Cambridge, UK, 20th January 2015 – Reversible debugging tools provider Undo Software (http://www.undo-software.com/) today launched Live Recorder. Embedded within complex software, Live Recorder allows Linux programs to make a detailed recording of themselves while they are running. The resulting Undo Recording enables developers to debug an exact copy of the original program’s execution, allowing them to track down bugs without needing to reproduce them in-house, write test cases or make time-consuming visits to customer sites.
Software failures in production are notoriously difficult to fix. Until now, in order to solve a problem reported on code running in production, developers have needed to gather information relating to the failure to write a test case and/or reproduce the bug in-house. This is time consuming and requires significant effort from the customer. If this method fails, enterprise organizations often have to send staff to the customer site to try to reproduce the bug in situ, negatively impacting the customer and costing them significantly in time and resources.
Live Recorder removes the need for test cases to be written and/or bugs to be reproduced in-house by creating an Undo Recording of a failure, which can be sent back to developers by the user. An Undo Recording allows UndoDB, the reversible debugger for Linux, to completely reconstruct everything a program has done, including every memory access and every instruction executed. Once an Undo Recording has been loaded into UndoDB, developers have access to an exact copy of the original program’s execution history and can record, rewind and replay their code to quickly find critical bugs, increase productivity and meet development deadlines.
By capturing software failures, Live Recorder provides developers with all the information they need to quickly respond to bugs that are found either in the field or internally within their own organizations (such as during software testing). This reduces turnaround time between customers reporting bugs and fixes being released and decreases the risk to time to market goals during internal testing. Live Recorder’s ability to easily maintain software to meet customer needs once released embeds serviceability into any Linux program, enhancing the ability of vendors to protect brand reputation and retain customers.
When used within internal software testing, Live Recorder reduces the risk to time to market by ensuring bugs found in testing can quickly be captured and investigated. By recording tests with Live Recorder, an exact copy of a failure in a test suite can be sent back to development teams, harmonizing research/development and testing/quality assurance teams.
Runtime Design Automation (RTDA) provides mission critical software that is utilized in highly complex 24/7 customized global environments and has deployed Live Recorder in its operations.
“Runtime strives to provide best-in-class partnership level support for our customers, so if a problem occurs our customers can count on us to respond,” said John Correia, VP Engineering, Runtime Design Automation. “Live Recorder provides a unique solution to record and replay code execution that enhances our ability to quickly and effectively troubleshoot complex problems relating to customer environments and third party tool integration. This enhanced visibility enables us to provide faster time to diagnosis and resolution for our customers, as well as a higher level of satisfaction.”
Live Recorder consists of a recorder associated with a specially configured UndoDB. The recorder comes in the form of a library that can be easily embedded within a program. This library has a simple and easy-to-use C API that allows recording to be started and stopped and a recording to be saved to a file, either on demand or automatically on termination of a program (for example in case of a program crash). When recording is not enabled, Live Recorder is completely dormant – it can be turned on when issues occur or run continuously, dependent on individual needs. The recorder is licensed so that software vendors can redistribute the library with their program.
“Fixing critical software bugs discovered off-site is always time-consuming and often impossible as developers struggle to reproduce the original bug in-house or have to physically travel to the customer’s premises,” said Greg Law, CEO and co-founder, Undo Software. “With Live Recorder you see what your customer sees, and can replay bugs without the need to reproduce them in-house. This gives organizations the insight they need to quickly fix the bugs that are causing havoc for customers, thus reducing risk and strengthening relationships.”
Live Recorder is available now and supports all compiled programs on 64-bit x86 Linux distributions. A whitepaper outlining the benefits of Live Recorder is available here (http://undo-software.com/resources/live-recorder-whitepaper/).
About Undo Software
Undo Software is the leading commercial supplier of Linux and Android reversible debugging tools that enable software developers to record, rewind and replay their C/C++ code to respond quickly to customer critical bugs, increase their productivity and meet their development deadlines. Used by over 1,000 developers at customers that include Cadence Design Systems and Mentor Graphics to solve complex, real-world problems, UndoDB is proven to reduce debugging time from weeks to minutes, while seamlessly integrating into existing development environments. Undo Software is a privately held company headquartered in Cambridge, UK, and is a Gartner “Cool Vendor in Application Development” for 2014. For more information, see: http://undo-software.com/ or follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/@undosoft.
