271K views · Oct 21, 2015 · 14:47 · 6 HN recommenders · 7 mentions · discussed 2018–2023
Greg Law's 15-minute CppCon 2015 lightning talk shows what GDB can do beyond basic use, including its text user interface and reverse debugging.
Why Hacker News points people here: Recommended as a fast, brilliant introduction to GDB's TUI mode and lesser-known features, useful for anyone who has only used IDE debuggers.
“this brilliant short talk (15min) about gdb's TUI.”HN comment, 2018
“this brilliant short talk (15min) about gdb's TUI.”
Short talk on gdb's TUI mode
Seems like a I cannot edit my post, but I just remembered this brilliant short talk (15min) about gdb's TUI. this video It really did change my opinion of gdb in just 15 min.
“The learning curve is a tad steep, but this video is pretty good”
Intro to using gdb for reading large C codebases
Compile it with debugging symbols and run it with gdb in tui mode. This will let you place breakpoints in source files, view back traces, find the definitions of functions, structures, macros, etc. The learning curve is a tad steep, but this video is pretty good: this video
“For a quick overview of what you're missing out on checkout”
Quick overview of what a good debugger offers over IDEs
> Sure, but I bet Intellij is a bit better when it comes to debugging java applications. I don't know about intelliJ specifically, but a good debugger beats the crap off the limited interface an IDE provides to them. It looks like IntelliJ only offers basic breakpoint/step through, etc. For a quick overview of what you're missing out on checkout "Give me 15 minute and I'll change you min on GDB": this video (hopefully the right video, can't check at work)
“A great demonstration is in the video”
Demonstrates reverse debugging in GDB
> So anything like this on Linux sounds like a very positive step forward. GDB has had reverse debugging since 2009 and there are other tools like rr and a few commercial ones. If anything I'd say that you calling it time travel debugging instead of reverse debugging demonstrates how insular the windows developer world is more than the windows platform being ignored. A great demonstration is in the video "Give Me 15 minutes and I'll change your view of GDB": this video
“As someone who wasn't very familiar with GDB, I learned a lot from seeing it used by someone skilled.”
Seeing gdb used by a skilled person
I'd also recommend "Give me 15 minutes and I'll change your view of GDB" [1] by Greg Law at CppCon 2015. As someone who wasn't very familiar with GDB, I learned a lot from seeing it used by someone skilled. [1]: this video
“there is a quick talk about it and other niceties that you may not know about”
Quick talk on GDB TUI mode and other lesser-known features
Nice! There is already a TUI in gdb albeit not as good looking. For more info, there is a quick talk about it and other niceties that you may not know about: this video
“anybody who wants to do the same thing with C should definitely check out GDB and its TUI mode”
Introduces GDB and its TUI mode
"You only need a tablet" (and remote infrastructure for actually writing your code on since a tablet won't work for 99% of assignments) I did the same thing in college, but with a Chromebook. I rented a VPS from Vultr and ssh'd in to write C and Java assignments with vim. VPS was $5/mo. Chromebooks can still write javascript code and run via the web browser, and you can actually mount a remote drive on a Chromebook (I think via sshfs?). From there you can use an electron based text editor like Atom (and I guess VSCode would work these days) and just compile and run programs via some SSH commands. I'll say anybody who wants to do the same thing with C should definitely check out GDB and its TUI mode: this video But I think these days, running a GUI application over a network has become trivial. Back then, I don't remember any providers making it simple to deploy such projects
