Debug mode and release mode builds

-

Recently it just happened that the current product I'm working on had a crisis situation. What happened was testing found a number of inexplicable and inconsistent crashes in the product.
We didn't have a debugger back then. So to fix these things, we got gdb compiled for target. Then couple more weeks went by in us trying to find the best way to debug the application.
Ultimately we found that autogenerating core dumps for debug mode build is best solution. But as soon as we prepared debug mode build we found a number of other crashes in functionality that's properly working in release mode.
To find out the reason, after numerous internet searches, we found there are some initialisation differences in debug mode n badly written code can cause it.
So we went back n started fixing it.
Now I was thinking about the RCA for this debacle. And I realised that we all were going in the opposite way at this. Basically everybody develops in debug mode and after codebase is stable they give release in release mode.
We have been developing release mode itself. That's first issue. We didn't have a debugger that's second issue. And we didn't have a working debugging strategy, that's the third issue.
Anyway, we have incorporated these changes in development process. And things have become much better since.
So lesson learned, whenever a project is started have all general strategies in place like how its going to be developed, how it will be debugged, how it will be tested, especially its an embedded application. Since embedded development can complicate things further.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Morning Quotes

-
Image
Source: www.brainyquote.com   I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly. Winston Churchill   Prayer is the key of the morning and the bolt of the evening. Mohandas Gandhi   I look upon death to be as necessary to our constitution as sleep. We shall rise refreshed in the morning. Benjamin Franklin  
Read more

QCalendarWidget CSS Stylesheeting

-
Recently I had to implement a calendar for a TouchScreen application. I resorted to css to modify the calendar widget's appearance so that it would be more accessible. Following is the code that enabled me to get a proper calendar. calendar->setStyleSheet("QMenu { font-size:20px; width: 300px; left: 20px; }"     "QToolButton {icon-size: 48px, 48px; font: 20px; height: 70px; width: 100px; }"     "QAbstractItemView {selection-background-color: rgb(255, 174, 0);}"     "QToolButton::menu-indicator{ width: 50px;}"     "QToolButton::menu-indicator:pressed,"     "QToolButton::menu-indicator:open{ top:10px; left: 10px;}"     "QTableView { font: 30px; }"     "QSpinBox { width: 100px; font: 20px;}"     "QSpinBox::up-button { width:40px;}"     "QSpinBox::down-button { width:40px;}");
Read more

Selecting new phone plan

-
I use a Reliance Jio SIM as my one and only cellphone number. I used to have another, but I found little use for that. So I discontinued that other SIM card. It was a Vodafone SIM and I had bought it thinking I would be using it when I visit my hometown. Turns out it's not usable there. So adios. Coming back to Jio, it was working so far so good for a while. And it was quite cheap. Then they increased the fares about 4-5 months ago. And it was costing ~Rs 7 per day. This was for unlimited Jio-Jio calling, ~300minutes free to other telcos, and 1.5GB daily cellular data. Now I got home internet, so I thought to cut costs on this. The current plan goes for INR555 for 84 days. This includes 1.4GB 4G cellular data per day, 300 min calling to other telcos, and jio-jio free. That's Rs 6.6 per day. Now I'm not even using 30minutes calling per day. And due to home internet my cellular usage has gone down. So I decided to go for some other cheaper plan. This one is INR1299 for 336 da...
Read more