nurupo / mingw-w64-debug-scripts

A bundle that includes a working MinGW-w64 gdb program and a small collection of gdb scripts that you can bundle with a debug build of your MinGW-w64 application for users to report the backtrace of crashes.

MinGW-w64 Debug Scripts

Collection of gdb scripts that you can bundle with a debug build of your MinGW-w64 application for users to report the backtrace of crashes.

Scripts

All scripts log sessions to debug-logs\%timestamp%.txt files.

debug-automatic.bat

This is what an average user would want to use.

• It starts the application with gdb attached, logging all stdout and stderr output of you application, as well as the input and output of gdb, in a single file. Note that some streams might be buffered and appear in the file way later than they actually were printed.
• When the application terminates abnormally, e.g. a crash happens, gdb outputs the backtrace, which is logged to the file.
• If the user closes the application, gdb console window also closes.
• If the user closes the gdb console window, the application also closes.
• If the application terminated abnormally, the log file containing all the logged data is opened using the default program associated for opening .txt files.

debug-manual.bat

This is aimed at users familiar with gdb.

• It starts gdb with the application loaded but not running yet, logging all stdout and stderr output of you application, as well as the output of gdb, in a single file. This allows to set a breakpoint and to do other things before running the application. Note that some streams might be buffered and appear in the file way later than they actually were printed.
• After the application terminates, abnormally or not, the gdb console window will remain, allowing to input commands into it for more in-depth debugging.
• After quitting the gdb session, the log file containing all the logged data is opened using the default program associated for opening .txt files.

Usage

1. In each .bat file, replace your-app-name.exe with the relative path to the application that should be debugged
2. Bundle the script with your application
3. Place gdb.exe next to the scripts
4. Test that the scripts work

That's it!

Getting gdb.exe

For the step 3, get gdb.exe from a reputable source (e.g. msys2) or build it yourself. It's very easy to cross-compile gdb.exe so please do so instead of bundling random builds you find online. For example, you can run the following to build gdb 9.2 on a Debian Buster Docker container:

ARCH="x86_64" #or i686
GDB_VERSION="9.2"
EXPAT_VERSION="2.2.9"
apt-get update
apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends \
                autoconf \
                automake \
                build-essential \
                ca-certificates \
                g++-mingw-w64-${ARCH//_/-} \
                gcc-mingw-w64-${ARCH//_/-} \
                pkg-config \
                texinfo \
                wget
# expat is needed by gdb for debugging dlls
wget https://github.com/libexpat/libexpat/releases/download/R_${EXPAT_VERSION//./_}/expat-$EXPAT_VERSION.tar.xz
tar -xf expat*.tar.xz
rm expat*.tar.xz
cd expat*
CFLAGS="-O2 -g0" ./configure --host="$ARCH-w64-mingw32" \
                             --prefix="$PWD/prefix"
make -j$(nproc)
make install
EXPAT_PREFIX="$PWD/prefix"
cd ..
wget http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gdb/gdb-$GDB_VERSION.tar.xz
tar -xf gdb*.tar.xz
rm gdb*.tar.xz
cd gdb*
mkdir build
cd build
CFLAGS="-O2 -g0" ../configure --host="$ARCH-w64-mingw32" \
                              --prefix="$PWD/prefix" \
                              --with-libexpat-prefix="$EXPAT_PREFIX"
make -j$(nproc)
make install
$ARCH-w64-mingw32-strip -s prefix/bin/gdb.exe
# grab prefix/bin/gdb.exe

License

MIT