Active debugging environment for debugging mixed-language...

Details Active debugging environment for debugging mixed-language... Active debugging environment for debugging mixed-language...

1998-01-30

2002-03-05

Chaki, Kakali (Department: 2762)

Data processing: software development, installation, and managem

Software program development tool

Translation of code

Reexamination Certificate

active

06353923

ABSTRACT:

COPYRIGHT AUTHORIZATION
A portion of the disclosure within this document contains material that is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the reproduction of copyright protected materials by any person that is doing so within the context of this patent document as it appears in the United States Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but the copyright owner otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to programming language debugging tools, and in particular, to an active debugging environment that is programming language neutral and host neutral for use in debugging any of a variety of disparate compiled and/or interpreted programming languages that may exist individually or in combination within a given application.
PROBLEM
The end user of a modern software product sees and uses an application that was created by an application developer. For purposes of this discussion, an application is a computer program written in any of a plurality of programming languages. Typically, a computer program contains some original program code and certain pre-existing or “canned” components that include, but are not limited to, modules, libraries, sub-routines, and function calls. The pre-existing application components are used where ever possible to limit the number of mistakes that are introduced into the application during development, and to minimize the amount of overall effort required to create the application.
As the number of applications and their components have increased, and the number of different programming languages used to generate the applications have increased, so also has the need grown for applications to expose their internal services to other applications in a consistent manner independent of the underlying programming languages involved. This need for exposing internal services of various applications in a universal manner is referred to as providing programmability.
Existing program architectural models such as the Component Object Model (COM) have greatly contributed to programmability across different applications. The COM model establishes a common paradigm for interactions and requests among different applications regardless of the programming languages or components involved. With COM, for example, an Internet web page application can be created that calls on only certain of the components of a word processing application, a spread sheet application, and a database application, that are needed to complete the web page application without including the entire bulk of each of the word processing, spread sheet, and database features within the web page application.
However, one problem that results from creating an application that includes multiple program components from many different programming language sources, is debugging. A first and third program component in an application may have originated from two different compiled language sources and a second and fourth program component in an application may have originated from two different interpretive language sources. Not only is there historically a fundamental difference in the implementation of a debugger for a compiled programming language versus an interpreted programming language, each programming language can have its own proprietary interfaces and other features that make debugging the aggregate application a difficult and/or impossible task.
For purposes of this document, a compiled programming language is considered a native machine code compilable programming language having a specific target platform. Examples of compiled programming languages include, but are not limited to, C and C++. Alternatively, an interpreted programming language is a run-time bytecode interpreted or source code interpreted programming language that operates under control of a master within a given application. Examples of interpreted programming languages include Visual Basic, Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), Visual Basic Script, Java, JavaScript, Perl, and Python. The Java programming language is included in the category of interpreted programming languages for purposes of this document even though Java is compiled from source code to produce an object and there is no access to the Java source during run time. One key reason Java is included is because the compiled Java object is fundamentally a bytecode object that requires a language engine rather than the traditional machine code link, load, and execute steps.
One example of a compiled programming language debugger limitation is that they require knowledge of the static environment from which the run-time object code was generated. The static environment of a compiled programming language includes the source code and the corresponding object code. A debugger for a compiled programming language performs the work of generating a mapping of the structures between the source code and the object code prior to executing the object being debugged, and the debugger requires that the source code and object code remain consistent throughout the debug process. Any changes to either the source code and/or the object code render the debug mapping and subsequent debugging capability unsound. For this reason, compiled programming language debuggers do not tolerate run time changes to code and the debugger for one compiled programming language is not functional for any other programming language.
Alternatively, interpreted programming languages are more flexible in that they are run-time interpreted by a programming language engine that does not require a static source code or object code environment. However, interpreted programming language debuggers do not accommodate compiled programming language debugging and are often functional with only one interpreted programming language.
Another problem with compiled programming language debuggers is that they only function under known predefined run-time conditions with a specific operating environment. However, even under these constraints existing compiled programming language debuggers are only aware of predefined host application content that is made available to the debugger prior to run time, but the debuggers have no run-time knowledge of host application content.
One solution to the difficulty with debugging applications that contain disparate code from compiled programming languages and/or interpreted programming languages is to limit the developer to using only one programming language for an application. However, this solution is undesirable because no one programming language is ideal for every application. Further, this solution is unreasonable because the demands of present day Internet web page programming, as well as the general customer/developer demands in the computing industry, require multi-language extensibility.
For these reasons, there exists an ongoing need for a debugging technology that facilitate efficient programmability by way of programming language, host application, and operating environment independence. A system of this type has heretofore not been known prior to the invention as disclosed below.
SOLUTION
The above identified problems are solved and an advancement achieved in the field of programming language debuggers due to the active debugging environment of the present invention for applications containing compiled and interpreted programming language code. The active debugging environment facilitates content rich run-time debugging in an active debug environment even if a mixture of compiled and interpreted programming languages exist within the application being debugged. One purpose of the active debugging environment is to provide an open and efficiently deployed framework for authoring and debugging language neutral and host neutral applications.
In the context of the present discussion, language neutral means that a debugging environment exists that transparently supports multi-language program debugging and cross-language stepping and breakpoints without requiring specific kno

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