Solaris Studio Topics: Debugging

Debugging Applications with Solaris Studio dbx, dbxtool, and the Thread Analyzer

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Successful program debugging is more an art than a science. dbx is an interactive, source-level, post-mortem and real-time command-line debugging tool. You can use it to run a program in a controlled manner and to inspect the state of a stopped program. dbx gives you complete control of the dynamic execution of a program, including collecting performance and memory usage data, monitoring memory access, and detecting memory leaks.

You can use dbx to debug an application written in C, C++, or Fortran. You can also, with some limitations, debug an application that is a mixture of Java code and C JNI (Java Native Interface) code or C++ JNI code.

Check out some of the great advanced debugging features in dbx that set it apart from the rest:

• Diversity in debugging: Debug applications on SPARC and x86 systems, on Solaris, or Linux operating systems, written using Solaris Studio or gcc compilers.
• Memory debugger: Collect memory usage data, monitor memory access, check array bounds, and detect memory leaks.
• Fix and continue: Find a bug while debugging, fix the source, and continue debugging without rebuilding the application.
• Multithreaded debugging: Debug multithreaded applications written using Solaris/OpenSolaris threads, POSIX threads, and OpenMP.
• Event handling: Create event-triggered actions, set conditional breakpoints and watchpoints, create trace and exception breakpoints, and send signals.
• Full command-line access: Enjoy uncompromised access to the dbx command-line console from within the NetBeans-based IDE with full parity between the IDE and dbx command-line programmable console.

Use the stand-alone GUI-based dbx debugger dbxtool.
Use the Thread Analyzer to look for data-races and deadlocks in threaded applications.