Are there any open-source alternatives to ReplayDIRECTOR / Chronon Debugger?

Question

You may be familiar with

• ReplayDirector, http://www.replaysolutions.com/products/replaydirector-for-java-ee
• Chronon, http://www.chrononsystems.com/product

Answer 1

Omniscient debuggers record the trace data to query afterwards. They are often also called reverse-, back-in-time, bidirectional- or time-travel-debuggers, but I prefer to reserve those terms for debuggers that allow actual reversing in a live program.

TOD is an open-source omniscient debugger for Java.

JIVE is another free omniscient debugger for Java, though not open-source.

The GNU debugger, gdb. It has two modes, one is process record and replay, the other is true reverse debugging. It is extremely slow, as it undoes single machine instruction at a time.

And for Python, the extended python debugger prototype, epdb, is also a true reverse debugger. Here is the thesis and here is the program and the code. I used epdb as a starting point to create a live reverse debugger as part of my MSc degree. The thesis covers the details of the implementation, as well as most of the historical approaches to reverse debugging. It is available online: Combining reverse debugging and live programming towards visual thinking in computer programming.