Re: <incomplete type> problems with gdb 4.16

[jurgen at rle-vlsi dot mit dot edu]

I have the same and worse problems with egcs 1.0.1 and gdb 4.16 on a
Pentium II PC under linux 2.0.30

1. gdb tends to seg-fault and die on me.
2. member function arguments are often only recognized as <error type>
3. often (but not always) I cannot print member variables of classes. E.g.,
   I have a class Entity with a member size_t numberOfPanels_. 
   Issuing the gdb command p numberOfPanels_ while being inside a member
   function results in:
   Internal error: 'this' is not of aggregate type

   I have not been able so far to isolate this behavior into a reasonably
   small program

4. When compiling with the -ggdb flag the debugger cannot find any source code,
   only the -g flag works in this respect 

5. I had gdb compiled with egcs. This resulted in memory violations - the
   debugger core dumped after usage (when exiting). This problem vanished
   after I compiled gdb with gcc 2.7.2

Essentially, it is impossible to meaningfully use gdb and egcs 1.0.1 together.
Since I use partial template specializations not supported by g++ 2.7.2, I am
back to print statements. This is a debugging approach I could live without.

-- Jurgen