Advanced Debugging Techniques in Practice (Keynote)

It’s been ten years since the first release of “rr”, an open-source record-and-replay debugger with many real-world users. It’s been five years since the release of “Pernosco”, a commercial omniscient debugger with some real-world users. I’ll give a brief overview of these tools and the technology behind them. I’ll explain why users adopted these tools and how they are used in practice. Just as importantly, I’ll present my understanding of why users have NOT adopted these kinds of tools and what we might be able to do about that. I’ll discuss some aspects of the debugging problem where I think academic research would be really useful.