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Squeak’s virtual machine simulator is extremely useful for debugging. You can use it to inspect and change objects “while time is stopped”, between the execution of individual virtual machine instructions. Traditionally, though, it takes an address-based view of objects. There are several useful utility methods which, given an object address, will print useful information to the Transcript. Wouldn’t it be nicer, though, if you could use normal inspectors to look through the fields of the objects in a simulated virtual machine’s object memory?

I created simulated objects for this purpose. They are instances of a SimulatedObject class; each one has an interpreter and an address. They can print useful information about themselves, like the interpreter can, but they can also modify themselves and interact with each other, changing the interpreter’s object memory appropriately. Are you wondering about the instructions of a compiled method? Would you like to make a few choice modifications to those instructions? A simulated object for that method’s address will help you.

Simulated objects play nicely with Squeak’s object inspectors, and, more importantly, with its object explorers. You feel like you’re inspecting normal objects, except that you can’t send normal messages to them. Or can you? I’m pondering this. It might be useful, for example, to terminate a process in a simulated interpreter’s object memory, without having to do it in another process. Time is stopped, but perhaps you could queue up messages to send when it starts again, through a collaboration between simulated objects and a coordinating object in the memory they describe.

I’ve been using simulated objects recently to chase references with the absolute assurance that I won’t be creating new ones. They’re very useful for debugging virtual machine primitives. Sometimes, when I’m debugging a headless system with a broken remote messaging system, it’s the only user interface I have for inspecting things. And it’s sure a lot nicer than inspecting things in a C debugger.

What will you do with them?