debugging on empeg: got gdbserver now what?

Ok, I've decided if I'm ever going to do any serious programming on the empeg I need a debugger. I guess this means I'm a wimpy programmer but that's besides the point.

Anyways I have managed to get gdbserver compiled and running on the empeg, I've attached the file- note you have to copy the libthread_db.so.1 file from the toolchain's lib directory to the /lib directory on the empeg for it to run. Problem is I can't get GDB to use it without crashing. Basically what I'm doing is this:
empeg: gdbserver localhost:2000 test
linux box: gdb test
(gdb) target remote empeg:2000
(gdb) breakpoint main
(gdb) continue
when I do the continue everything crashes. I imagine the problem is I have to re-compile gdb to support ARM binaries... but I have no idea how to do this.. any ideas GDB wizards?

Ok, I've decided if I'm ever going to do any serious programming on the empeg I need a debugger.

Bah! That's what printf() is for!

If you get this working, please share your success with the community. I'm sure the pace of my development would double if I could step through programs instead of having to depend on a bunch of debug statements.

I've decided if I'm ever going to do any serious programming on the empeg I need a debugger.

Does this help? I found it quite useful when writing Launcher. (See another of my posts on the subject of gdb.)

I think my rate of development more than doubled when I stopped relying on debuggers..

I think my rate of development more than doubled when I stopped relying on debuggers..

Was that before or after the robotic chip was implanted in your brain?

I've compiled gdb 5.3 for Linux x86 and gdbserver for ARM. It's on my webpage here

- Trevor

sweet, I'll give that a try and seem if it works for me.

Update: I did finally get this working although I couldn't use the gdb binary from your site, I think because I have a distrbution with libc and your binary is compiled with glibc or something. I just did a ./configure --target=arm-linux --host=i686-pc-linux-gnu on the GDB sources and it actually built and worked. Next step for me is get GNU Insight working so I can use a debugger I can actually deal with...

I think my rate of development more than doubled when I stopped relying on debuggers..

Yeah, same here. Of course, the frequency of application crashing also doubled, but I'm sure the users don't mind that.

Alternatively you can use the GNU Visual Debugger (GVD), but I prefer Insight (but I'ven't still made it running under Win32 using Cygwin). I'm using GVD for remote debugging a board with a MIPS-processor (via ABATRON-device).

Cheers,

Eize