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B.1 Requirements for Building gdb

Building gdb requires various tools and packages to be available. Other packages will be used only if they are found.

Tools/Packages Necessary for Building gdb

ISO C90 compiler
gdb is written in ISO C90. It should be buildable with any working C90 compiler, e.g. GCC.

Tools/Packages Optional for Building gdb

Expat
gdb can use the Expat XML parsing library. This library may be included with your operating system distribution; if it is not, you can get the latest version from http://expat.sourceforge.net. The configure script will search for this library in several standard locations; if it is installed in an unusual path, you can use the --with-libexpat-prefix option to specify its location.

Expat is used for:


zlib
gdb will use the ‘zlib’ library, if available, to read compressed debug sections. Some linkers, such as GNU gold, are capable of producing binaries with compressed debug sections. If gdb is compiled with ‘zlib’, it will be able to read the debug information in such binaries.

The ‘zlib’ library is likely included with your operating system distribution; if it is not, you can get the latest version from http://zlib.net.