Hi Eliot,
Anyway, the interesting question to me is what are the advantages
of your approach?
One is interactivity. The tool supports drilling down to instruction
level, which is good for critical code sequences such as method
prolog.
Another is comprehensibility. Because it can distinguish between
generated machine code (specific methods and runtime routines),
functions in the VM and other support code (including stuff like
Linux on stack system call entry) one sees all activities in the VM
presented meaningfully.
That's of course important, I agree. But if one uses out-of-image tools,
this could be seen too, couldn't it?
If one uses tools like OProfile or cachegrind, all this data are
collected and available for analysis.
Another is evolvability. Because it's written in smalltalk I can
develop the tool quickly and do so while I'm using it.
But this is because it's written in Smalltalk rather than because it
runs within the debugee/profilee, no?
Jan
