Debug C or C++ with GDB

It's speccialy usefull to use GDB not only to debug a program but also for traversing a project and to read the code in the order that it usualy runs and not sequencialy. Just put a breakpoint in the main funciton and next!

There's a very usefull plugin to make using GDB more comfortable, I been using it for many years. It's called GDB Dashboard and enhances the CLI.

Step 1: Download and Install GDB

First, ensure that GDB is installed on your system. You can typically install it via your package manager. For example:

# On Debian/Ubuntu
sudo apt update
sudo apt install gdb

Step 2: Download and Install the GDB Dashboard Plugin

Follow the instructions on https://github.com/cyrus-and/gdb-dashboard

Alternatively, you can quickly install it by running the following command:

wget -P ~ https://github.com/cyrus-and/gdb-dashboard/raw/master/.gdbinit

put it in .gdbinit on home or in .config/gdb/gdbinit

Step 3: Disable Unnecessary Features (Optional)

If not going to develop bare metal maybe better to disable some features.

Place this line at the end of the gdbinit

dashboard -layout !assembly breakpoints !expressions !history !memory !registers source stack threads variables

And voilà you have gdb configured an redy to use, with a better visualization for the CLI.