Re: Adding user-defined symbols to GDB

[Sterling Augustine <saugustine@google.com>]

I don't know of a way to do it without an objfile, but the method in that
script is far more complicated than it needs to be.

I would have to work out the details, but a linker script with simple
symbol-value assignments could easily produce this.

symbol0 = value0
symbol1 = value1

then run ld with the right options so it doesn't pull in startfiles and
what not. Then add-symbol-file from inside gdb.

On Wed, Jan 26, 2022 at 3:55 PM Matthew Rinaldi via Gdb <gdb@sourceware.org>
wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I have a list of symbols that I have parsed out from a section within
> the binary. The data is not in any standard symbol table format. I have
> extracted the symbol's name and address. I want to add these symbols to
> GDB, but it is non-trivial. The solutions that I have seen for adding
> new user-defined symbols do not look ideal for a seemingly simple task.
>
> Example:
> https://github.com/mahaloz/decomp2gef/blob/main/decomp2gef.py#L247
>
> Is it possible to have a feature/command where the user could add
> symbols directly to GDB without the use of an objfile?
>
> I brought it up with Simon Marchi, and he said the following:
> > But off-hand, I don't see why this wouldn't be possible. Each objfile
> > could have a list of user-defined symbols, that lookup_symbol_in_objfile
> > would search in addition to the other regular methods.
>
> Thank you,
> Matthew Rinaldi
>