gdbplus is an extension to the formal releases of GNU debugger gdb (http://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/) with core analyzer embedded. It supports the same functions, such as heap scan, object reference search, memory pattern analysis, etc., with the additional power of debug symbols. It has additional features like disassembling optimized code with the context of heap objects. The current implementation supports x86_64 architecture. However, it won't be difficult to port to other architectures and platforms if necessary.

A set of gdb commands are added to this custom build. Detail description of these functions may be found in the project's website: http://core-analyzer.sourceforge.net/

The source bundle includes an executable "gdb" under bin directory. This is for evaluation and testing purpose. It is recommended to build your own executable in your environment. You will need to download the corresponding verion of gdb (http://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/download/). Copy gdbplus source and header files (gdbplus/gdb-7.11.1/gdb) into the respective subfoler of downloaded source. Then build as usual.

$ ./configure --with-python --prefix=/usr/local
$ make

There is a build_gdb.sh in the root folder, you can directly build the custom gdb by running the script. (The version gdb-1824 is not supported as it has a different layout than others.)

If you use gdb python, you will need to install python scripts which are usually under /usr/share/gdb for many Linux distros. The gdb binary included in this repo has a different path /usr/local/share/gdb. You may use --data-directory option to specify the installed python script path on your host.

gdb --data-directory=/usr/share/gdb

Core analyzer extracts heap metadata with the help of debug symbols. Without the matching debug symbols, its functions are limited or don't work at all. For example, Linux heap data structures are defined in libc.so which debug symbols are required. The following table lists the command to install libc debug symbols on various Linux distros.

The libc.so debug symbols are installed at /usr/lib/debug by default. If gdb doesn't find it, you can add the following line in you .gdbinit file.

set debug-file-directory /usr/lib/debug