US Patent 7603659 Activating assertions and breakpoints

Methods and apparatus, including computer program products, for activating assertions and breakpoints. The techniques include establishing any number of checkpoints in a first computer program; and including each checkpoint in a checkpoint group, wherein each checkpoint group can include any number of the checkpoints regardless of where the checkpoints are in the first computer program. The checkpoints can include assertion statements and breakpoint statements. Activation variants enable checkpoint groups or compilation units or both to be managed jointly.