I heavily used gdb before, and now give lldb a shot. I like gdb's start command very much, but I can't find the equivalent one from lldb's manual. Now I can only use "b main" followed by run compound instead. So just curious whether there is an equivalent one in lldb? Or I can only use the compound of "b main" and run commands as a work-around.
You are correct, lldb doesn't have a dedicated start command. The stated motivation for that command is that gdb supports lots of runtimes that don't use a "main" symbol. That makes determining where user code begins non-trivial, and it's useful to have a command that figures that out for you. We haven't had a need for that in lldb yet.
If you always use start to run programs in gdb, then you can just set a breakpoint on main in your ~/.lldbinit file. That will get copied to any new targets that get made in your lldb session, and run will behave exactly like start (for runtimes that use a main symbol).
If it's something you would use a lot but not always, you could make your own version fairly easily using the python extension point in the command interpreter:
https://lldb.llvm.org/use/python-reference.html#create-a-new-lldb-command-using-a-python-function
Also, feel free to file an Enhancement Request with http://bugs.llvm.org.
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I am running gdb 10.1.90.20210103-git and gcc/g++ 10.2.1 20210110 on x86-64 Debian 11. My IDE is Codelite, which uses the manual rather than the machine interface to gdb, and enables me to type commands directly to gdb, and see the response (potentially copying the response to the clipboard). This when the inferior is paused after hitting a breakpoiunt, via the gdb console, which is in Codelite's Debugger > Output pane.
I was able to use the instructions at: https://sourceware.org/gdb/current/onlinedocs/gdb#Compiling-and-Injecting-Code "Compiling and injecting code in GDB" to compile simple C code and make it run in the environment of the halted inferior. For instance: compile code blah++; increments a local variable int in the inferior, which I can see via the Locals or Watch panes.
The compile file command worked fine as long as I specified the absolute path of the source file.
I was unable to see console output (to the inferior's or gdb's console) for a simple printf() statement: `printf("xxx");' because the code would not compile if there was such a line
Despite using set debug compile and set debug compile-cplus-types and checking these are set with the show versions of these, I get no error messages or acknowledgements regarding whatever I try to compile.
The blah variable is an integer, which is accessible through C code and so gcc. The ability to increment this was the only indication that my code had compiled and run.
I could not get any responses to set/show compile gcc so I am presumably compiling with gcc. I did give the command set compile gcc /usr/bin/x86_64-linux-gnu-cpp-10, but there was still no response from show compile gcc or any change in the C-only behaviour.
I could not compile the file if it contained a C++ line which incremented a data member of a class object in an vector of such objects. Nor could I compile my code if it contained C++ code such as: #include <fstream> and/or std::fstream oFile;.
The gdb documentation mentioned above is general, but does have C examples.
Is it possible to compile C++ code under gdb, injecting it into the environment of the paused inferior, with any version of gdb and gcc?
I am keen to use this C++ code injection facility, if it exists, for dumping the contents of large, complex, data structures to files and and to modify some elements of same to aid debugging.
Summary: GDB's C++ compilation and injection system does not work for me, and it is reported to be buggy or non-functional. I only tested this compile command with single lines of C code, but it worked fine for these. I was able to run my function, which writes a text dump file containing the values of a vector of class objects' data members, while the inferior was paused after a breakpoint, by including it in a source file and calling it with GDB's print or call commands, giving it the required input argument of the name of the vector to dump.
I haven't tried using GDB on its own, but at present I have no reason to believe that Codelite is interfering with my ability to communicate with GDB via Codelite's "Debugger > Output" console.
I wrote to the GDB Developer list and received what I assume is a well informed reply. I was told that in my respondent's experience "the C++ plugin isn't very functional. It seems to have some bugs and crash pretty frequently as well. Also, it seems like nobody is actively working on it." This is consistent with my experience to date.
Perhaps later versions of GDB would work better. However, there has been minimal change to the library https://github.com/gcc-mirror/gcc/commits/master/libcc1/libcp1.cc since 2017, and I could find no indication of new work on C++ compilation and injection in https://www.sourceware.org/gdb/news/ since the announcement of its introduction:
GDB 8.3.1 was released on 2019-09-20, with: "Experimental support for compilation and injection of C++ source code into the inferior (requires GCC 7.1 or higher, built with libcp1.so)."
It is possible that my problem is related to not having this library. I do have the C equivalent: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcc1.so.o. I could find no such library in a Debian package. It is possible I could get this going by compiling the latest GCC/G++ and GDB, but that is pretty daunting, involving installing later standard libraries than my current Debian installation has, while making those and the newer G++ and GDB available for Codelite sessions, but not interfering with other software on machine which needs the older compilation system.
The respondent suggested that instead of compiling and injecting fresh code in the middle of a debugging session, I could write it as a library, and run it by using the compile command, on a purely C piece of code which would call it. However, for my purposes, the function needs to be passed one or more C++ constructs, and any code which called a C++ function would be C++ code and so, presumably, not be compiled by GDB.
For my immediate purpose of doing text dumps of large vectors of class objects' data members, I was able to succeed by writing such a function in an existing source file, which also contains the functions I am debugging. Then I could call it with GDB's print or call commands. I imagine this would work if the debugging function was in any other linked source file, or in a linked library. (Perhaps there is a way of writing such a library, compiling and linking it while the inferior is halted.)
I was able to run this, from a debugging session in which the inferior was halted somewhere, with either the print or call command followed by the name of the function, with the name of the vector in brackets. There must be no semicolon. I found the print command better, since GDB would report the return value, which was "void". My function used C++ constructs such as "<<" to write to the text file.
A call within my dump function of the C function system("pwd") resulted in the current directory being output on the inferior's terminal window. Likewise: print system("pwd"). print system("mc") dutifully ran Midnight Commander in the inferior's terminal window.
I altered the function to return a string, which GDB reported in the GDB "Debugger > Output" console. I added a line: std::cout << "xyz"; - but nothing appeared on either the inferior's terminal window or in the GDB console.
My attempts to use the compile command to call my dump function in exactly the same way produced no results, with or without a trailing semicolon.
I found thatprint and call work with C and C++ code while `compile" only works with C code.
I tried print vvv[6].mmm for data members which were integers, floats, and strings and GDB returned their values correctly. Adding a ++ at the end caused it to return the original integer value, but the value itself was incremented.
When I tried print with a compound line of code, with a semicolon between the two logical lines, with and without one at the end, there was no response.
The GDB Developers list is not the place for support requests, but I did not know a better way to find out about the status of this facility.
I'd like to define a command which does X under gdb-multiarch, but prints out a helpful message when run under normal gdb. How can my script determine which of the two its run under?
Why? When I start gdb-multiarch, I can bind to a qemu-arm session. When I try that in gdb, I get bizarre errors. It's easy to forget and run gdb (and not -multiarch), and I want to my bind-to-qemu tell me "This must be run under gdb-multiarch".
Your question presumes that there is some difference between gdb and gdb-multiarch, but there doesn't have be any such difference.
Presumably on the OS you are using the gdb and gdb-multiarch are configured differently, with gdb only supporting native architecture, while gdb-multiarch supports cross-architecture debugging.
Presumably what you actually want to detect is that the target-architecture you need (arm ?) is / isn't supported by the current binary.
In the bind-to-qemu user-defined function, you can try to set architecture arm.
If that errors out, the rest of bind-to-qemu should not execute.
I am new to Linux space.
My project creates 'so' (akin to our dll's) which is used by an executable.
Currently to debug, I invoke gdb -tui Which puts me into the gdb terminal where I put break points and do the r with parameters ... and debug.
Everything was fine, until now where the entire architecture has been changed.
Now to run our code, we execute a command
$ java -jar ... and a lot many parameters.
The jar files etc do not belong to us.
I am yet to find out what executable is called, or the code flow.
Question :
Is there a way to invoke gdb command from within my source code ?
say
MyClass::myFunc()
{
some calls
<THE GDB COMMAND>
What I am looking at is, once I place my 'so' in the path and execute the said java command, the gdb is invoked the moment it hits my function.
The solution provided here wasn't clear.
Invoke and control GDB from c++
Since everything is 32-bit, I used :set makeprg=mingw32-make, and then tried compiling via :!make, which gave the following error message:
'make' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.
shell returned 1
I tried the basic "Goodbye World" stuff:
#include <iostream>
int main() {
std::cout << "Goodbye World";
return 0;
}
What am I doing wrong? Other than being a noob.
:!make doesn't run 'makeprg'. It runs make. Since you are specifically trying to run mingw32-make.exe, presumably you don't have an executable named make.exe. (See :help :!)
:make runs 'makeprg'. (See :help :make, :help 'makeprg')
my goal is to see the "Goodbye World" either in console or terminal or any observable way. Would this require additional tinkering to the _vimrc file?
You would rather want to do it by tinkering with your makefile. Any arguments to :make will be passed to 'makeprg'. If you defined targets clean (to remove the Make artefacts) or run (to execute the product of your Make), you will be able to write :mak clean or :mak run in Vim to run those targets. Obviously, you can create your own commands and/or mappings to make those :make commands faster.
Note (and I completely overlooked this myself, silly me) that when you run a simple code, such as the one above, that does not need extensive file managements and Makefiles, all you need to go is :!gcc % for C and :!g++ % for C++. I believe (and I may be wrong, but this is a simple observation) that in Vim, :! indicates the following commands are to be executed in the system Command Prompt, and gcc/g++ is the command to invoke the GNU Compiler for C and C++ respectively. Finally, % is used to indicate the current filename, with all extensions intact. This is extremely useful in cases of keymapping, as I have done via the following:
nnoremap <F5> :!g++ %<CR>|"Press Func.5 to Compile via GNU Comp.
I'm debugging a nasty problem where #includeing a file(not anything I wrote, for the record) causes a crash in my program. This means, I have working and broken, with only one C(++) include statement changed. Some of the libraries I'm using don't have debugging information.
What I would like to do is get GDB to output every line of C++ executed for the program run, and x86 instructions where not available to a textfile in such a format that I can diff the two outputs and hopefully figure out what went wrong.
Is this easily possible in GDB?
You can check the difference between the pre-processed output in each version. For example:
gcc -dD -E a.cc -o a.pre
gcc -dD -E b.cc -o b.pre
diff -u a.pre b.pre
You can experiment with different "-d" settings to make that more verbose/concise. Maybe something in the difference of listings will be obvious. It's usually something like a struct which changes size depending on include files.
Failing that, if you really want to mess with per-instruction or line traces, you could probably use valgrind and see where the paths diverge, but I think you may be in for a world of pain. In fact you'll probably find valgrind finds your bug and then 100 you didn't know about :) I expect the problem is just a struct or other data size difference, and you won't need to bother.
You could get gdb to automate line tracing. It would be quite painful. Basically you'd need to script it to run "n" (next line) repeatedly until a crash, then check the logs. If you can script "b main", then "run", then infinite "n" that would do it. There's probably a built-in command to do it but I'm not aware of it.
I don't think GDB can do this; maybe a profile will help, though? Are you compiling with gcc? Look at the -p and -pf commands, I think those might be useful.
The disassemble command at the gdb prompt will disassemble the current function you are stopped in, but I don't think outputting the entire execution path is feasible.
What library are you including? If it is open source, you can recompile it with debugging symbols enabled. Also, if you're using Linux, most distributions have -dbg versions of packages for common libraries.