Java applications, in particular server applications, are often multithreaded. Their execution can be non-deterministic, making them difficult to understand and debug. This paper presents a platform for
analyzing interleaved program execution, comprising the Jalapeno JVM, the replay capabilities of DejaVu, and the perturbation-free reflection afforded by Remote Reflection. A debugger
demonstrates the power and novel characteristics of the platform.
DejaVu supports understanding and debugging multithreaded Java applications through deterministic replay of non-deterministic execution. DejaVu replays the execution of the entire Jalapeno JVM,
including its thread and garbage collector subsystems. The debugger must not alter the execution behavior of the JVM during replay, which is especially challenging on this platform because all
components---from the Jalapeno JVM to DejaVu and the debugger---are written in Java. DejaVu ensures deterministic replay through symmetric instrumentation and remote reflection, which exposes the state of an application without perturbing it.
By: Bowen Alpern, Jong-Deok Choi, Ton Ngo, Manu Sridharan (MIT), John Vlissides
Published in: RC21864 in 2000
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