How to Install GDB?

There are two ways you can install GDB on your linux machine.

1. Install pre-built gdb binaries from verified distribution resources

You can install gdb on Debian-based linux distro (e.g. Ubuntu, Mint, etc) by following command.

$ sudo apt-get update

$ sudo apt-get install gdb

2. Download source code of GDB, compile it and install.

Follow below mentioned steps to compile GDB from scratch and install it.

Step-1: Download source code.

You can download source code of all release from http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gdb/

$ wget "http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gdb/gdb-8.0.tar.gz"

Step-2: Extract it

$ tar -xvzf gdb-8.0.tar.gz

Step-3: Configure and Compile it.

$ cd gdb-8.0

gdb-8.0$ ./configure

gdb-8.0$ make

This step will take a bit of time. So you can sit back and have cup of beer for a while.

Once it is completed, you can locate gdb binary located at gdb-8.0/gdb/gdb

Step-4: Install GDB.

$ make install

By default this will install gdb binaries in /usr/local/bin and libs in /usr/local/lib

Congratulation, you have successfully compiled and installed GDB.

Once you installed GDB, you can print GDB version to test whether it is installed correctly.

$ gdb --version