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Re: Debug application without source code

 
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Wim Van den Wyngaert
Honored Contributor

Re: Debug application without source code

Jon,

I've been in very complicated HR & oil refinery bookkeeping systems and I can asure you that sometimes you have to debug even without any bugs in the software.

Simply to follow and understand what is happening. But we built in very good "traces" (displays in cobol) and had to examine only the trace files.

Wim
Wim
Hoff
Honored Contributor

Re: Debug application without source code

{{{ But we built in very good "traces" (displays in cobol) and had to examine only the trace files.}}}

I tend to send this stuff to a crash log, and I tend to have it latent at all times, and I tend to invoke the debugger and/or (in rare cases) the process dump mechanisms on the fly. And yes, I tend to keep the maps and listings.

Writing this stuff out to the end user tends to be a "fail."

Mailing or otherwise transferring the (potentially (PK) encrypted) "fail" to your own crash server, or providing a way for the customer to mail the crash, is goodness.

Users (other than Jenwae's rather unique user base consisting of programmers) tend not to know what to do with a stackdump, and tend to either ignore or lose that data. And I'd be willing to bet that Jenwae's customer site is comprised of rather more than just programmers; that there are real end-user folks there, in addition to those that know from stackdumps.