GDB Debugger Lands CTF Support

The GNU Debugger (GDB) now has support for the Compact C Type Format following support for this debugging information format having been added to the GCC compiler and Binutils.

The CTF debug format is described as "a reduced form of debugging information whose main purpose is to describe the type of C entities such as structures, unions, typedefs and function arguments at the global scope only. It does not contain debug information about source lines, location expressions, or local variables."

CTF is a simpler format than DWARF with a goal of being faster and simpler than dealing with debuginfo packages. CTF was developed by Sun/Oracle and the format is documented here.

In plumbing the GNU toolchain for CTF support, GDB now has initial support.