Debugging

Don't strip symbols
As a first step, you may want to keep symbols in Executable and Linkable Format (ELF) files by the  FEATURE.

That way, all functions in the code will keep their name and e.g. can then show names in a backtrace instead of function addresses only.

Install debugging information
To install debugging information you can use the  feature. Furthermore, to install the source code you can activate the  feature which in turn requires the. These features are integrated so they provide you with an environment where can find both the debugging information and the sources and lets you fully use its interactive debugging features.

If  is in your default FEATURES,   won't do anything, so we disable it for debug-packages!

Then you can activate those new "environments" for packages you need the sources and/or debug info:

Now, if you debug program with gdb it will find the sources and debugging infos.

{{CodeBox|title=Example gdb session for debugging {{Package|dev-util/radare2}}|1= % gdb --args r2 /bin/ls Reading symbols from r2...Reading symbols from /usr/lib64/debug//usr/bin/radare2.debug...done. done. = gdb>> break main Breakpoint 1 at 0x2e70: file radare2.c, line 372. = gdb>> run Starting program: /usr/bin/r2 /bin/ls

Breakpoint 1, main (argc=2, argv=0x7fffffffdd98, envp=0x7fffffffddb0) at radare2.c:372 372   int main(int argc, char **argv, char **envp) { = gdb>> ...etc }}

Valgrind
Valgrind often needs debug information of the c-library to perform function redirection. For this, create the package debug environment described above and apply it for.

You should also stop stripping symbols for all packages to get meaningful backtraces.

You may have an extended debugging experience if you also activate debug symbols for the program you want to check (for local projects, build them with ).

Troubleshooting
It is possible that valgrind refuses to launch with an error containing the following. valgrind: A must-be-redirected function valgrind: whose name matches the pattern:      strlen valgrind: in an object with soname matching:   ld-linux-x86-64.so.2

In this case, you need to add  to   for  :