Debugging
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This document provides an overview of debugging techniques and best practices. It discusses what debugging is, common debugging rules and methods, as well as tools and techniques for preventing bugs. Key points covered include understanding the system, making failures reproducible, dividing problems, changing one thing at a time, and keeping an audit trail. The document also mentions code reviews, assertions, and defensive programming as ways to prevent bugs.
Debugging
- 1. Debugging Finding and solving problems in software
- 2. What is debugging? "Bug" and "debugging" are attributed to the discovery of a moth found in a Mark II computer at Harvard University. Debugging is not troubleshooting
- 3. Debugging Rules... 1. Understand the system 2. Make it fail 3. Quit thinking and look 4. Divide and Conquer 5. Change one thing at a time 6. Keep an audit trail 7. Check the plug 8. Get a fresh view 9. If you didn't fix it, it aint fixed
- 4. Debugging - A Simple Method a) Start | b) Construct a Hypothesis | c) Construct an Experiment | d) Hypothesis Proved? - goto b) | Need more evidence? - goto c) | Stop
- 5. 1. Understanding the System Know the fundamentals of the system Understand the frameworks involved Read the API's and communication interfaces Know your tools Understand what each module of the system does
- 6. 2. Make it Fail Start at the beginning Automate the failure No detail is insignificant Intermittent failures? Isolate the failure Build debugging tools and test harnesses
- 7. 3. Quit thinking and look Gather the low level details and "see" the failure Understand the context of the bug Design instrumentation in: ●Runtime statistics ●Status messages ●Debug logging - be descriptive!!! ●Deployment time environment checks Hypothesise and test
- 8. 4. Divide and Conquer Narrow the search down, software AND hardware. Successive approximation. Start at the bad end (e.g. the error log) and work your way up the chain looking at the various points on the way Fix the bugs you know about - fixing one could fix the other Fix the noise first, but don't go nuts
- 9. 5. Change one thing at a time Compare with a good one ! Use a rifle not a shotgun What's changed recently, it used to work! Separate environment and product
- 10. 6. Keep an audit trail Keep a day book of what you did During debugging write down... 1.What you did... 2.In what order... 3.And what happened! Be specific and consistent Correlate symptoms with others Version control and change logs are great for determining an audit trail of what's changed
- 11. 7. Check the plug Question your assumptions
- 12. 8. Get a Fresh View Get another viewpoint on the solution Talk to somebody about the problem Ask an expert: ●Email the author ●Check the forums ●Subscribe to the mailing list Make sure you report symptoms not theories
- 13. 9. If you didn't fix it, it aint fixed! The most important lesson by far... ●Fix the root cause ●Make sure it can't possibly happen again ●Fix the process at fault "We didn't see an issue until we deployed into the production environment" = Deploy early and deploy often
- 14. Debugging Methods and Tools
- 15. Debugging Methods Print/Trace Debugging - watching the flow of execution after adding print statements to the original code Remote Debugging - connect to a remote system with a debugger, monitor the execution and state Post Mortem Debugging - analysis of a memory dump from a program that has crashed Profiling - not debugging per se, but a useful technique for analysing a running program to look for issues
- 16. Lesser Known (?) Debugging Methods Rubber Ducking - explaining your problem to someone else. Stating the problem aloud in order to work it out. Failfirst - Write a unit test that exposes the failure, correct the code and make it pass Saff Squeeze - Write a system test, inline code, write test, repeat until fixed http://www.threeriversinstitute.org/HitEmHighHitEmLow.html Chaos Monkey - AWS Netflix approach - randomly kill and test areas. Fail consistently to test fault tolerant software. http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/04/working-with-the-chaos-monkey.html
- 17. Eclipse Debugging 1 Set breakpoints in the code Step into, over, return Watches - display a variable value Hit counts Setting an exception breakpoint Setting a method breakpoint
- 18. Eclipse Debugging 2 Class load breakpoint Using display after a breakpoint has been hit Attaching a remote debugger via a JDB agent
- 19. Bug Taxonomies and Bug Types There are ways to categorise bugs... lots of taxonomies available from research literature Some bug types include: ●Bohrbug - bug that manifests itself consistently under a set of conditions ●Heisenbug - bug that alters its' characteristics when studied
- 20. Preventing Bugs Debugging is hard and expensive in terms of fixing the bug, testing it and re-deploying it... We can try and prevent bugs with: ●Code Review ●Defensive Programming ●Precondition, postcondition and invariant checking ●Assertions
- 21. Further Resources ●Debugging - The 9 Indispensable Rules for Finding Even The Most Elusive Software and Hardware Problems - David Agans ●Debug It! : Find, Repair and Prevent Bugs in Your Code (Pragmatic Programmers) - Paul Butcher ●Testing Education - http://www.testingeducation.org/a/bugtax.pdf ●Lars Vogels Debugging Overview (2011) - http://www.vogella.de/articles/EclipseDebugging/artic