TipsAndTricks/DebugNativeRecipeWithGdb

How to debug native recipes with gdb

I recently had the need to debug a crash in a native binary that a layer I was working on invokes during the build.

To debug the crash with gdb I had to do two things; 1) have the build system generate a binary with debug symbols and 2) not have them stripped during installation to sysroot.

To enable debug symbols, usually one needs to add "-g" to the list of compiler flags. Unforunately how this is done is specific to each project - you need to inspect the source code tree and look for clues. For autoconf-based projects adding to CFLAGS environment variable is enough.

After the build has completed, inspect the compilation log to verify that -g is indeed there.

To ensure that the binaries in the sysroot don't have their debugging symbols stripped you need to set INHIBIT_SYSROOT_STRIP = "1" in your local.conf

Alternatively you might want to only inhibit stripping for specific recipes, this can be achieved using recipe OVERRIDES such as:

INHIBIT_SYSROOT_STRIP_pn-swupd-server-native = "1"

I used the former as it allowed me to be certain of having all debugging symbols available.

Note: you'll need to ensure any binaries you wish to debug are (re-)staged into the sysroot after changing this setting.

For more information on the gdb commands above see the gdb manual section "Commands to Specify Files"