Debugging at Full Speed Chris Seaton Michael L. Van De Vanter Michael Haupt Oracle Labs Oracle Labs Oracle Labs University of Manchester michael.van.de.vanter
[email protected] [email protected] @oracle.com ABSTRACT Ruby; D.3.4 [Programming Languages]: Processors| Debugging support for highly optimized execution environ- run-time environments, interpreters ments is notoriously difficult to implement. The Truffle/- Graal platform for implementing dynamic languages offers General Terms an opportunity to resolve the apparent trade-off between Design, Performance, Languages debugging and high performance. Truffle/Graal-implemented languages are expressed as ab- Keywords stract syntax tree (AST) interpreters. They enjoy competi- tive performance through platform support for type special- Truffle, deoptimization, virtual machines ization, partial evaluation, and dynamic optimization/deop- timization. A prototype debugger for Ruby, implemented 1. INTRODUCTION on this platform, demonstrates that basic debugging services Although debugging and code optimization are both es- can be implemented with modest effort and without signifi- sential to software development, their underlying technolo- cant impact on program performance. Prototyped function- gies typically conflict. Deploying them together usually de- ality includes breakpoints, both simple and conditional, at mands compromise in one or more of the following areas: lines and at local variable assignments. The debugger interacts with running programs by insert- • Performance: Static compilers