C.5 configure Options

Here is a summary of the configure options and arguments that are most often useful for building GDB. configure also has several other options not listed here. See (autoconf)Running configure Scripts, for a full explanation of configure.

configure [--help]
          [--prefix=dir]
          [--exec-prefix=dir]
          [--srcdir=dirname]
          [--target=target]

You may introduce options with a single ‘-’ rather than ‘--’ if you prefer; but you may abbreviate option names if you use ‘--’.

--help

Display a quick summary of how to invoke configure.

--prefix=dir

Configure the source to install programs and files under directory dir.

--exec-prefix=dir

Configure the source to install programs under directory dir.

--srcdir=dirname

Use this option to make configurations in directories separate from the GDB source directories. Among other things, you can use this to build (or maintain) several configurations simultaneously, in separate directories. configure writes configuration-specific files in the current directory, but arranges for them to use the source in the directory dirname. configure creates directories under the working directory in parallel to the source directories below dirname.

--target=target

Configure GDB for cross-debugging programs running on the specified target. Without this option, GDB is configured to debug programs that run on the same machine (host) as GDB itself.

There is no convenient way to generate a list of all available targets. Also see the --enable-targets option, below.

There are many other options that are specific to GDB. This lists just the most common ones; there are some very specialized options not described here.

--enable-targets=[target]…

--enable-targets=all

Configure GDB for cross-debugging programs running on the specified list of targets. The special value ‘all’ configures GDB for debugging programs running on any target it supports.

--with-gdb-datadir=path

Set the GDB-specific data directory. GDB will look here for certain supporting files or scripts. This defaults to the gdb subdirectory of ‘datadir’ (which can be set using --datadir).

--with-relocated-sources=dir

Sets up the default source path substitution rule so that directory names recorded in debug information will be automatically adjusted for any directory under dir. dir should be a subdirectory of GDB’s configured prefix, the one mentioned in the --prefix or --exec-prefix options to configure. This option is useful if GDB is supposed to be moved to a different place after it is built.

--enable-64-bit-bfd

Enable 64-bit support in BFD on 32-bit hosts.

--disable-gdbmi

Build GDB without the GDB/MI machine interface (see GDB/MI).

--enable-tui

Build GDB with the text-mode full-screen user interface (TUI). Requires a curses library (ncurses and cursesX are also supported).

--with-curses

Use the curses library instead of the termcap library, for text-mode terminal operations.

--with-debuginfod

Build GDB with libdebuginfod, the debuginfod client library. Used to automatically fetch ELF, DWARF and source files from debuginfod servers using build IDs associated with any missing files. Enabled by default if libdebuginfod is installed and found at configure time. For more information regarding debuginfod see Debuginfod.

--with-libunwind-ia64

Use the libunwind library for unwinding function call stack on ia64 target platforms. See http://www.nongnu.org/libunwind/index.html for details.

--with-system-readline

Use the readline library installed on the host, rather than the library supplied as part of GDB. Readline 7 or newer is required; this is enforced by the build system.

--with-system-zlib

Use the zlib library installed on the host, rather than the library supplied as part of GDB.

--with-expat

Build GDB with Expat, a library for XML parsing. (Done by default if libexpat is installed and found at configure time.) This library is used to read XML files supplied with GDB. If it is unavailable, some features, such as remote protocol memory maps, target descriptions, and shared library lists, that are based on XML files, will not be available in GDB. If your host does not have libexpat installed, you can get the latest version from http://expat.sourceforge.net.

--with-libiconv-prefix[=dir]

Build GDB with GNU libiconv, a character set encoding conversion library. This is not done by default, as on GNU systems the iconv that is built in to the C library is sufficient. If your host does not have a working iconv, you can get the latest version of GNU iconv from https://www.gnu.org/software/libiconv/.

GDB’s build system also supports building GNU libiconv as part of the overall build. See Requirements.

--with-lzma

Build GDB with LZMA, a compression library. (Done by default if liblzma is installed and found at configure time.) LZMA is used by GDB’s "mini debuginfo" feature, which is only useful on platforms using the ELF object file format. If your host does not have liblzma installed, you can get the latest version from https://tukaani.org/xz/.

--with-python[=python]

Build GDB with Python scripting support. (Done by default if libpython is present and found at configure time.) Python makes GDB scripting much more powerful than the restricted CLI scripting language. If your host does not have Python installed, you can find it on http://www.python.org/download/. The oldest version of Python supported by GDB is 3.0.1. The optional argument python is used to find the Python headers and libraries. It can be either the name of a Python executable, or the name of the directory in which Python is installed.

--with-guile[=guile]

Build GDB with GNU Guile scripting support. (Done by default if libguile is present and found at configure time.) If your host does not have Guile installed, you can find it at https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/. The optional argument guile can be a version number, which will cause configure to try to use that version of Guile; or the file name of a pkg-config executable, which will be queried to find the information needed to compile and link against Guile.

--without-included-regex

Don’t use the regex library included with GDB (as part of the libiberty library). This is the default on hosts with version 2 of the GNU C library.

--with-sysroot=dir

Use dir as the default system root directory for libraries whose file names begin with /lib’ or /usr/lib'. (The value of dir can be modified at run time by using the set sysroot command.) If dir is under the GDB configured prefix (set with --prefix or --exec-prefix options, the default system root will be automatically adjusted if and when GDB is moved to a different location.

--with-system-gdbinit=file

Configure GDB to automatically load a system-wide init file. file should be an absolute file name. If file is in a directory under the configured prefix, and GDB is moved to another location after being built, the location of the system-wide init file will be adjusted accordingly.

--with-system-gdbinit-dir=directory

Configure GDB to automatically load init files from a system-wide directory. directory should be an absolute directory name. If directory is in a directory under the configured prefix, and GDB is moved to another location after being built, the location of the system-wide init directory will be adjusted accordingly.

--enable-build-warnings

When building the GDB sources, ask the compiler to warn about any code which looks even vaguely suspicious. It passes many different warning flags, depending on the exact version of the compiler you are using.

--enable-werror

Treat compiler warnings as errors. It adds the -Werror flag to the compiler, which will fail the compilation if the compiler outputs any warning messages.

--enable-ubsan

Enable the GCC undefined behavior sanitizer. This is disabled by default, but passing --enable-ubsan=yes or --enable-ubsan=auto to configure will enable it. The undefined behavior sanitizer checks for C++ undefined behavior. It has a performance cost, so if you are looking at GDB’s performance, you should disable it. The undefined behavior sanitizer was first introduced in GCC 4.9.