Debugging STK Programs in gdb

One of the nicest aspects of working with STK programs is that all source (C++) is available, facilitating debugging. Single-stepping someone else's STK program is a very good way to learn how it works. Object oriented software is often hard to read because its functionality is spread out over many member functions in many class files, some of which may be in separate libraries. Single-stepping the code in a debugger solves this problem by showing you exactly what code is being executed and in a natural order, complete with the ability to inspect variables, stack frames, and even larger data structures such as arrays, structs, and objects.

On Windows platforms, development tools such as Microsoft Visual C++ provide all the debugging support you need.

On UNIX platforms, the standard C++ debugger is gdb, and we'll look at that case below.^B.1

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Subsections

• An example .gdbinit file.
• Preparing your Program for Debugging
• Executing gdb from the command line
• Executing gdb from Emacs
• Useful commands in gdb
• Debugging Plugin Modules in Emacs
  • DSSI and LADSPA Plugins
  • Single-Stepping a Plugin in gdb
  
  
• Dealing with C++ in gdb
• Miscellaneous tricks in gdb under Emacs

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written by Julius Orion Smith III
Julius Smith's background is in electrical engineering (BS Rice 1975, PhD Stanford 1983). He is presently Professor of Music and Associate Professor (by courtesy) of Electrical Engineering at Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), teaching courses and pursuing research related to signal processing applied to music and audio systems. See http://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/ for details.