how to generate pdb files while building library using mingw?

Question

I am cross compiling from linux to windows using the mingw32 tools. I need to generate pdb files for debugging on windows. Is there a way to do this?

Answer 1

this project gives you the ability to generate the pdb, it works in most cases for debuging :

https://github.com/rainers/cv2pdb

more details can help in this post about post mortem debugging

http://blog.morlad.at/blah/mingw_postmortem

Answer 2

GCC/MinGW produces debug info in its own format used by GNU GDB Debugger, there is no support for Microsoft PDB format. So you can:

1. build application on Windows with MSVC

2. use Windows version of GNU GDB

3. try to convert debug info to PDB and use Microsoft debuggers, but there is no mature solution

Answer 3

Another option is to cross-compile using llvm/clang instead of mingw, since llvm can now produce .pdb files. http://blog.llvm.org/2017/08/llvm-on-windows-now-supports-pdb-debug.html

That said, I just use cv2pdb. It doesn't translate everything correctly, but it's good enough.