TotalView Users Guide - CI Wiki

Setting Breakpoints and Barriers
Figure 226: Pending
Breakpoints
When you’re done, TotalView sets a breakpoint at the location. If you enter a
function name, TotalView sets the breakpoint at the function’s first executable
line. In either case, if a breakpoint already exists at a location, TotalView
deletes it.
CLI: dbreak sets a breakpoint
ddelete deletes a breakpoint
For detailed information about the kinds of information you can enter in
this dialog box, see dbreak in the TotalView Reference Guide.
Ambiguous Functions and Pending Breakpoints
If you type a function name that TotalView has no information about into
the Action Point > At Location dialog box, it assumes that you have either
mistyped the function name or that the library containing the function has
not yet been loaded into memory.
If TotalView cannot find a location to set a breakpoint (or a barrier point),
you can tell it to set it anyway because it could exist in a shared library or it
could be loaded later. These kind of breakpoints are called pending breakpoints.
When libraries are loaded, TotalView checks for the function’s name.
If the name is found, it sets the breakpoint. If it isn’t in a newly library,
TotalView just keeps on waiting for it to be loaded. You’ll see information in
the Action Points tab that tells you that the breakpoint is pending.
If the name you type is similar to the name of an existing function,
TotalView displays its Ambiguous Function dialog box that lets you select
which of these existing functions it should set a breakpoint on. If, however,
the function will be loaded into memory later, you can set a pending breakpoint
(See Figure 227 on page 355.).
If the name you entered was not ambiguous, TotalView just asks if it should
set a pending breakpoint. This question box is also shown in Figure 227 on
page 355.
TotalView can only place one action point on an address. Because the breakpoints you
specify are actually expressions, the locations to which these expressions evaluate can
overlap or even be the same. Sometimes, and this most often occurs with pending breakpoints
in dynamically loaded libraries, TotalView cannot tell when action points over-
354 Chapter 16: Setting Action Points