SuperLinux Encyclopedia - Debugging & Testing

Also see Quality Control and Bug Reporting (which covers bug tracking).

Misc:

• BUG-HUNTING  Brute force method of doing binary search of patches to find bug. (kernel doc)

Debuggers; Debugging Tools:

• Other lists:
  • Freshmeat: Debugging
• DDD - Data Display Debugger  "graphical user interface for command-line debuggers such as GDB, DBX, JDB, WDB, XDB, the Perl debugger, and the Python debugger"; supports very many languages; good display of data structures. Home page has good list of debugging resources.
• The GNU Nana page mentions an "assert.h" you might want to search for if you don't like Nana.
• debugfs -- ext2 file system debugger
• FvwmDebug -- the FVWM module debugger.
• GDB:
  • gdb -- The GNU debugger. GUI front ends are available.
  • KDbg -- KDE front end to gdb.
  • xxgdb -- X window system interface to the gdb debugger.
• GNU Nana "Improved support for assertions and logging in C and C++" (bug-catching tool)
• ltrace (FTP site) (tool which prints out a trace of all the system and dynamic library calls made by another process/program)
• makeg -- make a debuggable executable. (Runs "make" with debug variable settings.)
• perldebug -- man page about Perl debugging.
• strace -- trace system calls and signals:
  • Using Strace  Jan'96 LG
• Tcl:
  • blt_debug -- print Tcl commands before execution.
• Tsert - Integrated Test Harness  $? & free beta; With specialized modules. To ease SW testing.
• X-based debuggers
• Zentropix Remote Run-time Debugger (R2D2)  Debugger supports in-kernel and real-time use.

Testing:

• Freshmeat: Test Suites
• DejaGNU  A framework for testing programs.
• TET - Test Environment Toolkit  Artistic Lic.; "multi-platform uniform test scaffold" for many languages.

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