Introduction

1.1 About this tutorial

jBixbe is a stand-alone Java debugger that provides not only the capabilities of a conventional Java debugger but also a lot of features and new concepts distinguish it strongly from conventional Java debuggers and makes it to a complete program visualizer.

This tutorial does not explain what a debugger is or how it works nor any Java basics so you should be familiar with this. It explains jBixbe and how you can use it for debugging and visualizing Java applications. In our view this is a prerequisite when working with a debugger because the main problem should not be the debugger but how to debug applications in such a way that bugs and weaknesses can be found quickly.

Because of the various capabilities of jBixbe there are a lot of debug scenarios and this tutorial cannot respect them all. However, jBixbe is easy to use - so make also your own experiences.

1.2 System requirements

Watching and debugging a running application that itself could need a lot of system resources is an expensive process. jBixbe will run at a system with a 500 MHz processor and 128 MB memory but the debugging could be slowly and frustrating. So you should have at least a 700 MHz processor with at least 256 MB memory but for large and expensive applications it's better to have more.

jBixbe is nearly written in Java. Nearly means there are a few operating system specific native libraries loaded into the Java Virtual Machine. These libraries are available for Windows and Linux operating systems.

jBixbe was tested under different Linux distributions (SuSE, Debian, Gentoo, ...) and under different Windows operating systems (Win98, Win2000, WinXP) but should run at any Windows/Linux operating system where the required Java Virtual Machine runs.

jBixbe requires the J2SE(TM) Runtime Environment 5.0 (JRE1.5).

1.3 License

jBixbe comes with a "Free Trial License". Free means without license fee. The "Free Trial License" limits the debugging time to six minutes. After that time the JVM with your program to debug will terminate but jBixbe still running. You are free to start debugging again. If you want to have no time-restricted debugging you must purchase a Personal or Company License. There are no other technical limitations or restrictions.

1.4 Release notes

The latest release of jBixbe is 1.1

jBixbe 1.1 released on January 5, 2007

• include tutorial and how-to
• provide prepackaged example projects from tutorial
• increase debug session time up to 6 minutes for free trial version

jBixbe 1.0 Final released on September 12, 2006

• possibility to open a dynamic source code view directly for a method in sequence diagram
• a text view to display the value of a string reference

jBixbe 1.0 Beta released on August 10, 2006

• debug remote Java Virtual Machines
• watch local variable values in dynamic source code view
• better performance of source code views
• possibility to display the debuggee's VM properties
• echo input in standard I/O view
• fix a bug regarding quote characters in PATH environment variable
• only one download for all supported platforms

jBixbe 1.0 Alpha-2 released on June 15, 2006

• Windows support
• show class and method name in dynamic source code view
• possibility to open whole source file for current method in dynamic source code view
• display short id for object references
• auto open/save functionality for projects
• always show breakpoint view if a breakpoint is reached
• add context menu to breakpoint overview

jBixbe 1.0 Alpha released on May 18, 2006

This is the first public release and only available for Linux.

• a compact view for string objects
• a view for displaying local variables
• debug remote Java Virtual Machines