GRGraziano_M·Aug 13, 2017
GEF as well: https://github.com/hugsy/gef
Voltron adds awesome views, GEF adds a lot of handy functionality. I use both (often together)
In Give me 15 minutes and I'll change your view of GDB (2015) [video]hugsy
gef
Python2017–2025
hugsy / gef
gef
GEF (GDB Enhanced Features) - a modern experience for GDB with advanced debugging capabilities for exploit devs & reverse engineers on Linux
Developer ToolsSystems & InfrastructureScience & EngineeringSecurity & PrivacyCommunication & Social
10Distinct people
11Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
8.4KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
GEF (GDB Enhanced Features) - a modern experience for GDB with advanced debugging capabilities for exploit devs & reverse engineers on Linux
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
Using vanilla GDB is painful. As a bit of a shameless plug I recommend you check out GEF[1]. It's a large python script that extends GDB to make it a lot better to use. Notably…
Graziano_M used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
- longld/peda · linked in 2 of the same discussions
- pwndbg/pwndbg · 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, 5:05:26 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 year11 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2017-08-12 16:20:48 UTC to 2025-05-28 18:07:45 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 2 | 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 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 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 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
2 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.