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Start Program
After setup trace scope, it is time to
start the program for recording. Click Start Process button, before process startup,
it asks for a choice: Trace function calls only, or trace every line. The former instruments
and traces function start and end lines only, this makes instrumentation
and recording
faster, but gives less details. Normally, if you have a large code base, trace scope
is large too, since at the start, it is not clear which part of the program to trace,
use the first option to avoid large amount of trace result that would use too much
of your computer resource. After you have got some knowledge on the execution, you
can then limit trace scope and use the second option: trace every line of code,
which gives you the full information about the program execution.
During start up process, several things happen: First is loading debug info. Debug Assistant
relies it for instrumentation. A progress bar shows how many file has been processed
and how many left. This is usually very fast. The second is instrumentation,
IDE's
status bar tells the progress of instrumentation. This process can take up to a
minute or two if the scope is very large. Then the program starts and is hooked up.
If your program does not have a GUI to tell you it's started up, Debug Assistant
Terminate Process button should be enabled that signals the process is startup.
Click Show Trace Message to check the startup process. It also shows warnings and
errors during startup.
Record (Trace) Execution
Click Turn
On Trace, from then on program execution is recorded. You may turn it off by clicking
Turn Off Trace button. Now you can run the part of the program where you want to
know of.
If you want to trace program initialization and starting up process, you need to
turn on the trace before start a process, then recording starts right at the beginning.
Remember, keep trace on for a long period is not a good idea. Debug Assistant has
a limit of 2 million trace point hits. Exceed this limit, trace will be turned off
automatically. This is to avoid too much memory usage. Debug Assistant is not designed
to trace a long term execution.
Attach Program and Record
At times, you may want to trace a program
that is already running. Click Attach Process button to bring attach process dialog.
Click Refresh to get a list of currently running processes. You can pick one from
the list. In order for trace to work, trace scope settings should match the process.
Turn on trace to record the same way like you do with regular startup.
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Voice from our clients
"I am new in our large project. Debug Assistant realy helped
me big time.”
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