How Can I debug a C program on Linux?

Question

I am writing a C language program on Linux and compiling it using GCC.

I also use a Make file.

I want to debug my program. I don't want to debug a single file, I want to debug the whole program.

How can I do it?

score 34 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 07 '10 at 08:26

34

Compile your code with the -g flag, and then use the gdb debugger. Documentation for gdb is here, but in essence:

gcc -g -o prog myfile.c another.c

and then:

gdb prog

If you want a user-friendly GUI for gdb, take a look at DDD or Insight.

answered Apr 07 '10 at 08:26

3

There's also a graphical interface for gdb named ddd that can be useful if you're having a hard time with getting used to gdb. – wasatz Apr 07 '10 at 08:29
+1 just to add - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2588853/the-community-driven-gdb-primer – N 1.1 Apr 07 '10 at 08:29
i have large no of .c file. according to you i have to include them all. is there any shortest way. – ambika Apr 07 '10 at 08:45
@ambika Just ad the -g to the CFLAGS macro in your makefile – Apr 07 '10 at 08:51
Don't forget -Wall option and making it compile clean. – Tadeusz A. Kadłubowski Apr 07 '10 at 08:59
What is "prog"? There is no mention at all anywhere in the internet of that. – Santropedro Jun 24 '19 at 20:07

score 7 · Answer 2 · edited Feb 08 '17 at 14:16

I guess that you are building from the command line.

You might want to consider an IDE (Integrated Development Environment), such as KDevelop or Eclipse, etc (hint - Eclipse ... ECLPISE ... E C L I PS E).

Use an IDE to edit your code, refactor your code, examine your code - class tree, click a variable, class or function to jump to declaration, etc, etc

And - of course - to debug:

run your code in the IDE
set breakpoints to stop at particular lines
or just step through, a line at a time
examine the call stack to see how you go there
examine the current values of variables, to understand your problem
change the values of those variables and run to see what happens
and more, more, more

p.s as wasatz mentioned- DDD is great - for visualizing the contents of arrays/matrices, and - imo - especially if you have linked lists

Dennis V · Answer 3 · 2018-03-10T07:15:54.177

1

You can use gdb-based simple and useful GUI "Nemiver". It can debug your whole module comprising many source files.

edited Mar 10 '18 at 07:15

answered Nov 04 '17 at 08:55

Dennis V

574
7
19

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 29 '22 at 08:17

Try cgdb

cgdb is a lightweight curses (terminal-based) interface to the GNU Debugger (GDB). In addition to the standard gdb console, cgdb provides a split screen view that displays the source code as it executes. The keyboard interface is modeled after vim, so vim users should feel at home using cgdb.

^{github repository}

How Can I debug a C program on Linux?

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