Tracing

Tracing is a way to record debugging information that can be used during software development. With tracing, you can generate detailed, low-level information about an application's execution in the target device.

Examples of tracing are cases when messages are sent or received from a component, when states change, when a certain function is entered or exited, or anywhere else in the code where it is interesting to know if code has been executed or not.

System level performance analysis and problem-solving are often based on tracing. In your development team, a standard way to instrument traces to your code (for example, using the same trace group for fatal error tracing) can help in determining which level of traces should be activated.

TraceViewer collects traces as follows:

  1. TraceViewer connects to the device according to the connection parameters that can be defined on the Preferences page.
  2. The tool then collects the traces for a specified purpose (for example, during the testing of a certain component at the device side).
  3. The traces are displayed on the Carbide IDE user interface.

Note: there is a distinction between tracing and logging as general terms. Tracing is primarily for debugging and diagnostic purposes, whereas logging writes records of program usage and is often a functional requirement of a program.

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