GNU Debugger 12.1 Released With Multi-Threaded Symbol Loading By Default

Released on Sunday was GDB 12.1 as the newest version of the GNU Debugger.

GDB continues progressing nicely for this multi-language, multi-platform debugger. GDB 12.1 brings up a number of changes including:

A newly supported target with GDB 12.1 is being able to debug LoongArch on Linux.

The OpenRISC CPU architecture sees improvements with GDB 12.1 -- now having native configuration support for OpenRISC or1k on Linux and also now having GDBserver support too. OpenRISC doesn't see nearly the amount of attention as RISC-V but this open-source processor architecture does continue progressing and having some devoted developers and followers.

Another notable change is the multi-threaded symbol loading for GDB is now enabled by default. Back in GDB 9.1 back in 2020 it introduced multi-threaded symbol loading as a means of faster performance on modern multi-core systems. Now with GDB 12.1, the multi-threaded code is deemed safe enough to enable by default.

Other GNU Debugger 12.1 changes include Python API improvements, improved C++ template support, async mode for the FreeBSD native target, and other debugging enhancements.

Downloads and more details on the GDB 12.1 release via SourceWare.org.