Remote debugging is becoming a best practice for cloud application development due to gaps with logging and breakpoints, so how does this work for Java apps?
Following the lingering promise of managed infrastructure, reduced operational cost, and resiliency, cloud computing has seen phenomenal trends in adoption since the past decade. As software development marches towards the cloud, we soon realize that this shift warrants the need to rethink our debugging strategies. This is because as software systems are now leveraging these advancements in cloud computing and distributed systems we see gaps emerging in debugging that cannot be satisfied by the traditional methods of logging and breakpoints.
For example, a major issue while using breakpoints is that the codebase needs to be run in debug mode. Therefore, we are not actually replicating the actual state of our systems taking into consideration multi-threading, distributed services, and dependencies on remote services in a cloud-native environment along with multi-service architecture. Similarly, logs offer no respite, as they may be cumbersome and even costly to execute and store.
Therefore, considering the new era of technology and software, we see a movement to redefine debugging practices to better suit this new world. This is where we see the birth of remote debugging. A debugging technique that aims to provide the solution for cloud development and all its pitfalls when it comes to traditional debugging in the cloud or basic remote landscape. It allows debugging a system when the system itself is not in the local environment of the developer by setting up a connection between the developer’s local environment and the service to be debugged that sits on a remote server.
Therefore, this article aims to expand on why remote debugging is needed, the disadvantages that may arise, and how we can go about remote debugging Java applications.
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