Re: Unable to step over (n and ni) on mipsel-linux...

[Michael Chastain <mec dot gnu at mindspring dot com>]

David Daney <ddaney@avtrex.com> wrote:
> By compiler dependant, do you mean the compiler GDB was built with, or
> the one that compiled the target code?

This question comes up a lot -- I think it's underdocumented,
so I'll take a TODO item to write some more documentation on it.

Here's a brain dump.  David, you know half this stuff already,
I'm just collecting it into one place.

===

The version of GDB is important.

The compiler that GDB was built with is important if:

  . gdb fails to build
  . a test in gdb.gdb/*.exp is the issue

If gdb builds successfully, and you're not running one of the tests in
gdb.gdb (which tests the gdb executable itself), then the compiler that
built GDB usually does not influence GDB's behavior at run-time.
GDB is just a big C program.  If a C compiler can compile GDB, it usually
compiles it the way we meant it to.

The target architecture is always important.

The target operating system is always important.

The host architecture and the host operating system are of secondary
importance.  They might be important if the issue involves the remote
protocol and the host operating system is unusually weird.

The compiler that built the target code is critical!  The target
compiler is the program that writes all the debugging information which
GDB reads.  We nearly always need the name and version of the compiler
that built the target code.

Obviously, the debug flags (-g or -ggdb or -gdwarf-2 or -gstabs+)
are critical too.

Usually the target assembler and target linker are not important,
because the target compiler generates the debugging information and
the target assembler and target linker just pass them through.
GDB is sometimes sensitive to the target linker for issues with
shared libraries.

The target's standard C library is important if the problem involves
threads or the problem involves backtracing through the standard library.