Printf debugging 2006

One of the oldest methods of debugging is "printf debugging" -- putting various print statements in the code and then staring at the output. That's useful not only if you can't use a debugger. If the program does not crash, but produces wrong results after long computation, it's hard to figure where exactly the problem lies. In that case, printing intermediate data can be a very efficient method.

The only problem is that after adding print statements the program must be recompiled, and after debugging print statements must be removed. But it's possible to make gdb into printing machine using so called "breakpoint commands". Each breakpoint can have a list of commands that will be executed when breakpoint is hit. The commands can include printing and "continue". Here's a simplified example of gdb script I've used recently:

break main.cpp:1353
commands
   print ('lvk::nm_model::NM'*)this
   printf "Entering 'run', proc %d\n", $->processor_number
   continue
end
run

After putting this to a file "script", gdb can be run as:

gdb -batch -x script name_of_program > log

producing logs of variable values as certain points of the program.

Starting with version 3.3.0, similar functionality is available in KDevelop. Just click on the "Tracing" column in breakpoints window, select variables to print and click OK.

More screenshots here and here. This is a beginning, future KDevelop version will allow to specify custom commands for breakpoints.