~/talk

“GDB - A Lot More Than You Knew"

Talkat CppCon 2016 · 2016-09-18..09-23· [developer-experience]
name:Greg Law
linkedin:gregthelaw
slides:none on file

Shows concrete GDB workflows: the text UI (TUI) for visible source and disassembly, Python bindings like gdb.execute and gdb.parse_and_eval to script breakpoints and pretty‑printers that override print, and reversible debugging via record + reverse‑step to trace an intermittent stack smash (array indexed 33 vs 32). Gives performance numbers and alternatives: instruction‑level recording can be ~50,000x slower, Intel PT ~100x, rr ~2x, and commercial Undo/undb supports broader platforms. Demos include watchpoints on the stack pointer and reverse‑continue to the offending array store.

AI-written summary · about

  1. 0:00Introduction to debugging
  2. 1:28GDB overview and tools
  3. 3:08GDB resources and power
  4. 7:18Using TUI mode
  5. 14:19Python scripting in GDB
  6. 20:21Interacting with GDB Python
  7. 27:20Pretty printers
  8. 37:25Reversible debugging
  9. 42:47Debugging a crash
  10. 53:11Alternative debug tools
~/search
type to search 6,249 conferences, 138,987 speakers and 185,172 talks
~/help
cmdctrl k
search every conference, speaker and series
/
focus the filter search
h
home
c
conferences
s
speakers
e
series
t
light / dark — the status bar button does the same
?
this help
esc
close this, then clear every filter — or just the search, while you are typing in it

Ignored while you are typing. Pages without a filter rail have no search to focus.