GDB

The GNU Debugger (GDB) is a powerful, portable, command-line debugger that allows programmers to see what is going on inside another program while it executes, or what another program was doing at the moment it crashed. It supports a multitude of programming languages and CPU architectures,…

Key facts

First appeared
1986
Category
technology
Problem solved
GDB was created to solve the fundamental problem of understanding and fixing bugs in software, particularly in complex system-level programs and across diverse hardware architectures, within the burgeoning free software ecosystem. It aimed to provide a robust, free, and portable debugging solution that was not tied to proprietary systems.
Platforms
Various embedded systems (e.g., RTOS, bare-metal), OpenBSD, Solaris, GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, Microsoft Windows (via Cygwin or MinGW/MSYS2), macOS, NetBSD

Related technologies

Notable users

  • Open-source projects (e.g., Linux kernel, GCC)
  • Various Linux distribution maintainers
  • IBM
  • Google
  • Red Hat
  • Embedded systems developers globally