A Research On Debugger Of Dynamic Binary Translation

Dynamic binary translator generates the native code on the fly in runtime using translation technology. As the traditional debugger is targeted for statically generated code, it cannot be used to debug the program on dynamic binary translator. In order to enable debugging the program on dynamic binary translator, in this paper, we propose a new debug architecture for applications executing with dynamic binary translation systems.Debugger's implementation is tightly coupled with the target machine platform. It's even worse in dynamic binary translation system, as there are two related machine platforms in dynamic binary translation system. The debugger architecture is designed to be retargetable to decouple this relationship.In this paper, we describe a retargetable debugger architecture, and it's based on dynamic binary translator. New intermediate instructions are designed to decouple the debugger from machine platform. It also introduces some debugging technology to dynamic binary translation, including reverse executing, watch point and debugging script. By using these technologies, the overhead on debugging is reduced from dozens of executing time to twice or less. The debug architecture is implemented and used in our CrossBit system. It's proved that it reduces the time for developer to locate bugs sharply.