A debugger for message‐based processes

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Abstract
This paper describes a debugger of message‐based, communicating processes. This debugger is designed to reduce the apparent complexity of large systems of communicating programs by regarding only the interprocess activities of such programs. The debugger provides users with information about how sets of processes behave rather than what each program associated with each process does. It also provides various primitives for manipulating the interprocess activities of processes. In order to concentrate on just those operations pertinent to multi‐process debugging, the debugger provides no ability to access the source code of any program. Our system includes a user‐interface program, a mechanism to fire and execute interprocess debugging demons and a mechanism to obtain transcripts of interprocess activities. The user interface executes commands for the user at a terminal for creating and manipulating individual interprocess events. Demons are an event‐driven mechanism used to automatically monitor and modify interprocess events. Transcripts provide a record of interprocess events executed for a process that can be replayed later. We make use of these tools to provide individual process control, communication monitoring and process testing.

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