Debugging TCL scripts on ns2 – yes it works for ns 2.34!

As stated at http://www.isi.edu/nsnam/ns/ns-debugging.html ns2 is compatible with Don Libs’ Tcl debugger.

What that site doesn’t tell you is how to install it. There is a nice howto by tk424 here, but that wasn’t written for a recent version of ns2. All the same I recommend it, as it’s very useful. However I have contributed here a patch for the configure file of tcl-debug2 in order to make it compatible with recent versions of ns2. This was tested in ns2.34.

Ah, yes another thing. I am not going to go into as much detail as the howto above. Refer to it if you have questions. It’s totally fool proof.

The quick way is this.

1. Download http://expect.nist.gov/tcl-debug/tcl-debug.tar.gz (apparently thats the most up-to-date version out there since dinosaurs populated the earth.) If that link does not work, try my mirror: http://www.box.net/shared/0fah87994s
2. Untar it and move it to your ns-allinone-x.xx folder
3. go into the ns-allinone-x.xx/tcl-debug-2.0 folder and try calling ./configure
4. if that fails apply my patch from http://www.box.net/shared/20z8klbpjy and call ./configure again (applying the patch is as simple as calling “patch -p1 < tcl-debug-2.0-configure.patch”)
5. call make
6. you will get a file called “tcl-debug-2.0/libtcldbg.a” if everythings fine
7. copy that to “ns-allinone-x.xx/ns-x.xx/lib”
8. go to “ns-allinone-x.xx/ns-x.xx”
9. do “./configure –with-tcldebug”
10. call make (perhaps you have to make clean; make)
11. insert the line “debug 1″ at the line of your script that you wish to debug
12. follow this PostScript document for instructions how to use the debugger

So… that’s about it. And with that tool installed, you will finally know what your _o?? reference that is in the backtrace of ns2 really stands for. Plus know the type of the object simply by using its OTcl handle _o??. Cool, isn’t it. Happy debugging!

Read on! Knowledge hurts.

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