Re: GDB variants accepting plugins (to the debugger) ?

[Basile Starynkevitch <basile@starynkevitch.net>]

On Fri, 2026-01-30 at 10:35 -0500, Simon Marchi via Gdb wrote:
> 
> 
> On 2026-01-30 08:33, Eli Zaretskii via Gdb wrote:
> > > From: Basile Starynkevitch <basile@starynkevitch.net>
> > > Cc: team@refpersys.org
> > > Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2026 14:13:51 +0100
> > > 
> > > I am using GDB-17.1 on Linux/Debian/x86-64 to debug a C++ coded, GPL licensed, inference engine
> > > 
> > > 
> > > Is there any GDB variant accepting plugins to the debugger process
> > > (these could be definitely useful to display C++ data in a nice way, std::vector or std::map instances come to mind immediately).
> > > 
> > > I do know that GDB accept eg Guile or Python scripts.
> > > But coding manually a Python or Guile function for every important C++ classes of a software is very time consuming
> > 
> > Did you read the node "Auto-loading extensions" in the GDB manual?
> > GDB installs such an auto-loaded extension for standard C++ classes,
> > which actually uses printers.py provided by GCC/libstdc++
> > distribution.  But you can use the same mechanism to provide
> > extensions for your classes, if needed.
> 
> Here's the file Eli is referring to, for libstdc++:
> 
> https://gcc.gnu.org/git/?p=gcc.git;a=blob;f=libstdc%2B%2B-v3/python/libstdcxx/v6/printers.py;hb=HEAD
> 
> And here is the API it uses:
> 
> https://sourceware.org/gdb/current/onlinedocs/gdb.html/Pretty-Printing.html
> 
> Simon

I am (perhaps incorrectly) understanding that I could inside the ELF executable embed some ELF section containing Python code for GDB.

https://sourceware.org/gdb/current/onlinedocs/gdb.html/dotdebug_005fgdb_005fscripts-section.html
mention something. I don't understand if the script file name should be an absolute path, or a relative one?

If the Python script is a relative path, is it relative the working directory of GDB or of the debugged process?

Does anyone has some concrete toy -preferably opensource- example (for an open source C++ program, on Linux, and how to link that program 
to add the ELF sections containing Python code for the GDB debugger)?

Thanks
-- 

Basile STARYNKEVITCH                    basile AT starynkevitch DOT net
8 rue de la Faïencerie                       http://starynkevitch.net/Basile/  
92340 Bourg-la-Reine                         https://github.com/bstarynk
France                                https://github.com/RefPerSys/RefPerSys
                  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0908-5250