Processable: A Visual Assembly Debugger and Program Tracer in the Browser

Abstract

We present a web application for debugging and tracing programs written in x86-64 assembly. Given that assembly programming is notoriously difficult for students to learn, this visual environment aims to provide students with intuition for the behavior of programs at a lower level of abstraction than similar tools designed for tracing high level languages. We also present a javascript library for working with fixed-width integers and emulating ALU behavior, and an extensible assembly emulator (also in javascript), that were developed during this project in support of the visual debugger. By keeping the entire project in javascript, the application can be run without a webserver, and once hosted, can be accessed by a student with no installation.