Debugging support for aspect-oriented program based on program slicing and call graph

Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) introduces a new software module unit named aspect to encapsulate crosscutting concerns. While AOP modularizes crosscutting concerns to improve maintainability and reusability, AOP introduces a new factor of complexity. It is difficult to find defects caused by an aspect modifying or preventing the behavior of other objects and aspects. We examine a method to support a debugging task in aspect-oriented software development. We propose an application of a call graph generation and program slicing to assist in debugging. A call graph visualizes control dependence relations between objects and aspects and supports the detection of an infinite loop. On the other hand, program slicing shows the user changes of dependence relations caused by aspects. We implement a program-slicing tool for AspectJ and apply it to certain programs. The experiment illustrates how our approach effectively helps developers understand the influence of aspects in a program.