Ubuntu 14.04, gcc 4.8.4: gdb pretty printing doesn't work because of Python issue

Question

I'm getting this error when launching a program in gdb:

Using host libthread_db library "/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libthread_db.so.1".
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/share/gdb/auto-load/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6.0.19-gdb.py", line 63, in <module>
from libstdcxx.v6.printers import register_libstdcxx_printers
ImportError: No module named 'libstdcxx'

Google turned up this bug report: http://osdir.com/ml/debian-gcc/2014-02/msg00061.html This bug report list using the command python print sys.path on the gdb prompt. However, when I try to use any python on the gdb prompt, this happens:

(gdb) python print sys.path
File "<string>", line 1
print sys.path
        ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
Error while executing Python code.

(gdb) python print "Hello"
File "<string>", line 1
print "HellO"
            ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
Error while executing Python code.

I'm using Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, relevant version information:

$ gcc --version
gcc (Ubuntu 4.8.4-2ubuntu1~14.04) 4.8.4
$ gdb --version
GNU gdb (Ubuntu 7.7.1-0ubuntu5~14.04.2) 7.7.1
$ python --version
Python 2.7.6

Clearly, something in my setup is broken. Is it python, gdb, or something else?

Answer 1

I'm posting this as an answer so it will be easier for others to find it. The comments from Mark Plotnick and webbertiger are the actual answer.

To summarize, here is what worked for me:

• Created a ~/.gdbinit file
• Added python sys.path.append("/usr/share/gcc-4.8/python"); to that file

I'm using Eclipse CDT so I checked that this file is being used in window > preferences > GDB > GDB command file.