1. Chief Software Engineer
Debugging in SCIRun
J. Davison de St. Germain
Chief Software Engineer
SCI Institute
December 2003

2. Debuggers work (sometimes)
Debugging is hard
SCIRun is threaded...
Debuggers are always behind the times...
Get the pid (process id number) of the Module you are interested in:
Module->Show Log (PID on title bar)
Attach the debugger directly to that Thread

3. Print statements Sometimes you have to do it the old fashion way…
Put in print statements liberally through the routine you are debugging
You need only recompile the library with your module in it:
Eg: gmake lib/libPackages_BioPSE_Dataflow_Modules_Forward.so

4. Memory Problems SCIRun has its own memory allocator
Environment Variables:
MALLOC_STRICT
Marks memory and validates memory integrity
MALLOC_TRACE [filename]
Logs every memory allocation, de-allocation
MALLOC_STATS [filename]
Outputs a list of memory statistics at end of run
To turn off SCIRun allocator, use:
“--disable-sci-malloc” on configure line

5. Bugzilla Don’t go it alone! (…if you think it is a SCIRun Bug.)
Enter bug into Bugzilla
You will need to have a bugzilla account (use your address)
Or have us enter it for you
Bugzilla reminds us (daily) of current bugs. It keeps you informed of the status of these bugs.

6. Questions?