Debugging without a debugger

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Debugging without a debugger

I have some crashes in some C code, built without debugging symbols, and I have only a backtrace with the absolute addresses of the call stack. This is on windows (64 bits). I am more of a linux guy, so I am a bit lost at how to look into debugging this - on Linux, I would run the code under valgrind, but AFAIK, no such tool exists for windows 64 bits.

What are my options ? I can modify the C code at will, but I cannot build it with the debug symbols. The reason why I cannot build with debugging symbols is that my binary is not built with MS tools (it is built with mingw-w64).

+1 A:

You need to generate a map file. A map file lists out the addresses of various public symbols (functions, globals etc) in your executable/binary. Usually it can be generated by passign on a special switch to the linker.

MSDN reference for /MAP

SDX2000 2009-06-26 11:43:31

I am not using MS compilers, so I cannot use this - I edited my question to make this clearer

David Cournapeau 2009-06-26 11:50:28

What compiler are you using then? Map files are an (almost) universal concept.

SDX2000 2009-06-26 11:53:58

David is using MinGW, and according to the MinGW FAQ, it can produce map files: http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~main/cs1300/doc/mingwfaq.html#debugging

RichieHindle 2009-06-26 11:56:09

Thanks for the link.

SDX2000 2009-06-26 11:58:58

Ah, nice, this indeed sound exactly like what I need.

David Cournapeau 2009-06-26 12:06:06

You should probably be using the ming version of gdb, which can understand the symbols embedded in the binary.

Paul Betts 2009-06-26 15:48:25

ansaurus

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