Re: Intervention needed?

[Maciej Sobczak <see.my.homepage@gmail.com>]

> As gdb can be scripted, the tests that Maciej describes can probably be 
> automated,

Yes.

> albeit with considerable effort,

Not really. I would say there is no need for this effort to be higher than with any other form of test automation. Note that as with anything else in software, recurring problems can be mitigated by additional code. That is, if testing this way is difficult, then the difficulty is similar for the whole class of similar tests and as such that difficulty can be refactored away to additional utility (library/framework/etc.) with simpler (higher-level) interface.

> especially if the scripts 
> should be robust to evolution of the SW under test (changing the line 
> numbers of the required breakpoints, etc.)

This is a wider problem of traceability. You have to solve this problem anyway for the coverage analysis, for example. And the solution, whatever you happen to use (like tool-readable labels in source comments), will help with debugging, too.

In any case, yes, some projects need the debugger to test individual memory locations. The lack of proper tools is a technology risk.

> However, I don't think that gdb or other current debuggers are 
> ideal tools for automated checking of internal states.

They are not. But a non-ideal working debugger is still better than a not working one.

-- 
Maciej Sobczak * http://www.inspirel.com