Beyond Time-Travel Debugging
Speaker: Robert O'Callahan, Mozilla Corporation
Date: Thursday, October 23 2008
Time: 3:00PM to 4:00PM
Location: 32-G7 Lounge
Host: Rob Miller, MIT CSAIL
Contact: Rob Miller, x4-6028, rcm@mit.edu
Relevant URL: "Omniscient debugging" proposes to record a complete program execution and let developers query the recording to debug their programs. Because all program state over all times is immediately available, omniscient debugging can directly support the basic debugging task of tracing effects back to causes. This technology is about to break through into the mainstream, thanks to improved implementation techniques, virtual machines, increases in disk capacity, and increasing processor core count. I will describe the design and implementation of "Chronicle", a prototype which shows that omniscient debugging of large, real-world applications such as Firefox is feasible on commodity hardware. In fact, the real challenge is to design a UI that can take maximum advantage of omniscience. I will demonstrate a prototype UI ("Chronomancer") and argue that "time travel debugging" is too limited a vision; superior debugging experiences can be obtained by integrating information across times into a single view.
BIO: Robert O'Callahan obtained a PhD in programming languages and software engineering tools from CMU. After a few years at IBM Research working on dynamic program analysis, he returned to New Zealand to work on Mozilla full-time. Now he manages a growing team of Gecko developers in Auckland while still trying to write lots of code.
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