Adding gdb to MinGW

Question

I've gone to http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=2435, downloaded the Automated MinGW Installer for MinGW 5.1.4 and at the same time the GNU Source-Level Debugger Release Candidate: GDB 6.8-3. I've then installed MinGW base tools into C:\MinGW. No problem so far.

However when I come to install the gdb debugger it has a lot of files and folders with the same names as some already installed but the files are different to those already installed. e.g C:\MinGW\include\bfd.h is 171 KB but gdb-6.8-mingw-3\include\bfd.h is 184 KB.

How do I add gdb to MinGW without breaking what's already installed?

Answer 1

The Current Release (5.2.1) version of gdb at the project files page has always worked for me. The download is a stand-alone .exe, you don't need anything else.

But I'll bet the .exe in the 6.8 package will work, too. I'd try using just the .exe, and then if there are problems, try extracting the other files from the 6.8 package. (Though that may cause problems with the rest of the MinGW installation.)

Update: There seems to be a 7.something version. I haven't tested it thoroughly, but it seems to work, even with gcc 3.

Answer 2

Get Wascana Desktop Developer. It combines MinGW, gcc, Eclipse and gdb in one package.

Answer 3

You can safely overwrite the files prepackaged with MinGW with the (newer) ones from the gdb tarball. You can also choose not to overwrite them - just make sure to pick either one set, i.e. avoid mixing files from the older and the newer package.

Most of the offending files are probably not really relevant to you anyway. For example, the files belonging to the libbfd library aren't required for gdb's day to day operation, they're used if you want to extend the debugger or write debugging tools yourself.

At any rate, make a backup of the mingw directory before untarring the new release. It's very easy since MinGW is self-contained in that directory. That way, if anything should malfunction, you can just delete the directory and restore from the backup.

Answer 4

The TDM GCC/MinGW32 builds installer includes gdb. It's gcc 4.4.x with all the core binary packages required for basic Windows development, and is widely used without any unusual problems.