Formatting GDB template arguments in a backtrace

Question

As I work with a C++ template library in GDB (through the terminal), I am trying to find a way of pretty-printing the template arguments when, for instance, viewing a backtrace.

As an example, I am visually trying to find the second (outermost) template argument in this frame that is printed in GDB as follows:

(gdb) f
#10 try_to_refine_element<CGAL::Null_mesh_visitor_level<
CGAL::Mesh_3::tets::Refine_facets_visitor<CGAL::Regular_triangulation_3
<CGAL::Robust_weighted_circumcenter_filtered_traits_3<... (+10397 char)

Gist

These are not STL templates, so STL-template-printing-tools are not applicable, and pretty-printing specific types is not my interest (i.e. custom pretty-printers) as I only want to view the hierarchy of template arguments for a wide variety of classes/methods, rather than representing their content (these use-cases are addressed in the gdb docs). There are also a few pretty-printing in-built settings in GDB but none seem to affect templates (please correct if I've missed them!).

Is there a way of getting GDB to line-break and indent these more readably, or a standard script to use? Template colour coding would be a bonus! For the moment I can cut-paste and run Python to format as desired, but it seems reasonable that a better, tested solution exists.

While I am sure a number of visual IDEs would also solve this, as my general workflow is closely tied to tmux in the terminal, it would be nice to find a compatible solution.

Using pyparsing, for now have a proof-of-concept standalone script to run against a 1-line file containing a frame description (example output). If the answer here is no solid alternative exists, I will try coupling with frame filters and Github it, but as parsing is not my strong-suit, it will be a work-in-progress :) — ptw
– ptw, Commented Mar 18, 2016 at 10:03

ptw · Accepted Answer · 2016-03-18 15:13:30Z

1

Using frame filters, I've created a GDB Python plugin to provide this: https://github.com/philtweir/gdb-pretty-frame-cpp

It is not yet well-tested (and only with CGAL/boost/STL/VTK), but if there is interest, I can smarten it up a bit.

While this is an answer, I would still prefer to hear about any decent, established solution, as this code is still pretty basic.

answered Mar 18, 2016 at 15:13

ptw

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3 Comments

Tom Tromey Over a year ago

That's about the best you can do. I also wrote a colorizing frame filter :-)

ptw Over a year ago

Cool, thanks @tom - I take it that is the one in github.com/tromey/gdb-helpers ? Looks like you have a nice set of gdb extension repos, will have to explore :)

Tom Tromey Over a year ago

Yeah, that's the one. Be sure to try gdb-gui.

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