How a Debugger Operates

The CLI and TotalView debuggers affect the program but are not part of the program's process. That is, TotalView and the CLI run in separate processes, and their semantics are separate from the program's semantics.

A CLI interaction has two kinds of input: the executables that make up the program and the Tcl and CLI commands that you type. You will prepare the executable for debugging by compiling it with the -g, which tells the compiler to add information that lets the CLI display high-level output to the user, expressed in terms of the procedures and variables used in the source code. This option also allows the CLI to access components of the program (such as source files), eliminating the need for some assistance from the user.

If you do not use -g option, TotalView only displays the assembler code generated by the compiler.