gdb and executables of MSVC++50

[Stan Shebs]

lwerzinger@krones.de (Lothar Werzinger) writes:

> Is it possible to debug executables which were produced by the MSVC++
> (DevStudio 97 Service Pack 2) compiler with gdb? As far as I know, gdb
> supports COFF. but when I load the executable, gdb complains about
> finding no debug information.

This is a known problem.  Some versions of Microsoft compilers are
supposedly capable of generating standard COFF debugging when you
give them a flag /Z or /Zi or some such, but I've never observed
this myself personally.

> As far as I found out gdb is capable of loading and executing the
> binary. The only thing I would need, is a converter that makes a gdb
> symbol file out of the *.pdb files of the MSVC++ compiler. Has anybody
> written such a program or is doing so? Besides the fact that the .pdb
> files are MS and binary, it should be just a question of demangling the
> MS names and remangle them in a way gdb understands them or?

Mangling algorithms are generally very compiler-specific.  GDB could
in theory be taught to understand pdb files, and there is at least some
debug info documentation on MS' CDs, but it would be a major project,
even for a GDB expert.

							Stan Shebs
							Cygnus Solutions
							shebs@cygnus.com
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