Design Document for Debugging Kernel-Level Interactions

1. Title and Overview

Project Name: Kernel-Level Debugging for macOS Applications Objective: Debug applications interacting with macOS kernel features using tools like dtruss and Instruments.

2. Goals and Non-Goals

Goals

  • Debug kernel interactions such as file I/O and memory management.
  • Optimize system call usage.

Non-Goals

  • Modifying kernel code or developing kernel extensions.

3. Design Overview

  • Input: Application binary.

  • Output: Debug logs and optimized application.

  • Architecture:
    • Tracing: Use dtruss to trace system calls.
    • Profiling: Analyze kernel-level performance issues.

4. System Design

  1. Set Up Debug Tools:
  • Configure dtruss and Instruments for kernel tracing.
  1. Run Application:
  • Trace system calls during execution.
  1. Analyze Logs:
  • Identify bottlenecks and optimize code.
  1. Testing Strategy
  • Compare application performance before and after optimizations.
  • Validate system call correctness.