Extending omniscient debugging to support aspect-oriented programming

Debugging is a tedious and costly process that demands a profound understanding of the dynamic behavior of programs. Debugging aspect-oriented software is even more difficult: to implement the semantics of aspects, a number of implicit activities are performed, whose relation to source code is less direct to grasp. We show how omniscient debugging, a technique that consists in recording the activity of a program to later navigate in its history, can be extended to suit the particularities of aspect-oriented software. By enhancing program understandability, improvements to the tooling associated with aspect orientation will encourage the widespread acceptance of this emerging paradigm. Categories and Subject Descriptors D.2.5 [Testing and Debugging]: Debugging aids; D.2.6 [Programming Environments]: Integrated environments; D.3.4 [Processors]: Debuggers General Terms Design, Languages, Reliability Keywords Omniscient debugging, aspect-oriented programming

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2008
• Where: SAC
• Authors: Guillaume Pothier, Éric Tanter
• Keywords: Applied Computing, Aspect-oriented Software, Costly Process, Debugging, SAC 2008