TR-2005-07
Embedded Debugging of C/C++ Plugins and Extension Modules
Jing Cao; David M. Beazley. 1 June, 2005.
Communicated by David Beazley.
Abstract
Today, C and C++ are frequently used to write programs that operate as
dynamic link libraries, plugins, and extensions of large application
frameworks and high level programming languages. An unfortunate
side-effect of this programming style is that it makes debugging
considerably more difficult. Traditional debuggers don't work as
well with extension modules because of the complexity of execution
environment. Moreover, the information they provide may be
incomplete. To address this limitation, we have been exploring an
alternative approach to debugging plugin modules in which a small
C/C++ debugger is embedded into the application framework itself.
This embedded debugger requires no modifications to the application
or plugin modules. Moreover, it is able to catch many common C/C++
programming errors---turning those errors into useful diagnostic
error messages. We originally developed this approach for debugging
scripting language extension modules, but the approach has since
proven to be more widely applicable. In this paper, we describe the
embedded debugging approach, and how it can be applied to
complicated applications involving plugins, scripting languages, and
multiple programming languages. We provide examples of using an
embedded debugger with a variety of applications including Python,
PHP, and Java, as well as with the popular Apache websever.
Original Document
The original document is available in PDF (uploaded 1 June, 2005 by
David Beazley).
