Re: step into next source line (that belongs to me)

Jim Blandy
2006-12-26T18:35:15Z

Daniel Jacobowitz <drow@false.org> writes:
> On Tue, Dec 26, 2006 at 01:19:00PM +0100, Christian Parpart wrote:
>> Is there a way to do such things using gdb?
>
> Not yet, no. But it could probably be added using your definition of
> interesting files.

From time to time people complain here about GDB stepping into system
library functions, and it's often because they've installed debugging
info for those libraries and found GDB doesn't silently 'next' over
them even when given the 'step' command, as it used to. So GDB's
fallback behavior for dealing with undebuggable functions ends up
inadvertently providing a feature people want.

Perhaps each objfile (executable or shared object) could have a "step
status", specifying how step should behave with respect to
inter-object calls into that objfile. All objfiles would start out in
the "ask" state, where step would ask the user whether they're going
to be interested in that objfile. The answer would put the objfile in
the "step-past" or "step-into" status.

If control ever stopped in an objfile (breakpoint hit; segfault), GDB
could automatically mark it "step-into"; obviously, it's interesting
now.

The status would need to be saved somehow so that settings for shared
libraries wouldn't get lost each time the objfile was re-loaded.

There could be commands to mark object files manually. They could use
globbing characters.