Modular visual interface for GDB in Python
3 points · Open discussioncyrus-and
gdb-dashboard
Python2015–2024
cyrus-and / gdb-dashboard
gdb-dashboard
Modular visual interface for GDB in Python
22Distinct people
23Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
12.3KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Modular visual interface for GDB in Python
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
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Also in these discussions
- snare/voltron · linked in 2 of the same discussions
Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 2:04:58 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year23 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2015-09-11 16:38:44 UTC to 2024-04-11 10:01:15 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 3 | 0 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 2 | 3 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 1 | 5 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 1 | 4 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
From the project README
An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.
Read the project’s introduction
GDB dashboard
GDB dashboard is a standalone .gdbinit file written using the Python API that enables a modular interface showing relevant information about the program being debugged. Its main goal is to reduce the number of GDB commands needed to inspect the status of current program thus allowing the developer to primarily focus on the control flow.
Quickstart
Just place .gdbinit in your home directory, for example with:
wget -P ~ https://github.com/cyrus-and/gdb-dashboard/raw/master/.gdbinit
Optionally install Pygments to enable syntax highlighting:
pip install pygments
Then debug as usual, the dashboard will appear automatically every time the inferior program stops.
Keep in mind that no GDB command has been redefined, instead all the features are available via the main dashboard command (see help dashboard).
Head to the wiki to learn how to perform the most important tasks.
Read the full README on GitHubWhat Hacker News says
5 sourcesFirst of all, I agree! GDB without extensions is not that nice to use. But there exist several extensions (https://github.com/cyrus-and/gdb-dashboard, https://github.com/hugsy/gef, https://github.com/pwndbg/pwndbg, https://github.com/longld/peda, even though developed for it, these are not only useful for exploit dev!) that make it a lot better.
> - No way to get a 16-column (bytes+ASCII) standard hexdump. This is functionality that even the most basic debugger should have, yet it's missing from gdb.
This should be quite easy to implement as a small python snippet that you put in your ~/.gdbinit. Granted, this should be builtin functionality, but it also shows how extensible GDB can be.
> - If you write "b 0x12345" intending to set a breakpoint at address 0x12345, it doesn't work. An unnecessary and nonsensical extra asterisk is needed (w
Read the rest
hich makes it look like it's retrieving 4/8 bytes from 0x12345, and using that as the address of the breakpoint.)
Agreed, I never understood why that was necessary. It is really annoying. Perhaps someone wanted to avoid a conflict if you had a symbol named "0x12345"? (can you even do that?)
> - Starting gdb with a binary and passing arguments to it --- you'd expect it to be smart enough to realise that anything after the executable name should be the arguments to the debuggee and not the debugger, but it isnt.
I recently learned that gdb has a neat option called --args, that does exactly this:
gdb --args program arg1 arg2
GDB feels quite similar to VIM to me: you have to spent some time to get used to it, it has some warts but it is very flexible and useful if you know it.
Some other very nice:
https://github.com/snare/voltron
https://github.com/cyrus-and/gdb-dashboard
I particularly like Voltro's view modularity and backends support. But dashboard is a really nice throwback (SoftICE) with its theme and sensible default layout.
In Give me 15 minutes and I'll change your view of GDB (2015) [video]If you want to use a powerful gdb visual interface, you may want to try DDD. However, DDD has an old-fashioned GUI which is very crude. I have tried several visual debugging tools, such as RedHat Insight, DDD, Nemiver and kdbg, but none of them is enough powerful or stable. As far as I know, DDD can't display non-English comments in source code.
Now I'm using an awesome GDB init file to construct a convenient debugging interface. It's an open source project and you won't regret it:
https://github.com/cyrus-and/gdb-dashboard
There is also a browser-based frontend for GDB:
https://github.com/cs01/gdbgui
If you want to try more, search the keyword GDB on GitHub and sort by stars, then you will find many GDB enhancement tools.
In Give me 15 minutes and I'll change your view of GDB (2015) [video]Modular visual interface for GDB in Python
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