Compiling and injecting code in GDB: C++ rather than C

Question

I am running gdb 10.1.90.20210103-git and gcc/g++ 10.2.1 20210110 on x86-64 Debian 11. My IDE is Codelite, which uses the manual rather than the machine interface to gdb, and enables me to type commands directly to gdb, and see the response (potentially copying the response to the clipboard). This when the inferior is paused after hitting a breakpoiunt, via the gdb console, which is in Codelite's Debugger > Output pane.

I was able to use the instructions at: https://sourceware.org/gdb/current/onlinedocs/gdb#Compiling-and-Injecting-Code "Compiling and injecting code in GDB" to compile simple C code and make it run in the environment of the halted inferior. For instance: compile code blah++; increments a local variable int in the inferior, which I can see via the Locals or Watch panes.

The compile file command worked fine as long as I specified the absolute path of the source file.

I was unable to see console output (to the inferior's or gdb's console) for a simple printf() statement: `printf("xxx");' because the code would not compile if there was such a line

Despite using set debug compile and set debug compile-cplus-types and checking these are set with the show versions of these, I get no error messages or acknowledgements regarding whatever I try to compile.

The blah variable is an integer, which is accessible through C code and so gcc. The ability to increment this was the only indication that my code had compiled and run.

I could not get any responses to set/show compile gcc so I am presumably compiling with gcc. I did give the command set compile gcc /usr/bin/x86_64-linux-gnu-cpp-10, but there was still no response from show compile gcc or any change in the C-only behaviour.

I could not compile the file if it contained a C++ line which incremented a data member of a class object in an vector of such objects. Nor could I compile my code if it contained C++ code such as: #include <fstream> and/or std::fstream oFile;.

The gdb documentation mentioned above is general, but does have C examples.

Is it possible to compile C++ code under gdb, injecting it into the environment of the paused inferior, with any version of gdb and gcc?

I am keen to use this C++ code injection facility, if it exists, for dumping the contents of large, complex, data structures to files and and to modify some elements of same to aid debugging.

Answer 1

Summary: GDB's C++ compilation and injection system does not work for me, and it is reported to be buggy or non-functional. I only tested this compile command with single lines of C code, but it worked fine for these. I was able to run my function, which writes a text dump file containing the values of a vector of class objects' data members, while the inferior was paused after a breakpoint, by including it in a source file and calling it with GDB's print or call commands, giving it the required input argument of the name of the vector to dump.

I haven't tried using GDB on its own, but at present I have no reason to believe that Codelite is interfering with my ability to communicate with GDB via Codelite's "Debugger > Output" console.

I wrote to the GDB Developer list and received what I assume is a well informed reply. I was told that in my respondent's experience "the C++ plugin isn't very functional. It seems to have some bugs and crash pretty frequently as well. Also, it seems like nobody is actively working on it." This is consistent with my experience to date.

Perhaps later versions of GDB would work better. However, there has been minimal change to the library https://github.com/gcc-mirror/gcc/commits/master/libcc1/libcp1.cc since 2017, and I could find no indication of new work on C++ compilation and injection in https://www.sourceware.org/gdb/news/ since the announcement of its introduction:

GDB 8.3.1 was released on 2019-09-20, with: "Experimental support for compilation and injection of C++ source code into the inferior (requires GCC 7.1 or higher, built with libcp1.so)."

It is possible that my problem is related to not having this library. I do have the C equivalent: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcc1.so.o. I could find no such library in a Debian package. It is possible I could get this going by compiling the latest GCC/G++ and GDB, but that is pretty daunting, involving installing later standard libraries than my current Debian installation has, while making those and the newer G++ and GDB available for Codelite sessions, but not interfering with other software on machine which needs the older compilation system.

The respondent suggested that instead of compiling and injecting fresh code in the middle of a debugging session, I could write it as a library, and run it by using the compile command, on a purely C piece of code which would call it. However, for my purposes, the function needs to be passed one or more C++ constructs, and any code which called a C++ function would be C++ code and so, presumably, not be compiled by GDB.

For my immediate purpose of doing text dumps of large vectors of class objects' data members, I was able to succeed by writing such a function in an existing source file, which also contains the functions I am debugging. Then I could call it with GDB's print or call commands. I imagine this would work if the debugging function was in any other linked source file, or in a linked library. (Perhaps there is a way of writing such a library, compiling and linking it while the inferior is halted.)

I was able to run this, from a debugging session in which the inferior was halted somewhere, with either the print or call command followed by the name of the function, with the name of the vector in brackets. There must be no semicolon. I found the print command better, since GDB would report the return value, which was "void". My function used C++ constructs such as "<<" to write to the text file.

A call within my dump function of the C function system("pwd") resulted in the current directory being output on the inferior's terminal window. Likewise: print system("pwd"). print system("mc") dutifully ran Midnight Commander in the inferior's terminal window.

I altered the function to return a string, which GDB reported in the GDB "Debugger > Output" console. I added a line: std::cout << "xyz"; - but nothing appeared on either the inferior's terminal window or in the GDB console.

My attempts to use the compile command to call my dump function in exactly the same way produced no results, with or without a trailing semicolon.

I found thatprint and call work with C and C++ code while `compile" only works with C code.

I tried print vvv[6].mmm for data members which were integers, floats, and strings and GDB returned their values correctly. Adding a ++ at the end caused it to return the original integer value, but the value itself was incremented.

When I tried print with a compound line of code, with a semicolon between the two logical lines, with and without one at the end, there was no response.

The GDB Developers list is not the place for support requests, but I did not know a better way to find out about the status of this facility.