Before I debug or execute a program on my system at work, I have to source a file that contains numerous paths and settings that are specific to each project. Is there a way I can do this from gdb? I tried putting it into a .gdbinit file in the working directory, but that doesn't seem to be working. I tried to see if the environmental variable was set by typing
(gdb) shell echo $MY_VAR
and it was blank. Any ideas?
Basically to set the environment variable in the command prompt, you can use the set environment varname [=value]. More information is present here. Since you have noted down there are huge number of paths to be set, you can add them to a file like myGdbSrc and then load them explicitly using source [-s] [-v] filename. You can find details on loading a file here.
I have tried both of them and it works.
HTH.
PS: I have tried it on GNU GDB 6.6 version on SUSE Linux. However, it must work across all version since it seems to be basic command.
How about writing a wrapper script which sources your settings before loading gdb?
E.g. some trivial example:
#!/bin/sh
source my-script-which-sets-up-the-environment
gdb $*
This can of course also add arguments to the gdb invocation to setup paths, load a gdb script, etc.
