A portable debugger for parallel and distributed programs

  • Authors:
  • Doreen Cheng;Robert Hood

  • Affiliations:
  • Computer Sciences Corporation, Moffett Field, CA;Computer Sciences Corporation, Moffett Field, CA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 1994 ACM/IEEE conference on Supercomputing
  • Year:
  • 1994

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Abstract

We describe the design and implementation of a portable debugger for parallel and distributed programs. The design incorporates a client-server model in order to isolate non-portable debugger code from the user interface. The precise definition of a protocol for client-server interaction facilitates a high degree of client portability. Replication of server components permits the implementation of a debugger for distributed computations.Portability across message passing implementations is achieved with a protocol that specifies the interaction between a message-passing library and the debugger. This permits the same debugger to be used both on PVM and MPI programs.The process abstractions used for debugging message-passing programs can be adapted to debug HPF programs at the source level. This permits the meaningful display of information obscured in tool-generated code.