Every software developer and IT professional understands the crucial importance of effective debugging. Often, debugging consumes most of a developer’s workday, and mastering the required techniques and skills can take a lifetime. In Effective Debugging, Diomidis Spinellis helps experienced programmers accelerate their journey to mastery, by systematically categorizing, explaining, and illustrating the most useful debugging methods, strategies, techniques, and tools.   Drawing on more than thirty-five years of experience, Spinellis expands your arsenal of debugging techniques, helping you choose the best approaches for each challenge. He presents vendor-neutral, example-rich advice on general principles, high-level strategies, concrete techniques, high-efficiency tools, creative tricks, and the behavioral traits associated with effective debugging.   Spinellis’s 66 expert techniques address every facet of debugging and are illustrated with step-by-step instructions and actual code. He addresses the full spectrum of problems that can arise in modern software systems, especially problems caused by complex interactions among components and services running on hosts scattered around the planet. Whether you’re debugging isolated runtime errors or catastrophic enterprise system failures, this guide will help you get the job done—more quickly, and with less pain.   Key features include High-level strategies and methods for addressing diverse software failures Specific techniques to apply when programming, compiling, and running code Better ways to make the most of your debugger General-purpose skills and tools worth investing in Advanced ideas and techniques for escaping dead-ends and the maze of complexity Advice for making programs easier to debug Specialized approaches for debugging multithreaded, asynchronous, and embedded code Bug avoidance through improved software design, construction, and management

Table of Contents:
Figures xi Listings xiii Preface xv Acknowledgments xxiii About the Author xxviii   Chapter 1: High-Level Strategies 1 Item 1: Handle All Problems through an Issue-Tracking System 1 Item 2: Use Focused Queries to Search the Web for Insights into Your Problem 3 Item 3: Confirm That Preconditions and Postconditions Are Satisfied 5 Item 4: Drill Up from the Problem to the Bug or Down from the Program’s Start to the Bug 7 Item 5: Find the Difference between a Known Good System and a Failing One 9 Item 6: Use the Software’s Debugging Facilities 12 Item 7: Diversify Your Build and Execution Environment 17 Item 8: Focus Your Work on the Most Important Problems 20   Chapter 2: General-Purpose Methods and Practices 23 Item 9: Set Yourself Up for Debugging Success 23 Item 10: Enable the Efficient Reproduction of the Problem 25 Item 11: Minimize the Turnaround Time from Your Changes to Their Result 28 Item 12: Automate Complex Testing Scenarios 29 Item 13: Enable a Comprehensive Overview of Your Debugging Data 32 Item 14: Consider Updating Your Software 33 Item 15: Consult Third-Party Source Code for Insights on Its Use 34 Item 16: Use Specialized Monitoring and Test Equipment 36 Item 17: Increase the Prominence of a Failure’s Effects 40 Item 18: Enable the Debugging of Unwieldy Systems from Your Desk 42 Item 19: Automate Debugging Tasks 44 Item 20: Houseclean Before and After Debugging 45 Item 21: Fix All Instances of a Problem Class 46   Chapter 3: General-Purpose Tools and Techniques 49 Item 22: Analyze Debug Data with Unix Command-Line Tools 49 Item 23: Utilize Command-Line Tool Options and Idioms 55 Item 24: Explore Debug Data with Your Editor 57 Item 25: Optimize Your Work Environment 59 Item 26: Hunt the Causes and History of Bugs with the Revision Control System 64 Item 27: Use Monitoring Tools on Systems Composed of Independent Processes 67   Chapter 4: Debugger Techniques 71 Item 28: Use Code Compiled for Symbolic Debugging 71 Item 29: Step through the Code 76 Item 30: Use Code and Data Breakpoints 77 Item 31: Familiarize Yourself with Reverse Debugging 80 Item 32: Navigate along the Calls between Routines 82 Item 33: Look for Errors by Examining the Values of Variables and Expressions 84 Item 34: Know How to Attach a Debugger to a Running Process 87 Item 35: Know How to Work with Core Dumps 89 Item 36: Tune Your Debugging Tools 92 Item 37: Know How to View Assembly Code and Raw Memory 95   Chapter 5: Programming Techniques 101 Item 38: Review and Manually Execute Suspect Code 101 Item 39: Go Over Your Code and Reasoning with a Colleague 103 Item 40: Add Debugging Functionality 104 Item 41: Add Logging Statements 108 Item 42: Use Unit Tests 112 Item 43: Use Assertions 116 Item 44: Verify Your Reasoning by Perturbing the Debugged Program 119 Item 45: Minimize the Differences between a Working Example and the Failing Code 120 Item 46: Simplify the Suspect Code 121 Item 47: Consider Rewriting the Suspect Code in Another Language 124 Item 48: Improve the Suspect Code’s Readability and Structure 126 Item 49: Fix the Bug’s Cause, Rather Than Its Symptom 129   Chapter 6: Compile-Time Techniques 133 Item 50: Examine Generated Code 133 Item 51: Use Static Program Analysis 136 Item 52: Configure Deterministic Builds and Executions 141 Item 53: Configure the Use of Debugging Libraries and Checks 143   Chapter 7: Runtime Techniques 149 Item 54: Find the Fault by Constructing a Test Case 149 Item 55: Fail Fast 153 Item 56: Examine Application Log Files 154 Item 57: Profile the Operation of Systems and Processes 158 Item 58: Trace the Code’s Execution 162 Item 59: Use Dynamic Program Analysis Tools 168   Chapter 8: Debugging Multi-threaded Code 171 Item 60: Analyze Deadlocks with Postmortem Debugging 171 Item 61: Capture and Replicate 178 Item 62: Uncover Deadlocks and Race Conditions with Specialized Tools 183 Item 63: Isolate and Remove Nondeterminism 188 Item 64: Investigate Scalability Issues by Looking at Contention 190 Item 65: Locate False Sharing by Using Performance Counters 193 Item 66: Consider Rewriting the Code Using Higher-Level Abstractions 197   Web Resources 207 Index 211