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Welcome to "The Debugging Book"! Software has bugs, and finding bugs can involve lots of effort. This book addresses this problem by automating software debugging, specifically by locating errors and their causes automatically. Recent years have seen the development of novel techniques that lead to dramatic improvements in automated software debugging. They now are mature enough to be assembled in a book – even with executable code.
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You can use this book in four ways:
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You can read chapters in your browser. Check out the list of chapters in the menu above, or start right away with the introduction to debugging or how debuggers work. All code is available for download.
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You can interact with chapters as Jupyter Notebooks (beta). This allows you to edit and extend the code, experimenting live in your browser. Simply select "Resources → Edit as Notebook" at the top of each chapter. Try interacting with the introduction to interactive debuggers.
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You can use the code in your own projects. You can download the code as Python programs; simply select "Resources → Download Code" for one chapter or "Resources → All Code" for all chapters. These code files can be executed, yielding (hopefully) the same results as the notebooks. Once the book is out of beta, you can also install the Python package.
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You can present chapters as slides. This allows for presenting the material in lectures. Just select "Resources → View slides" at the top of each chapter. Try viewing the slides for how debuggers work.
This work is designed as a textbook for a course in software debugging; as supplementary material in a software testing or software engineering course; and as a resource for software developers. We cover fault localization, program slicing, input reduction, automated repair, and much more, illustrating all techniques with code examples that you can try out yourself.
This book is work in progress. All chapters planned are out now, but we keep on refining text and code with minor and major releases. To get notified on updates, follow us on Mastodon.