Symbolic debugging through incremental compilation in an integrated environment

It is demonstrated that fine-grained incremental compilation is a relevant technique when implementing powerful debuggers an incremental programming environments. A debugger and an incremental compiler for PASCAL has been implemented in the DICE system (Distributed Incremental Compiling environment). Incremental compilation is at the statement level which makes it useful for the debugger which also operates at the statement level. The quality of code produced by the incremental compiler approaches that required for production use. The algorithms involved an incremental compilation are not very complicated, but they require information that is easily available only in an integrated system, like DICE, where editor, compiler, linker, debugger and program data-base are well integrated into a single system. The extra information that has to be kept around, like the cross-reference database, can be used for multiple purposes, which makes total system economics favorable.