitating Postmortem Program Diagnosis with Value-set AnalysisIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2019.2939528(1-1)Online publication date: 2019
https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2019.2939528
Hiranaka YInafune TMiura STaketa T(2017)Backward range simulation of Java bytecodes and reduction of its processing timeProceedings of the 8th International Conference on Computer Modeling and Simulation10.1145/3036331.3036340(129-133)Online publication date: 20-Jan-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3036331.3036340
Cunha MFournel NPétrot F(2016)Deterministic reversible MPSoC debugger based on virtual platform execution tracesDesign Automation for Embedded Systems10.1007/s10617-015-9167-820:1(47-63)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10617-015-9167-8
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Index Terms

Instruction-level reverse execution for debugging
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Software verification and validation
      1. Software defect analysis
        Software testing and debugging

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Instruction-level reverse execution for debugging

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Information

Published In

PASTE '02: Proceedings of the 2002 ACM SIGPLAN-SIGSOFT workshop on Program analysis for software tools and engineering

November 2002

92 pages

ISBN:1581134797

DOI:10.1145/586094

Program Chairs:
Matthew B. Dwyer
Kansas State University, USA
,
Jens Palsberg
Purdue University, USA

ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes Volume 28, Issue 1
January 2003
83 pages
ISSN:0163-5948
DOI:10.1145/634636
Issue’s Table of Contents

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

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Published: 18 November 2002

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PASTE02: PASTE '02 - ACM SIGPLAN-SIGSOFT Workshop on Program Analysis for Software Tools and Engineering ( co-located with SIGSOFT '02/ FSE-10 )

November 18 - 19, 2002

South Carolina, Charleston, USA

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PASTE '02 Paper Acceptance Rate 9 of 26 submissions, 35%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 57 of 159 submissions, 36%

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Cited By

View all

Mu DDu YXu JXu JXing XMao BLiu P(2019)POMP++: Facilitating Postmortem Program Diagnosis with Value-set AnalysisIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2019.2939528(1-1)Online publication date: 2019
https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2019.2939528
Hiranaka YInafune TMiura STaketa T(2017)Backward range simulation of Java bytecodes and reduction of its processing timeProceedings of the 8th International Conference on Computer Modeling and Simulation10.1145/3036331.3036340(129-133)Online publication date: 20-Jan-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3036331.3036340
Cunha MFournel NPétrot F(2016)Deterministic reversible MPSoC debugger based on virtual platform execution tracesDesign Automation for Embedded Systems10.1007/s10617-015-9167-820:1(47-63)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10617-015-9167-8
Papoylias N(2010)High-Level Debugging Facilities and Interfaces: Design and Developement of a Debug-Oriented I.D.E.Open Source Software: New Horizons10.1007/978-3-642-13244-5_34(373-379)Online publication date: 2010
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-13244-5_34
Naborskyy AFujimoto R(2007)Using Reversible Computation Techniques in a Parallel Optimistic Simulation of a Multi-Processor Computing SystemProceedings of the 21st International Workshop on Principles of Advanced and Distributed Simulation10.1109/PADS.2007.31(179-188)Online publication date: 12-Jun-2007
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/PADS.2007.31
Johnson LPheanis DFulton I(2007)Hard-to-detect errors due to the assembly-language environment2007 37th annual frontiers in education conference - global engineering: knowledge without borders, opportunities without passports10.1109/FIE.2007.4418030(T1E-14-T1E-19)Online publication date: Oct-2007
https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2007.4418030
Lee J(2007)Dynamic Reverse Code Generation for Backward ExecutionElectronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science (ENTCS)10.1016/j.entcs.2006.12.028174:4(37-54)Online publication date: 1-May-2007
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.entcs.2006.12.028
Johnson LPheanis D(2006)Automated Error-Prevention and Error-Detection Tools for Assembly Language in the Educational EnvironmentProceedings. Frontiers in Education. 36th Annual Conference10.1109/FIE.2006.322560(19-23)Online publication date: Oct-2006
https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2006.322560
Koju TTakada SDoi NHind MVitek J(2005)An efficient and generic reversible debugger using the virtual machine based approachProceedings of the 1st ACM/USENIX international conference on Virtual execution environments10.1145/1064979.1064992(79-88)Online publication date: 11-Jun-2005
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1064979.1064992
Akgul TMooney III VPande S(2004)A Fast Assembly Level Reverse Execution Method via Dynamic SlicingProceedings of the 26th International Conference on Software Engineering10.5555/998675.999456(522-531)Online publication date: 23-May-2004
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/998675.999456
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Assembly instruction level reverse execution for debugging