Why is gdb so slow

The MinGw comes with the installed debugger and should work without any problems. It's really fast even it's connect to Microsoft symbol server but what it this? What if I don't have internet connection? And what do you mean? I should not install "Qt 5.

Should I install "Qt 5. I had this issue at one point. Do you have previous versions of the compilers installed? It was taking 10 seconds to step. After uninstalling all of the previous compiler versions and moping up everything, I just installed first, then , and everything debugs fine now I can switch between the two with the same performance.

If I remember correctly, there is some information on microsoft's help pages that gives a recommended order on how to install different versions of the compilers. At me at first MSVC was installed.

Therefore, apparently, a problem not in sequence. That implies it is running a 32 bit debugger. So it knows I have a 64 bit debugger. How do I make it use that one? You are building a 32bit application so you need a 32bit debugger. Qt Forum. Is it normally slow when debugging with GDB on Windows? The trouble is that on my platform, neither symbol is defined I am running on an embedded platform that does not have glibc ported to it.

What should be the generic fix? Tested without regressions on Fedora Core 6 IA I haven't been able to reproduce the problem myself, so I'm just guessing that this is the patch. Post by dodji Seketeli I have applied the patch and it doesn't help, unfortunately. Post by dodji Seketeli I have tried to add some printf around the patch to see if I could trace some stuff but nothing got printed on stdout.

Is that normal?. If yes, how can I add logs to understand what is going on? Post by dodji Seketeli Here is the content of the dynamic symbol table of my e6c0 g DF. If GDB can't find the address of the 'fixup' function, then it can't do anything but single-step through the dynamic linker as it looks up the symbol, which is where we're guessing you're spending your time. Post by Jim Blandy Post by dodji Seketeli I have tried to add some printf around the patch to see if I could trace some stuff but nothing got printed on stdout.

When GDB prints a value, it checks whether there is a pretty-printer registered for that value first. If there is, then GDB uses that pretty-printer to display the value.

Otherwise, the value prints in the usual way. Now, run any program and hit Ctrl-c to quit. Of course, this is just a simple pretty-printer program, but the possibilities are endless.

You can extract and print any value of a member in a structure with your pretty-printer. In my video, I show you a quick way to pretty-print structures in GDB and build-out this basic pretty-printer some more.

Debugging involves backward reasoning, like solving murder mysteries. Something impossible occurred, and the only solid information is that it really did occur. So we must think backward from the result to discover the reasons. Or in other words, we really want the debugger to be able to tell us what happened in the past - reality has diverged from your expectations, and debugging means figuring out at what point your expectations and reality diverged.

You need to know what your program actually did as opposed to what you expected it was going to do. This is why debugging typically involves reproducing the bug many times, slowly teasing out more and more information until you pin it down.

Reversible debugging takes away all that guesswork and trial and error; the debugger can tell you directly what just happened. Not everyone knows about it, but GDB has built-in reversible debugging since release 7.

It works pretty well, but you've to be ready to sacrifice performance a lot of it ; it's dramatically slower than any of the purpose-built time-travel debuggers out there like UDB. The challenge is that in most cases, you can't predict when the program faults, which means that you may have to run and record the program repeatedly until it eventually stalls.

Breakpoints and watchpoints work in reverse, which can help you, for example, to continue directly to a previous point in the program at which specific variable changes. Reverse watchpoints can be incredibly powerful.

I know of several instances of bugs that alluded a developer for months or even years that were solved in a few hours with the power of reverse watchpoints. Another cool GDB thing is that you can trigger a command or series of commands when the program hits a breakpoint. Type command [breakpoint ] , where [breakpoint ] is the identifier for your breakpoint.

In this video, I demonstrate live on stage reversible-debugging in GDB. Check it out, it shows you step-by-step in reverse how to trace a fault in my program.

I shared five easy ways to reduce your debugging hours. Perhaps a little overwhelming now, but the good news is that you don't have to adopt all at once. That probably would have the opposite effect. Sometimes little tweaks to your usual debugging habits and routines can already make a big difference.

Just start with small steps. Take your time to read the different tutorials and watch the videos that I shared in this article and adopt the things that you feel can improve your debugging. And, make sure to share your takeaways with your project members and organization so everyone benefits. Kernighan famously said:. Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place.