San Jose, CA — (press release) — LynuxWorks today announced the availability of the SpyKer event trace and visualization tool for software developers building embedded systems with the LynuxWorks LynxOS real-time operating system, BlueCat Linux, or other Linux distributions. SpyKer is the only commercial trace tool that traces kernel events without the need for instrumented kernel and library events and… without a special instrumented version of the library. SpyKer can also trace user application events without modification to the application source code, which can save time and speed up time to market.

Programmers must have trace tools to adequately debug software and there are many third-party tools available on the market. The problem with those tools is that they require instrumentation to the source code to get a trace. “From 12 years of embedded experience, we've learned programmers don't like instrumenting their code, and they don't like to run specially instrumented kernels or link with special instrumented libraries,” said Mitch Bunnell, LynuxWorks CTO and author of SpyKer. “You can load SpyKer on to LynxOS or just about any Linux and get valuable kernel traces instantly, without reboot, special kernels or source code modification.”

SpyKer collects time stamped events in the operating system kernel, libraries, and application code then displays them to the developer. The tool allows a programmer to understand exactly the actions of a computer system for the purpose of debugging an application program, operating system, or device driver. The tool also allows the programmer to get high precision profile information that can help locate performance bottlenecks. Since SpyKer is compatible with both real-time and Linux operating systems, designers can leverage this tool for use with either or both platforms.

SpyKer will be available at the end of October 2000 on LynxOS and the end of November for all Linux releases, and is priced at $999 per copy.

 
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