How can I use GDB from inside Visual Studio C++ (Express) to debug my GCC Makefile projects?

Question

I've a couple of Makefile projects on my visual studio (express) 2005/2008 (doesn't matter for now) to compile some application using the MinGW GCC compiler. I don't want to use the MS compiler because there are features that only are available on GCC.

Now I'd like to debug from inside VS since I'm coding from it but this requires me to use GDB (it works from the command line) but i prefer to use the IDE tools.

Is there a way to do this? Even if the Express version is limited and doesn't support it can it be done using the full version?

Answer 1

If you prefer IDE working under Windows you may be interested in Code Blocks or Qt Creator. They are free.

There are commercial dev-tools for Unixes too: MagicC++ (IDE), debuggers like TotalView, Allinea, Zero-bugs, UndoDB ...

If you want to stay with Visual Studio check this WinGDB. It is not supported by Express edition (extensions are not supported at all). But Microsoft have recently released free Visual Studio Community (has almost all features of Professional Edition), which is free and can be legally used by students/hobbyists/startups - free for individuals for developing commercial applications, free for organizations for developing open source applications, free for organizations (for up to 5 individual users) for developing commercial applications only if the organization has less than 250 computers and has less than $10M annual revenue. Refer VS 2013 Community License for more information.

By the way VirtualBox may be very helpful (I debug (Open)Solaris or Linux as VBox machines very frequently) ;-).