GDB Tutorial

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 00:00:00 -0400

GDB , the GNU Project debugger, is a useful debugger for many languages (C, C++, Fortran, etc). Here I keep a set of useful commands for my records.

Using GDB

To use GDB, compile the program with debugging information. For standard C++ program, add -g flag when compiling, i.e. something like

g++ -g -o myprogram myprogram.cpp

For AMReX related application codes like Castro, compile with DEBUG=TRUE, i.e.

make DEBUG=TRUE

Now launch GDB with compiled program as the following.