- Compile with -Wall and pay attention to warnings.
- Turn off compiler optimization. Remove -O from your CFLAGS.
- Turn on debugging. Add -g to your CFLAGS.
- Set appropriate breakpoints.
- There is nothing wrong with throwing in a printf statement to narrow down your search. Use fprintf to print to stderr.
- gdb --args ./program --program-args
- break filename:lineno
- Use valgrind to eliminate memory leaks and clean things up. If you can't trigger it while debugging, it's probably a memory bug. (valgrind --leak-check=full -v --log-file=vg.out ./program --program-args)
- Define the error condition, then determine how it got that way.
- When you find the bug, look for similar bugs in all your other code.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
A list of things to remember when debugging a C program
These go for C++ as well. Assuming gcc/g++ and gdb.
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