IDebug: An Advanced Debugging Framework for Java

Abstract

IDebug, the Infospheres debugging framework, is an advanced debugging framework for Java. This framework provides the standard core debugging and specification constructs such as assertions, debug levels and categories, stack traces, and specialized exceptions. Debugging functionality can be fine-tuned to a per-thread and/or a per-class basis, debugging contexts can be stored to and recovered from persistent storage, and several aspects of the debugging run-time are configurable at the meta-level. Additionally, the framework is designed for extensibility. Planned improvements include support for debugging distributed object systems via currying call stacks across virtual machine contexts and debug information logging with a variety of networking media including unicast, multicast, RMI, distributed events, and JavaSpaces. Finally, we are adding support for debugging mobile agent systems by providing mobile debug logs.