GDB 7.4.1 for Android with NEON support

This page provides a newer version of GDB and gdbserver for Android.

If you are experiencing problems debugging native Android code, this might be caused by the old GDB version included with NDK. The GDB and gdbserver provided with Android NDK for Windows are based on GDB 6.6, that was released more than 5 years ago.

We provide binaries of gdb 7.4.1 and gdbserver 7.4.1 built with Android patches. The following features are added in comparison to gdb 6.6:

  • Support for NEON registers
  • Support for THUMB instruction disassembly
  • Reduced crashes
  • Increased performance

The following releases are available:

GDB NDK Download link (GDB + gdbserver)
7.4.1 r8 arm-linux-android-gdb+gdbserver.zip

Installation instructions:

  1. Download and unpack the ZIP file.
  2. Open <NDK>\toolchains\arm-linux-androideabi-4.4.3\prebuilt\windows\bin directory
  3. Rename arm-linux-androideabi-gdb.exe to arm-linux-androideabi-gdb-OLD.exe
  4. Copy the new gdb.exe to the current folder.
  5. Open the <NDK>\toolchains\arm-linux-androideabi-4.4.3\prebuilt directory
  6. Rename gdbserver file to gdbserver_old
  7. Copy the new gdbserver to the current folder

Note that you'll have to rebuild your apps so that the new gdbserver is included in the APK files.

If you are using VisualGDB for Android, you don't need to replace anything manually. Simply check the "Use GDB 7.x" checkbox in VisualGDB project settings.

 If you are not using it yet, have a look through our quickstart tutorial. NDK debugging can be really easy.