Summary

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This chapter was an overview of what debuggers do and how they do it. By learning about your tools, you're better able to maximize their usage. The core Win32 Debugging API was presented, and some of the supporting systems that debuggers use, such as the symbol engine, were covered. You also learned about some of the other debuggers—besides the Visual C++ debugger—that are available. Finally, the WDBG example provided a complete debugger sample that illustrates exactly how debuggers work.

If you had never seen how debuggers operate at this level before, you might have thought that they were magical pieces of code. However, as you look through the code for WDBG, I think you'll agree that debuggers go through the same data grunt work that any software goes through. The biggest deficiency to overcome when writing a Win32 debugger is that the existing symbol engines handle only public functions, global variables, and source and line information. Without local variables, parameters, and types, it's difficult to make a debugger nearly as comprehensive as the Visual C++ debugger or WinDBG.