gdb-add-index - Add index files to speed up GDB

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       Permission  is  granted  to  copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free
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       Front-Cover Texts being "A GNU Manual," and with the Back-Cover Texts as in (a) below.

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gdb-16.2                                           2025-03-21                                   GDB-ADD-INDEX(1)

       When GDB finds a symbol file, it scans the symbols in the file in order to construct an internal symbol
       table.  This lets most GDB operations work quickly--at the cost of a delay early on.  For large programs,
       this delay can be quite lengthy, so GDB provides a way to build an index, which speeds up startup.

       To determine whether a file contains such an index, use the command "readelf -S filename": the index is
       stored in a section named ".gdb_index" (pre-DWARF 5) or ".debug_names" and ".debug_str" (DWARF 5).
       Indexes can only be produced on systems which use ELF binaries and DWARF debug information (i.e.,
       sections named ".debug_*").

       By default gdb-add-index will add a pre-DWARF 5 ".gdb_index" section to filename.  With -dwarf-5 DWARF 5
       sections are added instead.

       filename must be writable.

       gdb-add-index uses GDB, objcopy, and readelf found in the PATH environment variable.  If you want to use
       different versions of these programs, you can specify them through the appropriate environment variables
       (see below).

       gdb-add-index exits with status 0 if it succeeds in creating the index for filename or greater than 0 if
       an error occurs.

       See more in the GDB manual in node "Index Files" -- shell command "info -f gdb -n "Index Files"".

GDB Full  file  name  of  the  "gdb"  program  to use for index generation.  If not set, the PATH will be
           searched for a "gdb" program.

       OBJCOPY
           Full file name of the "objcopy" program to use to copy section information into the given  file.   If
           not set, the PATH will be searched for a "objcopy" program.

       READELF
           Full  file name of the "readelf" program to use to inspect properties of the given file.  If not set,
           the PATH will be searched for a "readelf" program.

       gdb-add-index - Add index files to speed up GDB

-dwarf-5
           Add DWARF 5 sections instead of previous ".debug_index" section.

       The full documentation for GDB is maintained as a Texinfo manual.  If the "info" and "gdb"  programs  and
       GDB's Texinfo documentation are properly installed at your site, the command

               info gdb

       should give you access to the complete manual.

       UsingGDB:AGuidetotheGNUSource-LevelDebugger, Richard M. Stallman and Roland H. Pesch, July 1991.

       gdb-add-index [-dwarf-5] filename