GDB (the GNU Debugger) Pretty Printers for Boost

Since version 7.0 GDB has Python scripting support. This can be used to provide “Pretty Printers” to make the output of GDB more usable. The libstdc++ project currently provides a set of pretty printers for their implementation of the C++ standard library. This projects goal is to provide a similar set of pretty printers for the Boost library.

Help is appreciated!

See supported.txt for supported classes and names of contributors.

The pretty printers are licensed under the terms of the Boost Software License, version 1.0.

Installation:

GDB version 7 or better is required!

Check out the git repository

git clone git://github.com/ruediger/Boost-Pretty-Printer.git

and add the following lines to your ~/.gdbinit

python
import sys
sys.path.insert(0, 'PATH-TO-THE-REPO/Boost-Pretty-Printer')
from boost.printers import register_printer_gen
register_printer_gen(None)
end

and of course replace PATH-TO-THE-REPO with the absolute path to the Boost Pretty Printer repository. If you have no ~/.gdbinit file just create it.

Now you can simply use GDB’s print (short p) statement to pretty print the supported boost objects.

Example

$ cat > foo.c++
#include <boost/range/iterator_range.hpp>
using namespace boost;

int main() {
  char buf[] = "Hello World";
  iterator_range<char const*> range(buf, buf + sizeof(buf));

  return range[0];
}
^D
$ g++ -g3 foo.c++
$ gdb -q a.out
Reading symbols from /home/ruediger/develop/demos/a.out...done.
(gdb) break 7
Breakpoint 1 at 0x4006cb: file /home/ruediger/develop/demos/foo.c++, line 7.
(gdb) run
Starting program: /home/ruediger/develop/demos/a.out

Breakpoint 1, main () at /home/ruediger/develop/demos/foo.c++:8
8         return range[0];
(gdb) p range
$1 = boost::iterator_range<char const*> of length 12 = {72 'H', 101 'e', 108 'l', 108 'l', 111 'o', 32 ' ', 87 'W', 111 'o', 114 'r', 108 'l', 100 'd', 0 '\000'}

GDB Subprinters and Version Numbers

Recent versions of gdb allow the user to list, enable, and disable individual printers and subprinters. For more information, see the GDB documentation. This python module installs a single top-level printer called boost, and individual subprinters for the various supported types. Each individual subprinter comes with a version number corresponding to the boost version number that it was designed for. As boost evolves, older printers might stop working.

Multi_Index_Container

The printer included here can only print Ordered (Unique or Non-Unique) and Sequenced indexes. Hashed and Random-Access indexes are not currently supported, though with the default settings, the printer will capture them and display an appropriate message. It is possible to specify which index to use for printing a specific container dynamically, from inside GDB. See the examples folder.