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imods

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 18, 2007
25
0
Hello,

Just as the title says, I'm looking for a good low-level (assembly level) debugger (not a disassembler) for my Intel Mac (iMac).

I have a decent disassembler called otx, but i'm looking for a debugger.

If anyone had worked with ollydbg (http://www.ollydbg.de/), then you should get a feel of what i'm looking for on a Mac. You can have a look at its main window:
ollydbg.png


Thanks in advance.
 

mduser63

macrumors 68040
Nov 9, 2004
3,042
31
Salt Lake City, UT
This ought to be in the Programming forum. Anyway, I'm not sure of the best assembly level debugger, but the XCode debugger will let you view the assembly generated from your code and single step through it.
 

imods

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 18, 2007
25
0
Thanks for your reply!

I'm supposed to debug applications that i don't have the source code for. I'm a beta tester.

So, does that mean that there are no *great* asm debuggers for Intel Mac?
 

mduser63

macrumors 68040
Nov 9, 2004
3,042
31
Salt Lake City, UT
Thanks for your reply!

I'm supposed to debug applications that i don't have the source code for. I'm a beta tester.

So, does that mean that there are no *great* asm debuggers for Intel Mac?

I've never had the need for an assembly debugger so I'm not sure. The XCode debugger will allow you to attach to any running process and you can view the assembly. I just attached to Proteus (IM client) with no trouble at all and was able to pause and single step through the assembly.
 

imods

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 18, 2007
25
0
Thanks again for your replies. I really appreciate it!

Actually i can't just attach to a running process because i can be debugging/analyzing a virus or other maleware binaries. So i can't just run them then attach. I want to be able to *start* the debugging from withing the debugger without running it, instead, the debugger should *start* the debugee in *suspended mode*, then I should be able to step through the code (assembly)
 

Eraserhead

macrumors G4
Nov 3, 2005
10,434
12,250
UK
I'm not sure if this is suitable but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Debugger is the debugger included with OS X, and it can be run on the command line too, and probably has more options there.

Otherwise if you can find a version of a linux/unix debugger that is suitable, there could well be a Mac version.
 

ChrisA

macrumors G5
Jan 5, 2006
12,911
2,158
Redondo Beach, California
Hello,

Just as the title says, I'm looking for a good low-level (assembly level) debugger

I use gdb directly for something quick like printing a trackback after a dump but use ddd, which is a gui debugger that can interface with several of the command line debuggers like gdb.

This setup works for a wide range of uses and operating systems. I can debug the "standard" type program and I can get it to work for in circuit debugging a small micro-controller too (The AVR chips)
 
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