Re: Weird x86 Linux/GNU crashes

[Phil Edwards <phil at jaj dot com>]

On Wed, Jul 31, 2002 at 09:33:41AM -0700, Joe Buck wrote:
> David Miller writes:
> > GDB exec's a shell to setup your environment properly then execute the
> > program to be debugged.  In this way GDB's environemnt doesn't need
> > to be altered among other things.
> 
> This "feature" of gdb has caused me nothing but pain over the years; no
> other program thinks it needs to "setup your environment properly" rather
> than just use the environment as is.  In almost every case where I have
> trouble, the environment *was* set up properly before GDB destroyed it by
> exec-ing a shell.  Life tends to be worse for csh/tcsh users, but bash
> users can also be messed up.

This explains so much...  GDB has suddenly become useable for me, now that
I know of this "feature" (and can turn it the #!$& off).


> Unfortunately, gdb's developers like it this way, so the rest of us just
> have to work around the damage.

Freaky.  You'd think if they wanted GDB to run with a different environment,
they'd use env(1) or something when starting the debugger.


Phil

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