Dbx (debugger) explained

dbx
Author:Mark Linton
Developer:Oracle Corporation
Operating System:Unix and Unix-like
Genre:Debugger
License:Free for download and use as described in the Sun Studio product license.

dbx is a source-level debugger found primarily on Solaris, AIX, IRIX, Tru64 UNIX, Linux and BSD operating systems. It provides symbolic debugging for programs written in C, C++, Fortran, Pascal and Java. Useful features include stepping through programs one source line or machine instruction at a time. In addition to simply viewing operation of the program, variables can be manipulated and a wide range of expressions can be evaluated and displayed.

History

dbx was originally developed at University of California, Berkeley, by Mark Linton during the years 1981–1984[1] and subsequently made its way to various vendors who had licensed BSD.

Availability

dbx is provided with AIX,[2] and was also provided with IRIX[3] and Tru64 UNIX.[4]

It is included as part of the Oracle Solaris Studio product from Oracle Corporation,[5] and is supported on both Solaris and Linux. It supports programs compiled with the Oracle Solaris Studio compilers and GCC.

It is also available on IBM z/OS systems, in the UNIX System Services component.[6] dbx for z/OS can debug programs written in C and C++, and can also perform machine level debugging. As of z/OS V1R5, dbx is able to debug programs using the DWARF debug format. z/OS V1R6 added support for debugging 64-bit programs.

GCC removed support for dbx in release 13.[7]

See also

External links

Notes and References

  1. Linton . Mark A. . 15074926 . 1990 . The Evolution of Dbx . USENIX Summer . 211–220 . USENIX Summer 1990 Technical Conference . 10.1.1.38.5985 .
  2. Web site: AIX 7.3 dbx symbolic debug program overview . IBM.
  3. https://web.archive.org/web/20160119165855/http://techpubs.sgi.com/library/tpl/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?coll=0650&db=man&fname=/usr/share/catman/u_man/cat1/dbx.z
  4. https://web.archive.org/web/20040626133213/http://h30097.www3.hp.com/docs/base_doc/DOCUMENTATION/V51B_HTML/MAN/MAN1/0554____.HTM
  5. Web site: Oracle Developer Studio 12.6: Debugging a Program With dbx . Oracle Corporation.
  6. Web site: z/OS 3.1 UNIX System Services Programming Tools . IBM.
  7. Web site: GCC Change notes .