Debugging with GDB

Debugging

GDB is the GNU debugger and is the main method used for debugging Objective-C programs. Full support for debugging Objective-C with GDB was added in version 6.0. This document will describe the various features of GDB that help with debugging Objective-C programs. However, GDB is a very complex program, and not everything that it can do will be described here.

Basic GDB usage

To start the debugger, specify the program you want to debug:

gdb myprogram

With GNUstep you can also use the debugtool and debugapp scripts to begin a debugging session:

debugapp MyApp.app

Following is a short list of important commands that gdb accepts. After this list, a more detailed explaination of each command is given.

run args - Run the program break func/method - Stop at a function or method print var/func - Print value of a variable/function backtrace - List the fuction stack frame value - Move up and down the fuction stack help - Get help on gdb commands quit - Quit the program

The run command

This command starts the program inside the debugger. You can optionally add arguments to the run command and these arguments will get passed directly to the program as normal command-line arguments. For instance, you might want to start an application and open a file:

run -NSOpen=afile.txt

The break command

This command instructs the debugger to stop when it reaches a certain location in the program. The syntax for break can be very complex. However we will only cover some simple examples. One instance is to break on a particular line number.

break afile.m:345

will stop the debugger at line 345 in the file afile.m.

break a_function

will tell the debugger to stop at the beggining of the a_function function. Finally, and most importantly for Objective-C programs, you can enter a fully-qualified or partially-qualified method name to stop at. A fully qualified Objective-C method name is specified as

-[Class methodName]

where the minus sign is used to indicate an instance method and a plus sign (not shown) is used to indicate a class method. The class name Class and method name methodName are enclosed in brackets, similar to the way messages are specified in Objective-C source code. For example, to set a breakpoint at the create instance method of class Fruit in the program currently being debugged, enter:

break -[Fruit create]

One can also specify just a method name:

break initWithValue:

gdb will automatically determine what class this method belongs to. If there is more than one class that implements this method, you will be presented with a list of classes that implement the method from which you must chose one.

The print command

The print command can be used to display a wide variety of information that gdb knows about the program. As with the break command, the variety of things you can do is very large, but we will discuss only a few of the things that can be done. Below are several simple examples of printing the value of a variable.

print aVariable print anIvar print self->anIvar print anArray[4] print aStruct.subvalue print *(int *)pointerValue

Note that you can specify variables in the same way you specify them in source code, using array subscripts, pointer dereferences, etc. You can also set the value of a variable using print:

print aVariable = 4

One can also print the value of a function. Here gdb will actually call the function you specify and return the output:

print my_function(4, "hithere")

When debugging Objective-C programs, the same thing can be done with methods.

print -[object hash]

A special command has been added to gdb to print the description of an object (based on the method of the same name). This is the print-object (or po) command:

po anObject

Which is the same as typing

print -[myObject desciption]

Other command

The clear, info line, jump, and list commands also accept Objective-C method syntax for specifying locations.