source: general/prog/gdb.xml@ 2d1757d

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<!DOCTYPE sect1 PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.5//EN"
   "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5/docbookx.dtd" [
  <!ENTITY % general-entities SYSTEM "../../general.ent">
  %general-entities;

  <!ENTITY gdb-download-http "&gnu-http;/gdb/gdb-&gdb-version;.tar.xz">
  <!ENTITY gdb-download-ftp  "&gnu-ftp;/gdb/gdb-&gdb-version;.tar.xz">
  <!ENTITY gdb-md5sum        "fbd3cdae16c581e8a742cb766ba35076">
  <!ENTITY gdb-size          "23 MB">
  <!ENTITY gdb-buildsize     "914 MB (add 805 MB for docs; add 575 MB for tests)">
  <!ENTITY gdb-time          "2.1 SBU (add 0.4 SBU for docs; add 18 SBU for tests; all using parallelism=4)">
]>

<sect1 id="gdb" xreflabel="GDB-&gdb-version;">
  <?dbhtml filename="gdb.html"?>


  <title>GDB-&gdb-version;</title>

  <indexterm zone="gdb">
    <primary sortas="a-GDB">GDB</primary>
  </indexterm>

  <sect2 role="package">
    <title>Introduction to GDB</title>

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

    &lfs113_checked;

    <bridgehead renderas="sect3">Package Information</bridgehead>
    <itemizedlist spacing="compact">
      <listitem>
        <para>
          Download (HTTP): <ulink url="&gdb-download-http;"/>
        </para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
        <para>
          Download (FTP): <ulink url="&gdb-download-ftp;"/>
        </para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
        <para>
          Download MD5 sum: &gdb-md5sum;
        </para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
        <para>
          Download size: &gdb-size;
        </para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
        <para>
          Estimated disk space required: &gdb-buildsize;
        </para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
        <para>
          Estimated build time: &gdb-time;
        </para>
      </listitem>
    </itemizedlist>
    <!--
    <bridgehead renderas="sect3">Additional Downloads</bridgehead>
    <itemizedlist spacing="compact">
      <listitem>
        <para>
          Required patch:
          <ulink url="&patch-root;/gdb-&gdb-version;-upstream_fixes-1.patch"/>
        </para>
      </listitem>
    </itemizedlist>
    -->
    <bridgehead renderas="sect3">GDB Dependencies</bridgehead>

    <bridgehead renderas="sect4">Recommended Runtime Dependency</bridgehead>
    <para role="recommended">
      <xref linkend="six"/> (Python 3 module, required at run-time to
      use GDB scripts from various LFS/BLFS packages with Python 3
      installed in LFS)
    </para>

    <bridgehead renderas="sect4">Optional</bridgehead>
    <para role="optional">
      <xref linkend="doxygen"/>,
      <xref linkend="gcc"/> (ada, gfortran, and go are used for tests),
      <xref linkend="guile"/>,
      <!-- don't advertise python2...
      <xref linkend="python2"/>,-->
      <xref linkend="rust"/> (used for some tests),
      <xref linkend="valgrind"/>, and
      <ulink url="https://sourceware.org/systemtap/">SystemTap</ulink>
      (run-time, used for tests)
    </para>

  </sect2>

  <sect2 role="installation">
    <title>Installation of GDB</title>
    <!--
    <para>
      First, apply a patch that fixes problems when debugging programs compiled
      with <xref linkend="rust" role="nodep"/>:
    </para>

<screen><userinput remap="pre">patch -Np1 -i ../gdb-&gdb-version;-upstream_fixes-1.patch</userinput></screen>
-->
    <para>
      Install <application>GDB</application> by running the following
      commands:
    </para>

<screen><userinput>mkdir build &amp;&amp;
cd    build &amp;&amp;

../configure --prefix=/usr          \
             --with-system-readline \
             --with-python=/usr/bin/python3 &amp;&amp;
make</userinput></screen>

    <para>
      Optionally, to build the API documentation using
      <xref linkend="doxygen"/>, run:
    </para>

<screen remap="doc"><userinput>make -C gdb/doc doxy</userinput></screen>

    <para>
      To test the results, issue:
    </para>

<screen remap="test"><userinput>pushd gdb/testsuite &amp;&amp;
make  site.exp      &amp;&amp;
echo  "set gdb_test_timeout 120" &gt;&gt; site.exp &amp;&amp;
runtest
popd</userinput></screen>

    <para>
      See <emphasis>gdb/testsuite/README</emphasis> and <ulink
      url="https://sourceware.org/gdb/wiki/TestingGDB">TestingGDB</ulink>.
      There are many problems with the test suite:
    </para>

    <itemizedlist>
      <listitem>
        <para>
          Clean directories are needed if re-running the tests.  For that
          reason, make a copy of the compiled source code
          directory before the tests in case you need to run the tests again.
        </para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
          Results depend on installed compilers.
        </para>
      </listitem>
<!-- I did not see this
      <listitem>
        <para>
          There are a large number of timeouts (there is a variable
          that can be set to increase time for timeout, but
          changing it will result in a different number of tests being
          run).
        </para>
      </listitem>
or this
      <listitem>
        <para>
          There are failures associated with system readline 6.x.
        </para>
      </listitem>
-->
<!--
      <listitem>
        <para>
          A few tests assume that the header file
          <filename>&lt;sys/sdt.h&gt;</filename>, part of <ulink
          url="https://sourceware.org/systemtap/">SystemTap</ulink>, is
          present.
        </para>
      </listitem>
-->
<!-- I don't know if this is true or not.  I tested on a Haswell.
      <listitem>
        <para>
          If the test suite is run on a Skylake-based Intel CPU or newer,
          many tests will fail due to the removal of the deprecated/problematic
          libmpx library in GCC.
        </para>
      </listitem>
-->
      <listitem>
        <para>
<!-- for gdb-11.1, gcc-11.2 - pierre
          A test run of the test suite had about 1700 unexpected failures
          (out of over 80000 tests). Over 1370 of the failures were related
          to FORTRAN tests. -->
<!-- for gdb-12.1, gcc-11.3.0 - bdubbs 
          A test run of the test suite had a little over 200 unexpected failures
          out of over 94000 tests.-->
<!-- for gdb-13.0, gcc-12.2.0 - bdubbs
          A test run of the test suite had 33 unexpected failures
          out of over 106000 tests. -->
<!-- for gdb-13.2, gcc-13.1.0 - pierre -->
          A test run of the test suite had 183 unexpected failures
          out of over 105000 tests.
        </para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
          On some systems, the gdb.tui test suite will fail if running over
          SSH.
        </para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
          On some AMD-based systems, over 200 additional tests
          may fail due to a difference in the threading implementation
          on those CPUs.
        </para>
      </listitem>

    </itemizedlist>

    <para>
      Now, as the <systemitem class="username">root</systemitem> user:
    </para>

<screen role="root"><userinput>make -C gdb install &amp;&amp;
make -C gdbserver install</userinput></screen>

    <para>
      If you have built the API documentation, it is now in gdb/doc/doxy.
      You can install it (as the <systemitem class="username">root</systemitem>
      user):
    </para>

<screen role="root"
        remap="doc"><userinput>install -d /usr/share/doc/gdb-&gdb-version; &amp;&amp;
rm -rf gdb/doc/doxy/xml &amp;&amp;
cp -Rv gdb/doc/doxy /usr/share/doc/gdb-&gdb-version;</userinput></screen>

  </sect2>

  <sect2 role="commands">
    <title>Command Explanations</title>

    <para>
      <parameter>--with-system-readline</parameter>: This switch forces
      <application>GDB</application> to use the copy of
      <application>Readline</application> installed in LFS.
    </para>

    <para>
      <parameter>--with-python=/usr/bin/python3</parameter>: This switch
      forces <application>GDB</application> to use Python 3.
      <!-- We don't advise to use python2 anymore
      Remove this switch if you have installed
      <xref linkend="python2"/> and want to use it instead of Python 3.-->
    </para>

  </sect2>

  <sect2 role="content">
    <title>Contents</title>

    <segmentedlist>
      <segtitle>Installed Programs</segtitle>
      <segtitle>Installed Library</segtitle>
      <segtitle>Installed Directories</segtitle>

      <seglistitem>
        <seg>
          gcore, gdb, gdbserver, and gdb-add-index
        </seg>
        <seg>
          libinproctrace.so
        </seg>
        <seg>
          /usr/{include,share}/gdb and /usr/share/doc/gdb-&gdb-version;
        </seg>
      </seglistitem>
    </segmentedlist>

    <variablelist>
      <bridgehead renderas="sect3">Short Descriptions</bridgehead>
      <?dbfo list-presentation="list"?>
      <?dbhtml list-presentation="table"?>

      <varlistentry id="gcore">
        <term><command>gcore</command></term>
        <listitem>
          <para>
            generates a core dump of a running program
          </para>
          <indexterm zone="gdb gcore">
            <primary sortas="b-gcore">gcore</primary>
          </indexterm>
        </listitem>
      </varlistentry>

      <varlistentry id="gdb-prog">
        <term><command>gdb</command></term>
        <listitem>
          <para>
            is the GNU Debugger
          </para>
          <indexterm zone="gdb gdb-prog">
            <primary sortas="b-gdb-prog">gdb-prog</primary>
          </indexterm>
        </listitem>
      </varlistentry>

      <varlistentry id="gdbserver">
        <term><command>gdbserver</command></term>
        <listitem>
          <para>
            is a remote server for the GNU debugger (it allows programs
            to be debugged from a different machine)
          </para>
          <indexterm zone="gdb gdbserver">
            <primary sortas="b-gdbserver">gdbserver</primary>
          </indexterm>
        </listitem>
      </varlistentry>

      <varlistentry id="gdb-add-index">
        <term><command>gdb-add-index</command></term>
        <listitem>
          <para>
            Allows adding index files to ELF binaries. This speeds up
            <command>gdb</command> start on large programs.
          </para>
          <indexterm zone="gdb gdb-add-index">
            <primary sortas="b-gdb-add-index">gdb-add-index</primary>
          </indexterm>
        </listitem>
      </varlistentry>

      <varlistentry id="libinproctrace">
        <term><filename class="libraryfile">libinproctrace.so</filename></term>
        <listitem>
          <para>
            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.
          </para>
          <indexterm zone="gdb libinproctrace">
            <primary sortas="c-libinproctrace">libinproctrace.so</primary>
          </indexterm>
        </listitem>
      </varlistentry>

    </variablelist>

  </sect2>

</sect1>