GDB kind of doesn't work on macOS Sierra

Question

It is a problem that appeared when I first updated to macOS Sierra yesterday.

GDB itself is running OK. However, somehow, it cannot run my program. When I type 'run' and 'enter', it immediately crashes with the information: During startup program terminated with signal SIG113, Real-time event 113.

My GDB is based on homebrew. So today, I uninstalled the whole homebrew package and reinstalled it. After the codesign step, I still faced the same error.

I tried 'sudo' and a few other things. Google had no idea what happened. So I was wondering if you guys might have some magical solution.

Answer 1

This is how I easily fixed the issue. [Update: based on feedback received and yet to be verified, it seems that this solution works with macOS Sierra 10.12 but not with macOS Sierra 10.12.2]

See video instructions here

1. Quit gdb
2. Using your text editor e.g. Sublime Text, save a file called .gdbinit in your user folder.
3. In the file add the following: set startup-with-shell off
4. Save the file
5. gdb should now work

Sources

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7684629?start=0&tstart=0

Where is .gdbinit is located and how can I edit it?

https://sourceware.org/gdb/onlinedocs/gdb/Starting.html

Answer 2

I got the same error after updating to macOS Sierra. Temporarily I changed debugger to LLDB using the library lldbmi2:
1. git clone https://github.com/freedib/lldbmi2.git lldbmi2
2. cd lldbmi2
3. mkdir build
4. cd build
5. cmake ../
6. make
7. sudo make install

Once lldbmi2 is installed, you can debug your application by creating a new C/C++ Application in Debug Configurations... and change the GDB debugger (in Debugger tab) from gdb to lldbmi2. Options to lldbmi2 may be set there. Something like /usr/local/bin/lldbmi2 --log.

Everything seems to be working fine, and even better as GDB.