dak@uoregon.uoregon.edu (David Alan Keldsen) (02/16/89)
I'm trying to put together a talk for a seminar here (the subject is Object-Oriented Programming Systems)...and I'm hoping to find some information on debugging support in such systems, research issues, and so on. So far, I've had very little luck in finding any useful information; it seems that very little research has been devoted to debugging (in general)--which is surprising in light of the MASSIVE amount of time that it consumes. It seems to me that OOPS represent both special opportunities and special challenges to debugging (and to software engineering in general). Consider, for example, that the traditional 'waterfall' methods of software engineering (phases of stepwise refinement of design and then implementation) give the debugger/maintainer a reference for how the system is 'supposed to' behave. With incremental design and implementation, the idea of what the system is supposed to do is much more difficult to grasp. Support tools such as the Smalltalk browser, and the various standard debugging primitives in most systems, assist the debugger in exploring and modifying behaviors...but where are the tools which give 'the big picture' in characterizing the behavior (or misbehavior) of objects and classes of objects? Especially since system state is even more distributed than usual... If single objects or classes of objects misbehave, the bugs are (hopefully) well isolated in the objects themselves rather than distributed throughout. But then there are the behaviors that are not captured in single objects... Do these issues ring any bells for you? If you've seen some interesting research/projects/products in this area, please drop me a line at the address in my .signature. If you think it is really of interest to the newsgroup, follow up. I will summarize and post replies if there is sufficient interest. Thanks in advance. -- /* David A. Keldsen Internet: dak@cs.uoregon.edu */ /* a.k.a. 'Dak' Usenet:{decvax,allegra}!tektronix!uoregon!dak */ /* Resemblance of the above to the policies of any organization, is purely */ /* unintentional and coincidental. No lawyer-serviceable opinions inside. */