A Programming Model-Centric Debugger: mcGDB

mcGDB is a GDB+Python implementation of Programming-Model Centric Debugging, from Kevin Pouget's PhD thesis work.

mcGDB has a modular architecture, that can be extended to support new programming models and environments:

• mcgdb module provides a set of generic tools, abstractions, and interaction mechanisms that can (and should) be reused to implement model-specific sub-modules.
• mcgdb.model holds the model-specific submodules. Currently, we provide:
  • mcgdb.model.task.environments.openmp: our current target (still in development):
    • OpenMP programming environment
  • mcgdb.model.gpu: module for kernel-based GPU programming, with two environment support:
    • OpenCL
    • Cuda
  • mcgdb.model.task: module for programming models based on interconnected tasks, with two P2012 environments (outdated):
    • PEDF and Dataflow programming
    • NPM and Component programming
• Performance evaluation of mcGDB.

Content

• Installation
  • Load mcGDB from GDB
  • Test and benchmark mcGDB
  • Generate mcGDB documentation
  • Requirements
  • Convenience with GDB/mcGDB

• Extending mcGDB
  • Supporting a New Programming Model and its Environment
  • Loading a Programming-Model Support
    • Loading models by name
    • Loading models by object-file filenames
  • Common use-case
  • mcGDB Extension Development Methodology
    • Implement the capture module.
    • Implement the representation module.
    • Implement the interaction module.
      • Implement new catchpoint functionalities:
      • Implement new graph visualization:
        • Architecture graphs
        • Activity graphs
        • Low-Level Tracing

• mcGDB Module for OpenMP
  • Implementation Challenges and Decisions
    • A Debugging Stub Preloaded in the Application
    • Task of the Preloaded Debugging Stub
  • Current-State Visualization
  • Information about the Current State
  • Step-by-step Execution Control
    • General Commands
    • #opm section
    • #opm critical
    • #opm barrier
  • GUI Control

• Python Programming Interface
  • Generic Toolset
    • mcgdb package
    • Capture module
    • Interaction package
    • Representation package
    • Toolbox package
  • Model-Specific Toolsets
    • Task-Based Models
    • GPU-Based Models

• Performance Evaluation of Breakpoint-Based Runtime-Information Capture
  • Native GDB And Python
  • mcGDB OpenMP

• Low-level Tracing
  • Event and parameter tracing
  • Tracing Implementation
  • Tracing Command-line Interface

• Example: mcGDB support from scratch
  • Task-Based Programming Environment and Application
  • mcGDB Debugging Support
    • Initialization
    • Capture Module
    • Representation Module
    • Interaction Module
  • Python Code for Debugging Support
    • Module task_model_debugging
    • Module mcgdb_lite

Documentation generated on Jul 01, 2016 from git-master/858d22a.