KDbg

KDbg is an open source and free graphical software implemented in C++ and designed from the offset to act as a GUI (Graphical User Interface) front-end for GDB application, also known as the GNU debugger. It is tailored specifically for the KDE Plasma desktop environment.

The project offers an intuitive and interactive graphical user interface that can be used for inspecting variables, setting breakpoints, as well as to stepping through code. KDbg has been successfully used to debug any program.

Features at a glance

KDbg lets users to inspect variable values in a tree structure and features conditional breakpoints, debugging of core dumps, support for attaching to running processes, as well as basic debugger functions, such as run, step, until, next, set breakpoint, enable breakpoint, disable breakpoint, clear breakpoint, and finish, assigned to the F5 through F10 keys.

Numerous other basic functions are also included in the application, among which we can mention support for searching text, support for setting environment variables and program arguments, support for viewing source code, and support for displaying various expressions. Direct member is another interesting feature of KDbg.

Getting started with KDbg

You have to methods for installing the KDbg application on your GNU/Linux system. The easiest one is by opening your default graphical package manager, search for ‘kdbg’ and install the package from the main software repositories of your distribution.

The second method should be used only by advanced Linux users or in case the package cannot be found in the software repos of your operating system of choice. Download the latest version from Softoware, save the archive on your PC, unpack it and open a terminal emulator.

In the Linux Terminal window, use the ‘cd’ command to go to the location of the extracted archive files (e.g. cd /home/softoware/kdbg-2.5.4), execute the ‘cmake .’ command to configure the project, followed by the ‘make’ command to compile it.

Install the application system wide by running the ‘sudo make install’ command as a privileged user or the ‘make install’ command as root. At the moment, it has been successfully tested with both 32-bit and 64-bit computer architectures.

What is new in this release:

• Bug fixes:
• A crash when the hotkey settings are changed was fixed.
• The animation button was regenerated to avoid a crash with modern Qt. Thanks to Armin Felder for the initial fix.
• Pretty-printers and GDB Python extensions were disabled, because they would interfere with the output parser.
• Recent GDBs do not terminate on receipt of SIGTERM, keeping KDbg running for 20 seconds. This was fixed.

What is new in version 2.5.4:

• Bug fixes
• Source file names with international characters are handled better.
• When an executable is loaded, GDBs of different vintage print different text, some of which were treated as error text incorrectly, leading to failed debugging sessions. More of these texts are now ignored.
• Variables pointing to some global variable lacked the ability to be expanded with recent GDBs.
• Parsing of string values residing in global variables was fixed.

What is new in version 2.5.3:

• GDB's breakpoint list is now parsed correctly in more cases.
• Communication with a localized GDB works now.
• A crash in the memory display has been fixed.
• The Russian and Croatian translations have been updated.

What is new in version 2.5.2:

• Support for GDB 7.5 has been added.
• More of GDB's output is now recognized in some corner cases.

What is new in version 2.5.1:

• Minor feature enhancements:
• .hpp files undergo syntax highlighting.
• Keys j and k can be used to move the cursor position in the source code.
• Bug fixes:
• Cooperation with newer GDB (7.2 and 7.3) is improved:
• wchar_t strings as printed by GDB 7.2 are recognized;
• the thread list was missing with GDB 7.3;
• program exit was not detected (also GDB 7.3).
• Enum values in anonymous namespaces are now recognized.

What is new in version 2.5.0:

• A number of icons were exchanged with Oxygen icons. These are not part of KDbg's source code.
• Session state per debugged program is now stored in a section in $KDEHOME rather than in a .kdbgrc file in the program's directory. This allows to debug programs that are located in unwritable directories. But this also means that earlier session information is disregarded.
• More accurate parsing of GDB responses of various commands fixed bugs in certain areas, in particular, temporary breakpoints, register values, truncated struct values, disassembly (again).
• "View Code" from the breakpoint list can open the source code in more cases.

What is new in version 2.2.2:

• Bug fix: An error message was shown instead of assembler code when gdb 7.1 was used.

What is new in version 2.2.1:

• Compilation with newer glibc failed.
• A crash could occur when the variable window was updated.
• A crash when command line switch -a was used together with a non-existing executable name.
• Syntax highlighting was applied to all files, not just C/C++.
• The display was incorrect when a file was reloaded that had disassembly lines visible.

What is new in version 2.2.0:

• Features:
• Source code windows have now a tab attached, which makes switching source files much easier.
• Source code windows now show line numbers at the left.
• There are now "Find Next" and "Find Previous" commands with shortcuts F3 and Shift+F3.
• Improved support of template types in the type tables (which are used to show structure members next to a structure variable). Notably, the number of elements in STL and Qt collection classes are shown.
• Arguments for the debugged program can be passed on KDbg's command line.
• Bug fixes:
• An incorrect terminal command string setting could crash KDbg if it contained format specifiers other than exactly one '%s'.
• The format specifier in the memory dump window was not correctly preserved when the expression is changed.
• Setting a conditional breakpoint could crash KDbg.
• Using Attach on systems that use the simplified Attach to Process dialog could crash KDbg.

What is new in version 2.1.1:

• Fixed a crash when the disassemble button was clicked when no program was loaded.

Requirements:

• KDE Plasma