Debugging with the MAD environment

Abstract Debugging parallel programs can be tedious and difficult. Therefore the programmer needs support from tools, that provide features for error detection and performance analysis. The MAD environment is such a toolset. It helps the user in monitoring and analyzing message passing programs. Communication errors and performance bottlenecks are visualized based on an event graph. Source code connection provides a combination between visualized events and the original lines of code or a control and data flow representation. A main part of the environment is dedicated to race conditions. After evaluation of events, which might be reordered during successive program runs, localization of message races can be performed by means of trace driven simulation. All the tools in the MAD environment follow an extensible and modular debugging strategy based on a graphical user interface.