# Low level bug tips

Tips for resolving low-level bugs in Phix:
There may be problems that go way beyond anything the standard ex.err, trace(), and profile() mechanisms can help you with, or indeed affect the latter trio directly: lower-level is needed, at least until whichever of those three that failed is fit and well again.
Obviously this is a last resort, feel free to chuck real nasties into my lap and stand well back.
Likewise this is not something you can jump into on day one; it needs a basic understanding of the whole VM, and the ability to understand the whole of any list.asm files that you produce. None of this is meant as a selling point, but I may as well share any little insights I might have.
An intermediate level problem is resolving a bad era: often this can be resolved by careful examination of the specific builtins\VM file getting it wrong, and perhaps a little bit of trial and error.
For an entry level low-level problem, might I suggest scouring a list.asm to find something that you could improve on, for example "if n<length(s)" loads everything into registers before a cmp reg,reg whereas I am pretty sure a cmp reg,[ebx+reg*4-12] would help shave something off. Just bear in mind that sometimes things are done the long/hard/convoluted way in order to be more helpful when things go wrong, so consider adding a few more tests to test/terror.exw *before* starting anything else. By entry level I guess I mean a learning exercise for the terminally curious, and obviously finding something you think you can improve is quite a bit easier than finding a typo or logic error hiding away somewhere in 50,000 lines or more of low-level code, but still not exactly trivial.
If possible, reproduce the problem using "p -d test" and running test.exe. Typically I will spend quite some time reducing the program to the absolute bare bones, eg demo\arwendemo\bug003.exw is a severely hacked copy of demo\arwendemo\demo_toolbar.exw and was created the hard way: by copying the whole of arwen.ew and half a dozen other includes into bug003.exw, removing all the "global", and deleting all the not used bits. The program has to be re-tested at every step, usually I have to undo something that fixed it, and yes, it takes days, not hours. Once I have made life as easy as possible, and assuming close examination of the last changes in the list.asm revealed nothing, I run the failing program under OllyDbg, regularly toggling back to said list.asm. Also, after I have gone to all that trouble, I make sure that should the problem ever occur again then at least it does so in the already simplified code, by adding it to "p -test".
If the problem only occurs under "p test", a couple of extra steps are required: You may want or need a listing of the compiler itself, especially the VM parts that get re-used, in which case run "p -d p" and copy the resulting list.asm to (say) p.asm. Then create another listing file (list.asm) using "p -d! test". Find the "call ecx" (or "call rcx") in p.exw/main() and trap on that in OllyDbg (or FDBG). Single-step and make a note of the address it calls. Compare that with the top of your list.asm; the difference must be (manually) applied to all code addresses. That covers the code section (CSvaddr), it may be that you need a similar difference to cover the data section (DSvaddr), both of which are fixed via the "p -d test" route. The easiest way to calculate the DSvaddr offset is by looking at any variable reference in the list.asm and then compare it with the equivalent reference once you have found the precise location of the code you are actually debugging.
One trick worth knowing is that, when you have to debug "p test" rather than "p -d test", the VM itself does not move, hence something like

    include builtins\puts1h.e
        ...
        puts1("about to go wrong")

    -- or, to avoid the extra opFrame/opRetf:

    include builtins\VM\puts1.e
    string msg = "about to go wrong"
        ...
        #ilASM{
            [32]
                mov edi,[msg]
            [64]
                mov rdi,[msg]
            []
                call :%puts1
        }

is likely to be the only/first thing that calls :%puts1 - hence trapping that, or better yet the appropriate final ret in builtins\VM\puts1.e, can be a relatively easy way to get OllyDbg / FDBG / EDB ready to single-step through some code, without all the rigmarole of having to figure out where the code got itself positioned this time round.
However the heap can also experience motion, and for that I can only recommend looking at the value of pGtcb, which is at least in a static location, found by looking in list.asm when running via "p -d test", or p.asm when running via "p test". If your program allocates multiple blocks or use threads, that may prove a fair bit more difficult. One day I hope to simplify all this "offset management" with something in pDiagN.e and/or Edita/Edix.
The reason these things move (at least on windows 7) is that every time you allocate some memory, the operating system locates it somewhere different. I *GUESS* it is either some kind of screen saver for memory cells (ie preventing damage by always using the same parts) or more likely it improves compatibility of some application(s) that re-use memory (just) after it has been freed, and further they might have been getting away with that an awful lot more on previous versions of Windows, and therefore this has been introduced so that fewer people think the new version of Windows sucks when the real culprit is some bug-ridden application they use. Anyway, it is a cross you must bear at the sharp end, and I trust it is now clear that "p -d test" is at least three times easier than "p test" when attempting low-level debugging.