Gwen moved to transfem socialMay 26, 2025
Hey you. Do you like low level programming? would you like to contribute to a large and well established project? Because I'm always looking to help new contributors getting started on GDB! It uses C++, but you may also end up needing to remove abstraction layers, so there's tons of things not-C++ to think about, if you want to.

I know that contributing to the GNU Debugger may sound like it's something that would be incredibly hard, or that you need ungodly amounts of knowledge to improve, because that's literally how I felt before sending my first patch, but the truth is, the project was developed by people (humans and otherwise), so silly bugs will abound, and simple oversights will need correcting. There is stuff for every level of programmer to do, from "I've worked on the kernel for 20 years" to "this is my 1st year in college and I'm not scared of large projects"

And here's the kicker, I want more contributors to the GDB project. So, if you are interested in this at all, you can hit me up and I will do my best to help you get setup to contribute (from compiling locally, to setting up git-send-email, running tests) and then help you understand the bugs, the code, and how to make a good commit message (to GDB's standards anyway). I've literally done code-walks with other mentees in the past, I eager to share as much of my experience as you would like to have! and I do my best to be ADHD/autistic friendly, since I'm AuDHD myself and would have really loved a mentor that did that for me in the past...

So... yeah, don't be afraid to reach out!

EDIT: Hi everyone! I made a poll on why people don't contribute, please vote and share here: https://kitsunes.club/notes/aas2it3uwq I'm editing this so that everyone that liked and boosted the post notices and votes on the poll.
Gwen, the Fops :therian::itits: (@gwenthekween)

Hi Fedi verse, it is I the GDB fops again! I want to collect data about why people aren't contributing to GDB. If you haven't contributed to GDB, please take a moment to vote and boost for reach. This poll accepts multiple answers, but please only vote on the ones that would actually get you to try to contribute if they were changed This data will be used to understand and hopefully figure out ways to improve the project for people who would like to participate. Feel free to expand on your answer! Why have you not contributed? (📊) RE: Hey you. Do you like low level programming? would you like to contribute to a large and well established project? Because I'm always looking to help new contributors getting started on GDB! It uses C++, but you may also end up needing to remove abstraction layers, so there's tons of things not-C++ to think about, if you want to. I know that contributing to the GNU Debugger may sound like it's something that would be incredibly hard, or that you need ungodly amounts of knowledge to improve, because that's literally how I felt before sending my first patch, but the truth is, the project was developed by people (humans and otherwise), so silly bugs will abound, and simple oversights will need correcting. There is stuff for every level of programmer to do, from "I've worked on the kernel for 20 years" to "this is my 1st year in college and I'm not scared of large projects" And here's the kicker, I want more contributors to the GDB project. So, if you are interested in this at all, you can hit me up and I will do my best to help you get setup to contribute (from compiling locally, to setting up git-send-email, running tests) and then help you understand the bugs, the code, and how to make a good commit message (to GDB's standards anyway). I've literally done code-walks with other mentees in the past, I eager to share as much of my experience as you would like to have! and I do my best to be ADHD/autistic friendly, since I'm AuDHD myself and would have really loved a mentor that did that for me in the past... So... yeah, don't be afraid to reach out! EDIT: Hi everyone! I made a poll on why people don't contribute, please vote and share here: https://kitsunes.club/notes/aas2it3uwq I'm editing this so that everyone that liked and boosted the post notices and votes on the poll.

KitsuClub
Show threadWhitepaws &🏳️‍🌈🇳🇱
@gwenthekween I rarely use GDB at all, but your post caught my eye. I have occasionally wondered what GDB could do for me, in terms of making me more effective and letting me do things I didn't know I could do. Surely if it's a popular tool, I must be missing out on something?
Jul 1, 2025 at 8:58pmWeb
Show threadGwen moved to transfem socialJul 1, 2025
@ruawhitepaw If you use a debugger at all, I would need to compare what you use to GDB to say for certain (especially since many IDE debuggers are actually using GDB under the hood), but off the top of my head, main useful features of gdb are:

* lets you stop the program when a variable changes
* lets you stop the program on a specific location (only when some conditions are met, if you'd like conditions)
* lets you examine the stack of calls until the current location; and letting you move up and down those calls to examine what local variables look like
* (with some asterisks) lets you unwind the execution to see what happened previously
* lets you control the execution of threads to some extent (though manual and somewhat time consuming), allowing you to manually create race conditions
* lets you change the state of the program, to quickly test solutions without recompiling, or force unreliable bugs to happen
* lets you call arbitrary functions of the program, so you know what results would happen or you can manually try some setup as a fix attempt with no recompilation
* lets you explore the control flow and structures of the program (if it has debug information), so you can reverse engineer easier, or at least coalesce fragmented structure definitions into one single screen
* when using gdbserver as well, you can debug something on machine/container A from machine/container B (please don't expose this to the internet though, there is no security whatsoever and anyone connecting has 3 full programming languages at their disposal)

I'm sure there's more that I even used myself, but I can't think of them since I've been on vacation for a week lol