Utilities

There are numerous utilities to aid in the debugging process. Those considered most useful will be described. The important thing to understand is that the more skilled you become with a particular debugging tool, the more useful it is for your debugging. Using a utility you are totally unfamiliar with is frustrating and probably won't help you find your error. But investing some time in learning the tool will save countless hours in future debugging.

Totalview

By far the most useful utility at NERSC for debugging is Totalview. Totalview provides an X Windows interface to a powerful debugger that lets you do everything from step through your code running on multiple processors to viewing your core files. It can be used for Fortran 90, C, C++ and HPF code.

Please see

• Using the Totalview Debugger on the SP

Other Utilities

The table contains a list of some other debugging utilities. The most useful is Totalview, but the lint programs are good as a last resort to track down particularly difficult errors. They tend to generate more information than you would ever need, so options should be used to limit the output.

Please see the man page for each utility to get more information.