Debugging Tips

• Make sure you really understand the concepts of message passing and the concurrency coordination model in SALSA. Most people have troubles on token continuations.

• Since the SALSA compiler does not do type checking in this version, you may need to go through the Java source code. The code related to your program is on the bottom of the generated java source code. Do not try to modify other parts that not related to your SALSA source code.

• Please note that a typo in a message sending statement does not generate Java or SALSA compile-time errors. You have to be very careful with that. A runtime error will be generated instead.

• Message passing and remote procedure calls are totally different. The token continuation does not have the result immediately. It has the result only after the message gets executed.

• Objects in messages are pass-by-value. This means the object arguments are sent with the cloned objects. A latter modification on these object arguments does not change the values which had been sent.

• Most people confused self with this. this means "this actor", while self "the actor reference" pointing to itself. self can only be used as a target of messages, or an argument to be passed around. this can be used for object method invocation. Using this as an argument must cause troubles.