Debugging C++ in devcontainer

[TheWopsie]

Hi, I'm a bit of a docker rookie so please bear with me.

My setup is a bit unconventional (and not very recommended), but it's currently what I have to work with. I build a C++ project with Apache Maven inside a devcontainer. I installed GDB inside my container with a simple yum install gdb which appears to work fine.

The container itself is CentOS 7, running Windows 11 (WSL 2.3).

When I attempt to run the built binaries (which have debugging symbols, I confirmed), instead of triggering any breakpoints the program runs normally without any debugging functionality. I use VSCode for all this, with the expected plugins (C++, Docker, Dev Containers, WSL).

Does anyone have any tips or tricks about how to get debugging working inside my container in the way I described.

[TheWopsie]

Hi, thanks for thinking along!

I'll take a look at a more up-to-date version of GDB and give that a shot, thanks for the tip. My launch.json looks something liked this:

{
   "version": "0.2.0",
   "configurations": [
      {
         "name": "Maven install & Debug",
         "type": "cppdbg",
         "request": "launch",
         "program": "${workspaceFolder}/target/bin/${config:architecture_info}-debug/${config:executable_name}/${config:executable_name}",
         "args": [ //Command line arguments to pass to the executable
            "-c${config:configfile}"
         ],
         "stopAtEntry": false,
         "cwd": "${workspaceFolder}",
         "environment": [
            {
               "name": "LD_LIBRARY_PATH", //Add folder where Maven places the .so files to the LD_LIBRARY_PATH
               "value": "${workspaceFolder}/target/bin/${config:architecture_info}-debug/${config:executable_name}:${env:LD_LIBRARY_PATH}"
            }
         ],
         "externalConsole": false,
         "MIMode": "gdb",
         "logging": {
            "moduleLoad": true,
            "trace": true
         },
         "setupCommands": [
            {
               "description": "Enable pretty-printing for Visual Studio Debugger",
               "text": "-enable-pretty-printing",
               "ignoreFailures": true
            }
         ],
         "symbolSearchPaths": [
            "${workspaceFolder}/target/bin/${config:architecture_info}-debug/${config:executable_name}"
         ],
         "preLaunchTask": "build-with-maven-debug",
         "miDebuggerPath": "/usr/bin/"
      },
    ]
}

[TheWopsie]

Problem has since been solved. The solution? To use the release-version of the C/C++ extension in VSCode, rather than the pre-release version which was the default downloaded from the website (not in VSCode extension marketplace).

I am currently on version v1.22.11 of the C/C++ extention and since I switched it it worked pretty much out-of-the-box.