Reuse of debuggers for visualization of reuse

Abstract

become a key component in our visualization tools. We have been investigating tool support for managing reuse of source code. One approach we have been exploring is the use of visualization in programming tools. A difficulty with this approach is that effective program visualization of ordinary programs requires substantial sophisticated low-level software. Our solution to this problem is to reuse debugging systems in an innovative way. We present our experience with this approach, both to evaluate the reusability of the debugging systems we used, and to provide a case study in reuse. In this paper, we present our experienc:e with this use of debuggers, both to evaluate the reusability of the debugging systems we used, and to provide a case study in reuse. We have developed two different tools, each using a different debugging technology: one for C++ programs that uses Gdb and Expect, and another for Java programs that uses the Java Virtual Machine Debugger Interface (JVMDI).