Debugging with GDB (February 2008)
Table Of Contents
- Summary of GDB
- A Sample GDB Session
- Getting In and Out of GDB
- GDB Commands
- Running Programs Under GDB
- Stopping and Continuing
- Examining the Stack
- Examining Source Files
- Examining Data
- Using GDB with Different Languages
- Examining the Symbol Table
- Altering Execution
- GDB Files
- Specifying a Debugging Target
- HP-UX Configuration-Specific Information
- Summary of HP Enhancements to GDB
- HP-UX dependencies
- Supported Platforms and Modes
- HP-UX targets
- Support for Alternate root
- Specifying object file directories
- Fix and continue debugging
- Inline Support
- Debugging Macros
- Debugging Memory Problems
- When to suspect a memory leak
- Memory debugging restrictions
- Memory Debugging Methodologies
- Debugging Memory in Interactive Mode
- Debugging Memory in Batch Mode
- Debugging Memory Interactively After Attaching to a Running Process
- Configuring memory debugging settings
- Scenarios in memory debugging
- Stop when freeing unallocated or deallocated blocks
- Stop when freeing a block if bad writes occurred outside block boundary
- Stop when a specified block address is allocated or deallocated
- Scramble previous memory contents at malloc/free calls
- Detect dangling pointers and dangling blocks
- Detect in-block corruption of freed blocks
- Specify the amount of guard bytes for every block of allocated memory
- Comparison of Memory Debugging Commands in Interactive Mode and Batch Mode
- Heap Profiling
- Memory Checking Analysis for User Defined Memory Management Routines
- Commands to track the change in data segment value
- Thread Debugging Support
- Debugging MPI Programs
- Debugging multiple processes ( programs with fork and vfork calls)
- Debugging Core Files
- Printing the Execution Path Entries for the Current Frame or Thread
- Invoking GDB Before a Program Aborts
- Aborting a Command Line Call
- Instruction Level Stepping
- Enhanced support for watchpoints and breakpoints
- Debugging support for shared libraries
- Language support
- Enhanced Java Debugging Support
- Commands for Examining Java Virtual Machine(JVM) internals
- Support for stack traces in Java, C, and C++ programs
- Support for 64-bit Java, C, aC++ stack unwinding
- Enhanced support for C++ templates
- Support for __fpreg data type on IPF
- Support for _Complex variables in HP C
- Support for debugging namespaces
- Command for evaluating the address of an expression
- Viewing Wide Character Strings
- Support for output logging
- Getting information from a non-debug executable
- Debugging optimized code
- Visual Interface for WDB
- Starting and stopping Visual Interface for WDB
- Navigating the Visual Interface for WDB display
- Specifying foreground and background colors
- Using the X-window graphical interface
- Using the TUI mode
- Changing the size of the source or debugger pane
- Using commands to browse through source files
- Loading source files
- Editing source files
- Editing the command line and command-line history
- Saving the contents of a debugging session to a file
- Support for ddd
- Support for XDB commands
- GNU GDB Logging Commands
- Support for command line calls in a stripped executable
- Displaying the current block scope information
- Linux support
- The HP-UX Terminal User Interface
- XDB to WDB Transition Guide
- By-function lists of XDB commands and HP WDB equivalents
- Overall breakpoint commands
- XDB data formats and HP WDB equivalents
- XDB location syntax and HP WDB equivalents
- XDB special language operators and HP WDB equivalents
- XDB special variables and HP WDB equivalents
- XDB variable identifiers and HP WDB equivalents
- Alphabetical lists of XDB commands and HP WDB equivalents
- Controlling GDB
- Canned Sequences of Commands
- Using GDB under gnu Emacs
- GDB Annotations
- The gdb/mi Interface
- Function and purpose
- Notation and terminology
- gdb/mi Command Syntax
- gdb/mi compatibility with CLI
- gdb/mi output records
- gdb/mi command description format
- gdb/mi breakpoint table commands
- gdb/mi Data manipulation
- gdb/mi program control
- Miscellaneous GDB commands in gdb/mi
- gdb/mi Stack Manipulation Commands
- gdb/mi Symbol query commands
- gdb/mi Target Manipulation Commands
- gdb/mi thread commands
- gdb/mi tracepoint commands
- gdb/mi variable objects
- Reporting Bugs in GDB
- Installing GDB
- Index
2 Debugging with GDB
So that they may not regard their many labors as thankless, we particularly thank those
who shepherded GDB through major releases: Andrew Cagney (release 5.0); Jim Blandy
(release 4.18); Jason Molenda (release 4.17); Stan Shebs (release 4.14); Fred Fish (releases
4.16, 4.15, 4.13, 4.12, 4.11, 4.10, and 4.9); Stu Grossman and John Gilmore (releases 4.8,
4.7, 4.6, 4.5, and 4.4); John Gilmore (releases 4.3, 4.2, 4.1, 4.0, and 3.9); Jim Kingdon
(releases 3.5, 3.4, and 3.3); and Randy Smith (releases 3.2, 3.1, and 3.0).
Richard Stallman, assisted at various times by Peter TerMaat, Chris Hanson, and
Richard Mlynarik, handled releases through 2.8.
Michael Tiemann is the author of most of the gnu C++ support in GDB, with significant
additional contributions from Per Bothner. James Clark wrote the gnu C++ demangler.
Early work on C++ was by Peter TerMaat (who also did much general update work leading
to release 3.0).
GDB 4 uses the BFD subroutine library to examine multiple object-file formats; BFD
was a joint project of David V. Henkel-Wallace, Rich Pixley, Steve Chamberlain, and John
Gilmore.
David Johnson wrote the original COFF support; Pace Willison did the original support
for encapsulated COFF.
Brent Benson of Harris Computer Systems contributed DWARF 2 support.
Adam de Boor and Bradley Davis contributed the ISI Optimum V support. Per Bothner,
Noboyuki Hikichi, and Alessandro Forin contributed MIPS support. Jean-Daniel Fekete
contributed Sun 386i support. Chris Hanson improved the HP9000 support. Noboyuki
Hikichi and Tomoyuki Hasei contributed Sony/News OS 3 support. David Johnson con-
tributed Encore Umax support. Jyrki Kuoppala contributed Altos 3068 support. Jeff
Law contributed HP PA and SOM support. Keith Packard contributed NS32K support.
Doug Rabson contributed Acorn Risc Machine support. Bob Rusk contributed Harris
Nighthawk CX-UX support. Chris Smith contributed Convex support (and Fortran de-
bugging). Jonathan Stone contributed Pyramid support. Michael Tiemann contributed
SPARC support. Tim Tucker contributed support for the Gould NP1 and Gould Powern-
ode. Pace Willison contributed Intel 386 support. Jay Vosburgh contributed Symmetry
support.
Andreas Schwab contributed M68K Linux support.
Rich Schaefer and Peter Schauer helped with support of SunOS shared libraries.
Jay Fenlason and Roland McGrath ensured that GDB and GAS agree about several
machine instruction sets.
Patrick Duval, Ted Goldstein, Vikram Koka and Glenn Engel helped develop remote
debugging. Intel Corporation, Wind River Systems, AMD, and ARM contributed remote
debugging modules for the i960, VxWorks, A29K UDI, and RDI targets, respectively.
Brian Fox is the author of the readline libraries providing command-line editing and
command history.
Andrew Beers of SUNY Buffalo wrote the language-switching code, the Modula-2 sup-
port, and contributed the Languages chapter of this manual.
Fred Fish wrote most of the support for Unix System Vr4. He also enhanced the
command-completion support to cover C++ overloaded symbols.