Programming Language Array Constructs For Parallel Relative Debugging

Relative debugging is a technique which addresses the problem of debugging programs developed using evolutionary software techniques. Recent developments allow relative debugging to be used on programs that have been ported from serial to parallel architectures. Such programs may change significantly in the porting process, and this raises many issues for the debugging process. This paper examines the issues of array data and code transformations that occur in these situations, and proposes an algebra for expressing the changes to the data representation. A series of programming language constructs are defined, implemented as extensions to the command language of our existing debugger, GUARD95, that allow the comparison of data between two, otherwise, different programs.