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The Moldable Debugger: A Framework for Developing Domain-Specific Debuggers

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Software Language Engineering (SLE 2014)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 8706))

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Abstract

Debuggers are crucial tools for developing object-oriented software systems as they give developers direct access to the running systems. Nevertheless, traditional debuggers rely on generic mechanisms to explore and exhibit the execution stack and system state, while developers reason about and formulate domain-specific questions using concepts and abstractions from their application domains. This creates an abstraction gap between the debugging needs and the debugging support leading to an inefficient and error-prone debugging effort. To reduce this gap, we propose a framework for developing domain-specific debuggers called the Moldable Debugger. The Moldable Debugger is adapted to a domain by creating and combining domain-specific debugging operations with domain-specific debugging views, and adapts itself to a domain by selecting, at run time, appropriate debugging operations and views. We motivate the need for domain-specific debugging, identify a set of key requirements and show how our approach improves debugging by adapting the debugger to several domains.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Software Composition Group, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    Andrei Chiş & Oscar Nierstrasz

  2. CompuGroup Medical Schweiz AG, Bern, Switzerland

    Tudor Gîrba

Authors
  1. Andrei Chiş
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  2. Tudor Gîrba
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  3. Oscar Nierstrasz
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Rennes 1, IRISA, Inria,, France

    Benoît Combemale

  2. Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

    David J. Pearce

  3. IRISA, Rennes, France

    Olivier Barais

  4. University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Jurgen J. Vinju

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Chiş, A., Gîrba, T., Nierstrasz, O. (2014). The Moldable Debugger: A Framework for Developing Domain-Specific Debuggers. In: Combemale, B., Pearce, D.J., Barais, O., Vinju, J.J. (eds) Software Language Engineering. SLE 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8706. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11245-9_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11245-9_6

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-11244-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-11245-9

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