Thread: @mingw users: gdb makes me clueless

Hi,

I'm playing around a few hours with mingw under windows xp (version 5.1.3). I'm trying to debug the app I'm porting to win32 with mingw's gdb. So I can load the app with it and even run it. Also I can set a breakpoint, e.g.

Code:

break MainFrame.cpp:MainFrame::MainFrame()

to break in the ctor of the wxWidget main frame. But if I run it, the app just runs ignoring my breakpoint (always, I tried it with line numbers too). The executables are build and linked with -O0 -g3. I also tried with -ggdb, -gstabs, -gdwarf-2 and so on, but most time gdbs behavior was even worse. I alos tried the insight-gdb-version (6.6). Same thing.
Linux gdb + same app works just fine.
What I'm doing wrong?

Thank you for any hints!

Can you break at main()? Does that at least work?

Originally Posted by Mario F.

There's a few issues with GDB breakpoints in constructors. Your solution to break at function call is one of the ways to handle it. But it is useless if your constructor is inlined. Is it? If so, defined it in the implementation file instead.

I'd just use the -fno-inline flag. I've never had the problems you mention.

Hi again,

you are right, I did a google search and read about the problem with breaking in a c/dtor.
I suffered from two problems at once: I tried to brak in the ctor and if I tried to break in another function I used the wrong debugging symbol format (-ggdb). Compiling and linking with -g3 and breaking in main works now.

About adding the parameter signature to the break command when breaking in a C++ function I read in some gdb-tutorial. The reason given for it was the polymorphic character of C++ (same function name with different signature are possible). So the signature is needed to specify the break point. That sounded logical to me and it worked at least on my setup. I looked through the gdb help messages but there wasn't that mentioned. So I'm not sure about the final truth

Thanks to both of you!