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ReplayEngine allows testers to work backward


By Jeff Feinman
September 8, 2008 — 
TotalView Technologies has created a record and replay product that offers a back-and-forth debugging method.

ReplayEngine, released today, is a separately licensed add-on that helps developers find root causes of problems quickly, according to TotalView CEO Rich Collier. It is integrated with the TotalView Debugger and helps identify software problems through reverse execution, or “working backward,” as the company said.

“A lot of the debuggers that are out there, you have to debug going forwards and in one way, so this gives the developer the freedom to debug backwards or forwards,” Collier said. “We believe that’s a unique capability, especially in the C/C++ and Fortran arena.”

Using ReplayEngine, developers can interact with the replay function and set watch points to see differences in data and source code through a recording. Collier said the typical method of debugging involves setting a breakpoint and frequently running past the actual error, which necessitates the setting of another breakpoint. ReplayEngine can find the root cause of a problem easier by starting from where the failure is, he said.



ReplayEngine has a “run back to” command that jumps backward longer distances within the code, TotalView said. It allows developers to compare any set of points along the captured sequence, and this can make fault identification faster.

“It enables you to step backward line by line, and it captures the program execution,” Collier said. “The record capability creates an instrumentation library that allows the reproduction of any point in the program. It records the session, so you’re able to start from any previous state and then replay the recorded session in a controlled fashion.”



Collier said that ReplayEngine can help after a crash, when information needed to debug might be missing. TotalView’s offering can help a developer view code before a crash. Collier said that frequently during crashes, there is a wide gulf between the point of failure and where the actual error occurred, and ReplayEngine helps troubleshoot and find the error.

“ReplayEngine is exciting new technology,” said Paul Gray, education program chair of the Supercomputing Conference, which focuses on networking, storage and analysis. “From a software engineering perspective, being able to record and replay program execution will go a long way in improving the effectiveness of the troubleshooting phase of software development, which is a crucial component of high-performance computing education.”

Replay Engine is currently available on Linux-x86 and x86-64, and developers can debug parallel applications using the MPICH 2.0 Message Passing Interface library on x86 Linux platforms.


Related Search Term(s): testing & troubleshooting, TotalView


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