gdb-add-index man

gdb-add-index

gdb-add-index filename

When GDB finds a symbol file, it scans the symbols in the file in order to construct an internal symbol table. This lets most GDB operations work quickly–at the cost of a delay early on. For large programs, this delay can be quite lengthy, so GDB provides a way to build an index, which speeds up startup.

To determine whether a file contains such an index, use the command readelf -S filename: the index is stored in a section named .gdb_index. The index file can only be produced on systems which use ELF binaries and DWARF debug information (i.e., sections named .debug_*).

gdb-add-index uses GDB and objdump found in the PATH environment variable. If you want to use different versions of these programs, you can specify them through the GDB and OBJDUMP environment variables.

See more in Index Files.