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libdebugmod - Debug Module Library

libdebugmod is a very small C library to easily manage debug output in console or embedded applications.

Author: André Colomb src@andre.colomb.de

License

Copyright (C) 2014 André Colomb

libdebugmod is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

libdebugmod is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Lesser General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

Motivation

Small programs, especially on embedded microcontrollers, often have different needs for runtime debugging output than large-scale desktop or server applications, where minimal runtime overhead or compiled binary size is less of a concern. Outputting debug messages during the program's execution is often the most valuable source of information for developers.

The traditional approach for controlling the level of debug verbosity is to assign each possible message a severity level and then filter out everything above a certain, runtime-configured level. This level can even be limited to a lower value for production builds with smaller binary size and better runtime performance.

With libdebugmod, messages are instead enabled per translation unit (called a code module in this context). A translation unit is typically one source file (.c or .cpp), or whatever the compiler treats as the scope of a static variable. This is coupled with a decentralized architecture, where no central component needs to have a list of all subsystems. Referencing modules via hard-coded string identifiers makes it possible to still easily control the verbosity during runtime, for example through text commands or a console.

The overhead is kept minimal and configurable to allow small executable sizes on embedded platforms. Production builds are easily stripped of almost all debugging code (see "Limitations" below). In contrast to traditional approaches, where debug output code is hidden by the preprocessor conditions, libdebugmod keeps the code visible to the compiler. Such debugging code is less likely to break during restructuring and leads to compilation errors before releasing broken debug code which the compiler has never had a chance to validate.

Features

  • Standard C streams as I/O descriptors make logging to files or console easy.
  • Suitable for embedded systems, leaving the choice of output function to the user (fprintf() not mandatory).
  • No wrapper functions, allowing the compiler to e.g. validate printf format strings.
  • Zero runtime overhead for production builds.
  • Enable / disable debug output for individual modules at runtime.
  • Minimal runtime overhead when debugging is disabled.
  • Decentralized architecture for independent code module subsystems.
  • Function context is provided for each debug output.
  • Complete control over output prefixes via callback function.
  • Debugging code is always compiled and therefore consistent with other code changes (e.g. renamed variables).
  • Small implementation with optional features.

Limitations

  • Relies on optimizing compiler for zero-overhead production builds
  • Slight binary size overhead for strings used as module identifier or function context (compiler-dependent)
  • Not thread-safe

Installation

Requirements

There are no required dependencies for building the library. Since the code uses features from the C99 language standard, the compiler must support this standard and it might have to be explicitly enabled with a command line switch (e.g. -std=c99).

The source code and interfaces are well documented and prepared to generate documentation with Doxygen. A handy configuration named Doxyfile is included.

Compilation

A simple Makefile is included under the src directory, compatible at least with GNU make. It contains rules to create the static library and a test program demonstrating the API. In addition, the dump target outputs a disassembly of the test program to verify the library overhead.

The number of debug modules which can be registered in a program is limited during compilation of debug_mod.c. This maximum can be checked through the variable debug_mod_max. To override it, define the DEBUG_MOD_MAX macro to a numeric value during compilation. The default is four modules.

By default, compilation is done with the build machine's standard tools like cc and objdump. To test the library with this default toolchain, use the host target:

make host

As another example usage, the avr target provides a convenient way to cross-build using the avr-gcc toolchain and then dump the resulting disassembly for inspection:

make avr

To use the library in your own code, there are two possible build scenarios. Either way, the include directory should be added to the preprocessor include path for your project.

Variant A: Using the Static Library

When building a native host application or if you just want a binary file for use in projects, make the lib target in the provided Makefile. The standard variables from the environment or provided on the command line can control the toolchain options (CC, LD, CPPFLAGS, CFLAGS, LDFLAGS). Example:

make -C libdebugmod/src/ CFLAGS="-g -O1" clean lib

Make sure to also configure optional library API features during this step, as explained under the section "Runtime management API" below. The built static library can then be regularly linked to your project by providing the linker with a library path:

cc -Ilibdebugmod/include/ -Llibdebugmod/src/ \
	myproject.c -ldebugmod -o myproject

Or by directly referencing the archive file:

cc -Ilibdebugmod/include/ \
	myproject.c libdebugmod/src/libdebugmod.a -o myproject

Variant B: Direct Linking

If the library source resides within your project directory, it may be easier to just include the source file for the API functions in your build process. This way, your toolchain configuration is always consistent with the libdebugmod build. Keep in mind that a C99 mode compiler is required, though.

cc -Ilibdebugmod/include/ \
	myproject.c libdebugmod/src/debug_mod.c -o myproject

If your project uses a Makefile, simply add the include path to your CPPFLAGS variable, then add libdebugmod/src/debug_mod.c to the source files. Example Makefile excerpt:

DEBUGMOD_DIR = libdebugmod
CPPFLAGS += -I$(DEBUGMOD_DIR)/include
myproject: myproject.c $(DEBUGMOD_DIR)/src/debug_mod.c

Basic API for Debug Output

To employ any libdebugmod functionality in one of your code modules, you need to:


	#define DEBUG_MOD_ENABLE	// This is optional
	#include <debug_mod.h>
	DEBUG_MOD_INIT("my module")

Without the DEBUG_MOD_ENABLE macro, the debug output code is still visible to the compiler, but will be removed by the optimizer. In practice, it may be easier to define the DEBUG_MOD_ENABLE macro via command line flags to the preprocessor during a debug build instead of hard-coding it into each source file.

The debug_mod.h header file contains most of the API declaration and provides the magic to separate debug channels for different translation units. It must be included once per translation unit. Just look at its contents or the generated Doxygen documentation for details.

The DEBUG_MOD_INIT() macro must also be used once per translation unit, before any debug output. It defines the static storage used to identify and register the current code module. Lazy people with a good C preprocessor may use the magic constant __FILE__ for the module identifier:

DEBUG_MOD_INIT(__FILE__)

Actual debug output is most conveniently generated with one of the macros DEBUGF() and DEBUGL(). They are designed to provide great flexibility around the stream I/O functions from the C Standard Library, namely fprintf(), fputs(), fputc(), etc. Your average debug message may look like this:


	fprintf(stderr, "Houston, we have %d problems.", count);
	fputc('\n', stderr);

With libdebugmod, the calls should look like this:


	DEBUGF(fprintf, "Houston, we have %d problems.", count);
	DEBUGL(fputc, '\n');

The DEBUGF() and DEBUGL() macros expand to a code block which

  1. Is optimized away when DEBUG_MOD_ENABLE was not defined.
  2. Evaluates a configured callback function to decide whether debug output is desired for the current module.
  3. Calls the given output function with the configured stream as first or last argument, respectively.
  4. Passes all remaining arguments to the output function verbatim.

The first two steps above can also be reused for code other than debug output, for example to open a log file only when debugging is enabled. The DEBUG_CONDITION macro expands to an if (...) statement with the described behaviour.

The callback function serves two main purposes: a) Controlling whether the specific debug statement should be executed by returning a non-zero value and b) "preparing" the debug output, such as writing a prefix (timestamp, etc.) to the output stream. In addition to the current module's debug configuration, it is passed a string describing the calling context. By default, the __func__ magic preprocessor macro is used, but can be overridden setting DEBUG_MOD_CONTEXT to any expression evaluating to a string at runtime.

Runtime Management API

The library allows to flexibly reconfigure each module at run-time. The callback function deciding whether to execute the debug statements can be exchanged, or entirely suppressed. Switching the output stream passed in DEBUGF() and DEBUGL() statements is also supported.

These configuration changes can be done from within each module for its own settings, as well as through a module-external API to allow for centralized management of debug facilities by the user.

Self-Configuration Within Modules

Each module's own current output stream can be accessed directly through debug_mod_get_stream() and modified using debug_mod_set_stream(). The default output stream at initialization is always stderr.

Initially, each module's configuration is lazily initialized to use the callback function address stored in debug_mod_default_func. Set the latter during early program initialization to provide a default callback instead of disabling all debug modules.

Replacing the callback function is done via debug_mod_set_func(), where a function pointer of type debug_mod_f must be passed in. Setting the callback to NULL disables debugging output for this module altogether, which is equivalent to debug_mod_disable_self().

In some setups, a central module list may not be desired, but at some point in time a complete enumeration of all registered modules is needed. However, the lazy initialization only happens upon the first evaluation of the DEBUG_CONDITION, which implies all side-effects of the respective callback function. To avoid these, use debug_mod_register_self() within each module, forcing registration early in the program startup. The incremental_string_search.c demo program (explained below) includes such a usecase.

External Reconfiguration API

Other modules can control the debug output experience using the API provided in debug_mod_control.h. To access the respective API, you need to:


	#define DEBUG_MOD_DYNAMIC	// This is optional (see below)
	#define DEBUG_MOD_SAVE		// This is optional (see below)
	#include <debug_mod_control.h>

This header file also pulls in the standard debug_mod.h header, so the basic API for debug output can be used regularly after initialization with DEBUG_MOD_INIT() (see above). In addition the function debug_mod_register() is declared and can be used to configure a debug module in advance.

Each module's configuration is lazily initialized during the first evaluation of the DEBUG_CONDITION, for example when first reaching a DEBUGF() call. At this time, the debug_mod_init() function arranges two things:

  1. Make sure the module's identifier is registered in a central list using debug_mod_register().
  2. Apply the debug_mod_default_func address (typically NULL), unless the module has already been registered, in which case the pre-recorded configuration is used.

This logic allows to enumerate modules and their individual settings from a central place using debug_mod_register() during program initialization, like in the following example.


	// Example output preparation: Prefix with function context
	char cb_context(debug_mod* self, const char* context) {
		fputs(context, self->stream);
		fputs("(): ", self->stream);
		return 1;
	}

	int main(void) {
		// Enable debug output to stderr by default for any module
		debug_mod_default_func = cb_context;

		// Override a specific module's default stream
		debug_mod dm = { cb_context, stdout, "my module" };
		debug_mod_register(&dm);

		/* main program logic */

		return 0;
	}

Dynamic Module Reconfiguration (optional)

This part of the control API is optional and only available if the macro DEBUG_MOD_DYNAMIC was defined before including debug_mod_control.h. Remember to arrange this also when building the static library, for example:

make -C libdebugmod/src/ CPPFLAGS=-DDEBUG_MOD_DYNAMIC clean lib

Additional functions exposed are debug_mod_update() and debug_mod_disable(). In contrast to debug_mod_register(), they can be used to alter modules' configurations anytime after they have been registered and used, from outside the affected module.


	// Update callback and stream for all known modules
	debug_mod_update(NULL, cb_context, stdout);
	// Disable a single module's output again:
	debug_mod_disable("my module");
	// which is equivalent to:
	debug_mod_update("my module", NULL, NULL);

Specifying a NULL value for the module identifier applies the call to all modules that have already been registered (explicitly or automatically).

Save and Restore Configuration (optional)

This part of the control API is optional and only available if the macro DEBUG_MOD_SAVE was defined before including debug_mod_control.h. Remember to arrange this also when building the static library, for example:

make -C libdebugmod/src/ CPPFLAGS=-DDEBUG_MOD_SAVE clean lib

Additional functions exposed are:

  • debug_mod_list() to iterate through all known modules
  • debug_mod_save() to conveniently save the current modules' configuration to an array
  • debug_mod_restore() to apply a previously stored configuration

	debug_mod my_config[debug_mod_max];	// Note the maximum size
	debug_mod_save(my_config, sizeof(my_config) / sizeof(*my_config));
	// "my_config" may be copied to non-volatile memory now
	memcpy(wherever, my_config, sizeof(my_config);

	// ... during next run, load my_config again, then:
	debug_mod_restore(my_config, sizeof(my_config) / sizeof(*my_config));

Demo Programs

The source code includes a small demo program illustrating all of the features named above. Inside the src/ directory, look at the files test_debug_mod.c and test_ext_module.c. The Makefile includes a target to compile and run this demo using the host toolchain. Note that the preprocessor macros to enable features must be defined during this compilation step.

make -C libdebugmod/src/ \
	CPPFLAGS="-DDEBUG_MOD_ENABLE -DDEBUG_MOD_DYNAMIC -DDEBUG_MOD_SAVE" \
	clean test

Two compilation units are tested, using the preprocessor's special __FILE__ macro for the module identifier. The test_debug_mod.c module contains different example implementations for setup functions, prepending the stream output with varying context information.

The test calls for API functions are all documented and use the optional API if enabled. The main() function demonstrates debug output from an external module and its own, with various configuration changes in between.

Another example lives in test_incremental_search.c and shows a more sophisticated usage of the runtime management API. It implements a rather efficient incremental string search algorithm to match a (partial) input against the list of registered debug modules, exercising the debug_mod_list() function. Use the following Makefile target to run the example code with appropriate macro definitions already included.

make -C libdebugmod/src/ clean test-search