Interactive Blackbox Debugging for Concurrent Languages

We describe a novel approach to the design of portable integrated debugging tools for concurrent languages. Our design partitions the tools set into two categories. The language specific tools take into account the particular features of a programming language for on-line experimenting with and monitoring of distributed programs. The language independent tools support off-line presentation and analysis of the monitored information. The separation of the language independent tools from the language specific tools allows adapting the tools to support debugging for a broad category of concurrent programming languages. The separation of interactive experimentation from off-line analysis provides for efficient exploitation of both user time and machine resources. We present an overview of our design and describe the implementation of a prototype debugging facility for OCCAM. © 1989, ACM. All rights reserved.