4858 - debugging tips

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@@ -375,6 +375,109 @@ Running `subx` will transparently compile it as necessary.
   building general infrastructure here for all of the x86 instruction set.
   SubX is about programming with a small, regular subset of 32-bit x86.
 
+## A few hints for debugging
+
+Writing programs in SubX is surprisingly pleasant and addictive. Reading
+programs is a work in progress, and hopefully the extensive unit tests help.
+However, _debugging_ programs is where one really faces up to the low-level
+nature of SubX. Even the smallest modifications need testing to make sure they
+work. In my experience, there is no modification so small that I get it working
+on the first attempt. And when it doesn't work, there are no clear error
+messages. Machine code is too simple-minded for that. You can't use a debugger,
+since SubX's simplistic ELF binaries contain no debugging information. So
+debugging requires returning to basics and practicing with a new, more
+rudimentary but hopefully still workable toolkit:
+
+* Start by nailing down a concrete set of steps for reproducibly obtaining the
+  error or erroneous behavior.
+
+* If possible, turn the steps into a failing test. It's not always possible,
+  but SubX's primary goal is to keep improving the variety of tests one can
+  write.
+
+* Start running the single failing test alone. This involves modifying the top
+  of the program (or the final `.subx` file passed in to `subx translate`) by
+  replacing the call to `run-tests` with a call to the appropriate `test-`
+  function.
+
+* Generate a trace for the failing test while running your program in emulated
+  mode (`subx run`):
+  ```
+  $ ./subx translate input.subx -o binary
+  $ ./subx --trace run binary arg1 arg2  2>trace
+  ```
+  The ability to generate a trace is the essential reason for the existence of
+  `subx run` mode. It gives far better visibility into program internals than
+  running natively.
+
+* As a further refinement, it is possible to render label names in the trace
+  by adding a second flag to both the `translate` and `run` commands:
+  ```
+  $ ./subx --map translate input.subx -o binary
+  $ ./subx --map --trace run binary arg1 arg2  2>trace
+  ```
+  `subx --map translate` emits a mapping from label to address in a file
+  called `map`. `subx --map --trace run` reads in the `map` file at the start
+  and prints out any matching label name as it traces each instruction
+  executed.
+
+  Here's a sample of what a trace looks like, with a few boxes highlighted:
+
+  <img alt='trace example' src='../html/subx/trace.png'>
+
+  Each of the green boxes shows the trace emitted for a single instruction.
+  It starts with a line of the form `run: inst: ___` followed by the opcode
+  for the instruction, the state of registers before the instruction executes,
+  and various other facts deduced during execution. Some instructions first
+  print a matching label. In the above screenshot, the red boxes show that
+  address `0x0900005e` maps to label `$loop` and presumably marks the start of
+  some loop. Function names get similar `run: == label` lines.
+
+* One trick when emitting traces with labels:
+  ```
+  $ grep label trace
+  ```
+  This is useful for quickly showing you the control flow for the run, and the
+  function executing when the error occurred. I find it useful to start with
+  this information, only looking at the complete trace after I've gotten
+  oriented on the control flow. Did it get to the loop I just modified? How
+  many times did it go through the loop?
+
+* Once you have SubX displaying labels in traces, it's a short step to modify
+  the program to insert more labels just to gain more insight. For example,
+  consider the following function:
+
+  <img alt='control example -- before' src='../html/subx/control0.png'>
+
+  This function contains a series of jump instructions. If a trace shows
+  `is-hex-lowercase-byte?` being encountered, and then `$is-hex-lowercase-byte?:end`
+  being encountered, it's still ambiguous what happened. Did we hit an early
+  exit, or did we execute all the way through? To clarify this, add temporary
+  labels after each jump:
+
+  <img alt='control example -- after' src='../html/subx/control1.png'>
+
+  Now the trace should have a lot more detail on which of these labels was
+  reached, and precisely when the exit was taken.
+
+* Once we have a sense for precisely which instructions we want to look at,
+  it's time to look at the trace as a whole. Key is the state of registers
+  before each instruction. If a function is receiving bad arguments it becomes
+  natural to inspect what values were pushed on the stack before calling it,
+  tracing back further from there, and so on.
+
+  I occasionally want to see the precise state of the stack segment, in which
+  case I uncomment a commented-out call to `dump_stack()` in the `vm.cc`
+  layer. It makes the trace a lot more verbose and a lot less dense, necessitating
+  a lot more scrolling around, so I keep it turned off most of the time.
+
+Hopefully these hints are enough to get you started. The main thing to
+remember is to not be afraid of modifying the sources. A good debugging
+session gets into a nice rhythm of generating a trace, staring at it for a
+while, modifying the sources, regenerating the trace, and so on. Email
+[me](mailto:mu@akkartik.com) if you'd like another pair of eyes to stare at a
+trace, or if you have questions or complaints.
+
 ## SubX library
 
 A major goal of SubX is testable wrappers for operating system syscalls.