Object Flow

Overview

Object Flow Analysis is a novel dynamic analysis to effectively track the flow of objects in object-oriented systems.

Object Flow Debugging

This section gives instructions to install and use the object-flow-aware back-in-time debugging system. This system consists of the Object Flow VM, which is an extended Squeak virtual machine and of support code that provides the functionality to introspect execution history from the debugger frontend. A rich user interface to navigate the execution history is provided by the Compass debugger (see below).

Authors: Adrian Lienhard and Julien Fierz
License: The Object Flow VM and the Compass debugger frontend is distributed under the MIT license
Copyright 2008, Adrian Lienhard

Download

The following download includes a compiled VM for the appropriate platform and a prepared image (based on Squeak 3.9) with the Compass debugger frontend: ObjectFlowDebugger-1.0.zip

Currently supported platforms

To start up the image, execute the appropriate script start-platform.*.

VM source

Modified VM source code is the package VMMaker in repository www.squeaksource.com/FlyingObjects.html
VM is built using SVN revision 1712 from http://squeakvm.org/svn/squeak/.

Preparing your own Image

For demonstration purpose, the provided image is sufficient, but if you like to use the debugger for one of your applications, the following installation is required. The Object Flow Debugger requires support code in the image (for example, the definition of the class Alias and the extension of the class Process). To make your own image ready to be run on the Object Flow VM do the following:

Starting the Debugger

There exist two ways of recording a program execution and starting the debugger. The first way of recording data is to use the flyDuring: method implemented in the class Object. For instance, to trace the bank account example, execute the following code:

self flyDuring: [ BAAccount example ]

The execution of the block is recorded. Now the Compass debugging interface can be started by executing

CompassDebugger start

The debugger will then show the recorded data. When closing the debugger, the traced data gets deleted. If an error occurs while tracing the code, as usual a small debugger window appears. In addition to the default buttons the new button labelled "Compass" opens the Compass debugger at the location where the error occurred.

The second way to debug is to use unit tests. We extended SUnit to re-run a failed test and record its execution before the failure is shown in the debugger. By re-running a test, as usual the small debugger window pops up, and as discussed above the Compass debugger can be started by clicking the "Compass" button.

Compass Debugging Frontend

This section gives an overview of the different views and actions provided by Compass. The screenshot shows the main window of Compass.

Compassscreenshot.png

1. Execution trace. This view shows the execution trace as a tree in which nodes represent executed methods and block closures. Lines represent the caller relationship from top to bottom right. Nodes are ordered from left to right by the start timestamp of their execution and from top to bottom by their depth on the call stack. The trace can be navigated by clicking on the circles. The thick green arrows represent the flow of the object that was selected in one of the other views (see below).

2. Execution stack. This view shows the execution stack as it existed at the time when the selected method execution was started.

3. Object flow. This panel shows the flow of a selected object. The list contains the transfers of a reference of this object (e.g., argument, return, field write, field read, etc.). This allows one to backtrack the flow of the object to find out how the object was passed into this method. The flow given by this list is the same as the one shown graphically in the execution trace (1). By selecting a reference transfer from the list, the focus of the debugger changes to the method execution in which this transfer took place.

4. Source code. This is the source code of the method of the selected method execution.

5. Executed program statements. This list shows the reference transfers (aliases) and method sends that occurred during the execution of the selected method or block execution. When an item is selected the corresponding source code statement in the source code pane (4) is highlighted. Additionally, important actions can be executed from the context menu (right-click on an item). The available actions depend on whether an alias or a message send is selected. The most important action is to show the flow of an object. When choosing this action, the flow is shown in the previously described object flow pane (3) and it is drawn in the execution trace (1). You can also choose to explore the forward flow, which brings up a window that shows a tree of how the object was transferred starting at the current selection. 6. Variables. These four panes are the same as in the original debugger. They allow one to inspect the fields of the receiver and of local variables of the selected execution context with respect to the point in time of the current focus. By right-clicking on a variable, similar actions can triggered as in pane (5), for example, selecting an object to highlight its object flow.

7. Dependencies. This list shows the control flow dependencies of the currently selected method execution (that is, the list of control flow statements present in the current call stack on which the selected method execution depends). By clicking on a dependency, the debugger jumps directly to the method execution and selects the control flow statement in the source code pane (4).

8. Side effects graph. The side effects graph summarizes the side effects that the execution of the currently selected method and all transitively called methods produced. A red arrow between two objects indicates a field or array slot update. The red arrow points from the updated object to the newly assigned object. To support the understanding of this graph, the following additional information is provided to show the connection between the different objects in the graph. A black arrow indicates the previous value of a modified field and a green arrow indicates a field or array read event (dereference). By right-clicking on an object, a menu with a list of the new field values comes up. By selecting a value, the debugger jumps to the location where the object was written into the field.

9. Navigation history. Like in a web browser, the navigation history can be used to go step by step back- and forward. In our case, the steps are the context switches (changes of focus in the Compass user interface). If the context is changed, by clicking on the back button you get to the previously selected context. Also bookmarking is supported to be able to quickly jump to bookmarked locations in the execution history.

Publications

Refereed Articles in International Journals

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