Re: Help using the GDB C++ STL pretty-printers / xmethods

[Jonathan Wakely <jwakely.gcc@gmail.com>]

On Sun, 8 May 2022, 00:09 Paul Smith, <paul@mad-scientist.net> wrote:

> On Sat, 2022-05-07 at 20:51 +0100, Jonathan Wakely wrote:
> > On Sat, 7 May 2022 at 20:07, Paul Smith <paul@mad-scientist.net>
> > wrote:
> > GCC's 'make install' should do everything needed. That installs
> > $prefix/lib64/libstdc++.so.6.0.30-gdb.py alongside the .so file, and
> > gdb auto-loads that when debugging a process linked to the
> > libstdc++.so.6.0.30 library. That python script imports the
> > register_libstdcxx_printers function and runs it.
> >
> > Maybe you're only linking statically to libstdc++.a?
>
> Ah.  Yes I'm linking statically.
>
> > Hmm, that's reminiscent of
> > https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=25234
>
> I checked and when I first attach I do see:
>
>   (gdb) show lang
>   The current source language is "auto; currently c".
>
> and things don't work, then after I change to a C++ frame I see:
>
>   (gdb) show lang
>   The current source language is "auto; currently c++".
>
> and things work.
>
> I discovered that if I add:
>
>   set language c++
>
> to my init, that it all works properly.  For my purposes this is a
> sufficient workaround.
>
> It's a bit strange (confusing) that the C++ pretty-printers work
> without having to do that, but the C++ xmethods do not.
>
> Also just a data point, my previous GDB (10.2) didn't require this:
> when I attach with that version, GDB chose the auto language as "c++"
> immediately.  I suppose it's worth a bugzilla report.
>
> > All the logic to do that in Python is already present in the
> > printers,
>
> I figured so I'd hoped there was something here already.  I get what
> you're saying of course.  Maybe I'll find some time to dig into this...
> at some point...
>
> > > (b) Ways to access the contents of containers like unique_ptr,
> > > shared_ptr, etc. from python functions.  So if in my class I have
> > > "std::unique_ptr<Foo> fooPtr" and in my python functions I have a
> > > variable "fooPtr" which refers to this object, I would like a way
> > > to retrieve a gdb.Value containing its pointer.
> >
> > The UniquePtrGetWorker Xmethod already does that. You should be able
> > to just do:
> >
> >  py ptr = gdb.parse_and_eval('uniqptr.get()')
>
> xmethods don't help me (IIUC) because I'm in the middle of some Python
> function and the value I want to retrieve is in a Python variable, not
> in a GDB variable, so I can't easily access it with parse_and_eval().
>
> For instance in my examples here I'd have a python method:
>
>   def find_obj(val):
>       if val['mgr']['initialized']:
>           return val['mgr']
>       return val['otherMgr']
>
> or whatever, but of course I can't do this because val['mgr'] is a
> std::unique_ptr and I don't know how to dig out the object it points
> to.  The above doesn't need to work as-is: something like:
>
>   def find_obj(val):
>       mgr = StdUnique(val['mgr']).get()
>       if mgr['initialized']:
>           return mgr
>       return val['otherMgr']
>
> or whatever would be fine.
>


gdb.set_convenience_variable('mgr', val['mgr'])
init = gdb.parse_and_eval('$mgr->initialized')

This will use the xmethod to evaluate the expression.

>