Industry Articles
How to use a debugger as a bug preventive tool-December 21, 2009 |
The essence of preventive debugger-driven software verification is "Debug Early, Debug Often"
By Nathan Field, Green Hills Software, Inc.
Embedded.com (12/16/09, 12:42:00 PM EST)
Generally speaking, a debugger is thought of as a tool to use after a problem is encountered, when its cause is not obvious. Although a good debugger is the best tool for diagnosing problems and defects in software products, their use in the code writing phase is often overlooked. In this article, I will discuss how and why you would want to use a debugger before you know that you have a bug to track down and fix. At the end of the article, I will discuss some of the basic requirements that a debugger must meet in order to apply this technique.