Reverse Debugging
History
It all started with Smalltalk-76, developed in 1976 at Xerox PARC. (Everything started at PARC đ.) It had the ability to retrospectively inspect checkpointed places in execution. Around 1980, MIT added a âretrograde motionâ command to its DDT debugger, which gave a limited ability to move backward through execution. In a 1995 paper, MIT researchers released ZStep 95, the first true reverse debugger, which recorded all operations as they were performed and supported stepping backward, reverting the system to the previous state. However, it was a research tool and not widely adopted outside academia.
ODB, the Omniscient Debugger, was a Java reverse debugger that was introduced in 2003, marking the first instance of time-travel debugging in a widely used programming language. GDB (perhaps the most well-known command-line debugger, used mostly with C/C++) added it in 2009.
Now, time-travel debugging is available for many languages, platforms, and IDEs, including:
- Replay for JavaScript in Chrome, Firefox, and Node, and Wallaby for tests in Node
- WinDbg for Windows applications
- rr for C, C++, Rust, Go, and others on Linux
- Undo for C, C++, Java, Kotlin, Rust, and Go on Linux
- Various extensions (often rr- or Undo-based) for Visual Studio, VS Code, JetBrains IDEs, Emacs, etc.
References
Backlinks