Wednesday 4 March 2015
Debugging Gecko With Reverse Execution
Over the last month or so I've added reverse-execution support to rr's gdb interface. This enables gdb commands such as reverse-continue, reverse-next, reverse-finish and reverse-step. These work with breakpoints and watchpoints, so you can do things like
Breakpoint 1, nsCanvasFrame::BuildDisplayList (this=0x2aaadd7dbeb0, aBuilder=0x7fffffffaaa0, aDirtyRect=..., aLists=...)
at /home/roc/mozilla-inbound/layout/generic/nsCanvasFrame.cpp:460
460 if (GetPrevInFlow()) {
(gdb) watch -l mRect.width
Hardware watchpoint 2: -location mRect.width
(gdb) reverse-cont
Continuing.
Hardware watchpoint 2: -location mRect.width
Old value = 12000
New value = 11220
0x00002aaab100c0fd in nsIFrame::SetRect (this=0x2aaadd7dbeb0, aRect=...)
at /home/roc/mozilla-inbound/layout/base/../generic/nsIFrame.h:718
718 mRect = aRect;
(Here the "New value" is actually the value before this statement was executed, since we just executed backwards past it.)
Since debugging is about tracing effects to causes, and effects happen after their causes, reverse execution is a big deal. I've just started using it to debug Gecko, and I'm enjoying it immensely! I find myself having to unlearn a lot of my usual debugging tactics; much of what I've learned about debugging up until now is really just workarounds for not having had reverse execution.
An example from today: working on bug 1082249, I was in a function nsDisplayTableItem::ComputeInvalidationRegion with a geometry variable pointing to an nsDisplayBackgroundGeometry when it should have been a nsDisplayTableItemGeometry. At first I considered various indirect ways to figure out where the nsDisplayBackgroundGeometry came from, but now there's an easy direct way: set a breakpoint on the nsDisplayBackgroundGeometry, make it conditional on this == the current value of geometry, and reverse-continue to see exactly where that specific object was created (in a subclass of nsDisplayTableItem that I hadn't thought of).
This work is checked into rr master. It's not well tested yet, so a new official rr release is not imminent, but I'd appreciate people trying it out and reporting issues. At least I have been able to use it to get work done today :-).
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