How to get Eclipse to give Cygwin's GDB a posix path to the executable?

Question

I'm using Eclipse on Windows to program C++ using Cygwin's toolchain. I would like to use it for debugging as well, but my problem is the following:

• The executable to debug is in a sub-folder of the workspace (pretty standard, I guess) but not of the actual Project from which the executable is built.
• Eclipse and GDB have different path formats: Eclipse works with Windows paths, whereas GDB works with posix paths. Eclipse knows D:\Path\To\Exe whereas GDB needs /cygdrive/d/Path/To/Exe.
• Eclipse insists that it can find the executable to debug when I enter the path in the "Debug configurations..." dialog. The "Debug" button is disabled until the path is correct.
• Eclipse does not seem to take ${workspace_loc} in that particular input box.

Is there some hidden option I don't know about? Have you had the problem before?

What I've tried so far

• Forcing Eclipse to pass the path I input to GDB --- did not work.
• Fiddling with source lookup paths and path mappings --- did not work, it's really just for source files.
• Creating a C++ Project for the output folder where the executable is, so I could have a relative path to the exe inside the project --- did not work.

Things I could still try

• Use the .gdbinit file to discard the path given by Eclipse and load the real executable with posix paths --- tried that, but not very hard.
• Specify a wrapper as argument to GDB --- pollutes the root of my workspace.
• Provide my own plug-in to deal with the case --- adds another piece of code to maintain in another language.

Answer 1

Cygwin comes with a program called cygpath to translate paths from windows to unix and vice-versa, e.g.

$ cygpath -u 'c:\Users\Andrew\Documents\svn'
/cygdrive/c/Users/Andrew/Documents/svn

do a cygpath --help for more info.

So you probably want to write a wrapper for GDB that translates any windows-specific paths to unix paths, and then invokes the real GDB.

Answer 2

In Eclipse in Preferences->C/C++->Debug->"Common Source Lookup Path" add new path mapping. As compilation path you should use Unix like path (e.g. /cygdrive/c), as local system path you should use Windows like path (e.g. c:).

Answer 3

The problem went away when upgrading to Eclipse Ganymede.