What is 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.

GDB can do four main kinds of things (plus other things in support of these) to help you catch bugs in the act:

• Start your program, specifying anything that might affect its behavior.
• Make your program stop on specified conditions.
• Examine what has happened, when your program has stopped.
• Change things in your program, so you can experiment with correcting the effects of one bug and go on to learn about another.

GDB version 8.0

An errata list (PROBLEMS) and documentation are also available.

News

June 4th, 2017: GDB 8.0 Released!

The latest version of GDB, version 8.0, is available for download.

Building this version of GDB now requires the following tools:

• A C++-11 compiler (for instance, GCC 4.8 or later);
• GNU make version 3.81 or later.

Changes in this release include:

• C++: Support for rvalue references
• Python scripting enhancements:
  • New functions to start, stop and access a running btrace recording.
  • Rvalue reference support in gdb.Type.
• GDB commands interpreter:
  • User commands now accept an unlimited number of arguments.
  • The "eval" command now expands user-defined arguments.
• DWARF version 5 support
  (note that its .debug_names index is not supported yet).
• GDB/MI enhancements:
  • New -file-list-shared-libraries command to list the shared libraries in the program.
  • New -target-flash-erase command, to erase flash memory.
• Support for native FreeBSD/mips (mips*-*-freebsd)
• Support for the following targets:
  • Synopsys ARC (arc*-*-elf32)
  • FreeBSD/mips (mips*-*-freebsd)
• Miscellaneous enhancements:
  • Command-line redirection now supported on MS-Windows hosts.
  • Support for thread names on MS-Windows.
  • Support for the PKU register on GNU/Linux.
  • Support for Target descriptions on sparc32 and sparc64.
  • New GDB/CLI command to erase flash memory
  • rdrand and rdseed instructions record/replay support.

Support for the following features have been removed:

• Support for Java programs compiled with gcj
• Support for the following configurations:
  • FreeBSD/alpha (alpha*-*-freebsd*)
  • GNU/kFreeBSD/alpha (alpha*-*-kfreebsd*-gnu)

See the NEWS file for a more complete and detailed list of what this release includes.

Apr 17th, 2017: GDB 8.0 branch created

The GDB 8.0 branch (gdb-8.0-branch) has been created. To check out a copy of the branch use:

git clone --branch gdb-8.0-branch ssh://sourceware.org/git/binutils-gdb.git

Jan 21st, 2017: GDB 7.12.1 Released!

The latest version of GDB, version 7.12.1, is available for download.

This is a minor corrective release over GDB 7.12, fixing the following issues:

• PR tdep/20682 (aarch64 regression: gdb.cp/nextoverthrow.exp)
• PR server/20733 (Failed to build aarch64_be-linux-gnu GDBserver)
• PR tdep/20953 (GDB crashes after "set architecture rl78")
• PR tdep/20954 (GDB crashes if "set architecture rx")
• PR tdep/20955 (GDB internal error in cris-tdep.c)
• PR build/20712 (gdb 7.12+ doesn't build as C++ on Solaris)
• PR breakpoint/20653 (string_to_explicit_location has some weird code)
• PR build/20753 (MinGW compilation errors due to strcasecmp)
• PR gdb/20977 (GDB exception handling is broken on i686-w64-mingw32)
• PR python/21048 (backtrace is broken on i686)
• PR sim/20808 (mips sim build fails due to undefined SD/CPU variables)
• PR sim/20809 (mips sim build fails for r3900 cpus)
• PR gdb/20939 (GDB aborts if there is an error in disassembly)

September 30, 2011: Release Mistakes in GDB Versions 6.0 - 7.3

A mistake has been detected in the release tar files for all GDB releases from version 6.0 to version 7.3 (included). The mistake has been corrected, and the FSF issued the following announcements:

• Making up for a release mistake in GDB versions 6.0 - 6.6
• Making up for a release mistake in GDB versions 6.7 - 7.3

Nov 28, 2006: Reversible Debugging

The GDB maintainers are looking for contributors interested in reversible debugging.