Beyond Linux® From Scratch - Version 2015-03-06-multilib

Chapter 13. Programming

GDB-7.9

Introduction to GDB

GDB, the GNU Project debugger, allows you to see what is going on “inside” another program while it executes -- or what another program was doing at the moment it crashed. Note that GDB is most effective when tracing programs and libraries that were built with debugging symbols and not stripped.

This package is known to build and work properly using an LFS-7.7 platform.

Package Information

GDB Dependencies

Optional

DejaGnu-1.5.2 (for tests), Doxygen-1.8.9.1, Guile-2.0.11, and Python-2.7.9

User Notes: http://wiki.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/wiki/gdb

Installation of GDB

Install GDB by running the following commands: 

./configure --prefix=/usr --with-system-readline &&
make

Optionally, to build the API documentation using Doxygen-1.8.9.1, run: 

make -C gdb/doc doxy

To test the results, issue: make -k check. There are many problems with the test suite. Depends on installed compilers, there are differences if run locally or remotely, a large number of timeouts (there is a variable that can be set to increase time for timeout, but changing it, apparently the total number of tests is not conserved), there are failures associated with system readline 6.x, between others. Unexpected failures are of the order of 0.5%.

Now, as the root user: 

make -C gdb install

If you have built the API documentation, it is now in gdb/doc/doxy. You can install it (as the root user): 

install -d /usr/share/doc/gdb-7.9 &&
cp -Rv gdb/doc/doxy /usr/share/doc/gdb-7.9

Contents

Installed Programs: gcore, gdb and gdbserver
Installed Library: libinproctrace.so
Installed Directories: /usr/include/gdb and /usr/share/gdb

Short Descriptions

gcore

generates a core dump of a running program.

gdb

is the GNU Debugger.

gdbserver

is a remote server for the GNU debugger (it allows programs to be debugged from a different machine).

libinproctrace.so

contains functions for the in-process tracing agent. The agent allows for installing fast tracepoints, listing static tracepoint markers, probing static tracepoints markers, and starting trace monitoring.

Last updated on 2015-02-26 10:38:31 -0500