GDB Internals

This document documents the internals of the GNU debugger, GDB. It includes description of GDB's key algorithms and operations, as well as the mechanisms that adapt GDB to specific hosts and targets.

• 1 Requirements
• 2 Overall Structure
  • 2.1 The Symbol Side
  • 2.2 The Target Side
  • 2.3 Configurations
• 3 Algorithms
  • 3.1 Frames
  • 3.2 Breakpoint Handling
  • 3.3 Single Stepping
  • 3.4 Signal Handling
  • 3.5 Thread Handling
  • 3.6 Inferior Function Calls
  • 3.7 Longjmp Support
• 4 User Interface
  • 4.1 Command Interpreter
  • 4.2 Console Printing
  • 4.3 TUI
  • 4.4 libgdb
• 5 Symbol Handling
  • 5.1 Symbol Reading
  • 5.2 Partial Symbol Tables
  • 5.3 Types
  • 5.4 Object File Formats
    • 5.4.1 a.out
    • 5.4.2 COFF
    • 5.4.3 ECOFF
    • 5.4.4 XCOFF
    • 5.4.5 PE
    • 5.4.6 ELF
    • 5.4.7 SOM
    • 5.4.8 Other File Formats
  • 5.5 Debugging File Formats
    • 5.5.1 stabs
    • 5.5.2 COFF
    • 5.5.3 Mips debug (Third Eye)
    • 5.5.4 DWARF 1
    • 5.5.5 DWARF 2
    • 5.5.6 SOM
  • 5.6 Adding a New Symbol Reader to GDB
• 6 Language Support
  • 6.1 Adding a Source Language to GDB
• 7 Host Definition
  • 7.1 Adding a New Host
  • 7.2 Host Conditionals
• 8 Target Architecture Definition
  • 8.1 Registers and Memory
  • 8.2 Using Different Register and Memory Data Representations
  • 8.3 Frame Interpretation
  • 8.4 Inferior Call Setup
  • 8.5 Compiler Characteristics
  • 8.6 Target Conditionals
  • 8.7 Adding a New Target
• 9 Target Vector Definition
  • 9.1 File Targets
  • 9.2 Standard Protocol and Remote Stubs
  • 9.3 ROM Monitor Interface
  • 9.4 Custom Protocols
  • 9.5 Transport Layer
  • 9.6 Builtin Simulator
• 10 Native Debugging
  • 10.1 Native core file Support
  • 10.2 ptrace
  • 10.3 /proc
  • 10.4 win32
  • 10.5 shared libraries
  • 10.6 Native Conditionals
• 11 Support Libraries
  • 11.1 BFD
  • 11.2 opcodes
  • 11.3 readline
  • 11.4 mmalloc
  • 11.5 libiberty
  • 11.6 gnu-regex
  • 11.7 include
• 12 Coding
  • 12.1 Cleanups
  • 12.2 Wrapping Output Lines
  • 12.3 GDB Coding Standards
    • 12.3.1 Formatting
    • 12.3.2 Comments
    • 12.3.3 C Usage
    • 12.3.4 Function Prototypes
    • 12.3.5 Clean Design
• 13 Porting GDB
  • 13.1 Configuring GDB for Release
• 14 Testsuite
  • 14.1 Using the Testsuite
  • 14.2 Testsuite Organization
  • 14.3 Writing Tests
• 15 Hints
  • 15.1 Getting Started
  • 15.2 Debugging GDB with itself
  • 15.3 Submitting Patches
  • 15.4 Obsolete Conditionals

This document was generated on 31 May 2000 using the texi2html translator version 1.51a.