dbx is a source-level

debugger A debugger is a computer program used to test and debug other programs (the "target" programs). Common features of debuggers include the ability to run or halt the target program using breakpoints, step through code line by line, and display ...

found primarily on Solaris, AIX,

IRIX IRIX (, ) is a discontinued operating system developed by Silicon Graphics (SGI) to run on the company's proprietary MIPS architecture, MIPS workstations and servers. It is based on UNIX System V with Berkeley Software Distribution, BSD extensio ...

Tru64 UNIX Tru64 UNIX is a discontinued 64-bit UNIX operating system for the DEC Alpha, Alpha instruction set architecture (ISA), currently owned by Hewlett-Packard (HP). Previously, Tru64 UNIX was a product of Compaq, and before that, Digital Equipment Corp ...

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

and

BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), also known as Berkeley Unix or BSD Unix, is a discontinued Unix operating system developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berkeley, beginni ...

operating systems. It provides symbolic debugging for programs written in C, C++, Fortran, Pascal and

Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...

. Useful features include stepping through programs one source line or

machine instruction In computer programming, machine code is computer code consisting of machine language instructions, which are used to control a computer's central processing unit (CPU). For conventional binary computers, machine code is the binaryOn nonbi ...

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 The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

, by Mark Linton during the years 1981–1984 and subsequently made its way to various vendors who had licensed BSD.

Availability

dbx is provided with AIX, and was also provided with

and

. It is included as part of the

Oracle Solaris Studio Oracle Developer Studio, formerly named Oracle Solaris Studio, Sun Studio, Sun WorkShop, Forte Developer, and SunPro Compilers, is the Oracle Corporation's flagship software development product for the Solaris and Linux operating systems. It in ...

product from

Oracle Corporation Oracle Corporation is an American Multinational corporation, multinational computer technology company headquartered in Austin, Texas. Co-founded in 1977 in Santa Clara, California, by Larry Ellison, who remains executive chairman, Oracle was ...

, and is supported on both Solaris and

. It supports programs compiled with the Oracle Solaris Studio compilers and GCC. It is also available on

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

z/OS z/OS is a 64-bit operating system for IBM z/Architecture mainframes, introduced by IBM in October 2000. It derives from and is the successor to OS/390, which in turn was preceded by a string of MVS versions.Starting with the earliest: ...

systems, in the

UNIX System Services z/OS UNIX System Services (z/OS UNIX, or informally USS) is a base element of z/OS. z/OS UNIX is a certified UNIX operating system implementation ( XPG4 UNIX 95) optimized for mainframe architecture. It is the first UNIX 95 to not be derived f ...

component. 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 Dwarf, dwarfs or dwarves may refer to: Common uses *Dwarf (folklore), a supernatural being from Germanic folklore * Dwarf, a human or animal with dwarfism Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional entities * Dwarf (''Dungeons & Dragons''), a sh ...

debug format. z/OS V1R6 added support for debugging

64-bit In computer architecture, 64-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit central processing units (CPU) and arithmetic logic units (ALU) are those that are based on processor registers, a ...

programs. GCC removed support for dbx in release 13.

References

External links

z/OS 3.1 UNIX System Services Programming Tools
- includes dbx
AIX 7.3 dbx symbolic debug program overview

* Debuggers Unix programming tools {{Unix-stub

History

Availability

See also

References

External links