Specify GDB version for Termdebug

Question

I am trying to use :Termdebug in Vim 8.1 on a CentOS machine. The default version of GDB at /usr/bin/gdb is less than the required v7.12. However, I have newer versions of GDB within devtoolset distributions I have installed with yum. To enable newer GDB versions, I need to run source /opt/rh/devtoolset-{version}/enable.

I don't want to source that script in my .bashrc and disrupt my default environment. Is there anyway I can run that command on running :Termdebug?

Is this possible with :TermdebugCommand?

Answer 1

As pointed out by Christian (all credits to him) in this comment, setting g:termdebugger does the trick. Put this into your .vimrc:

let g:termdebugger='/path/to/your/gdb'

Single quotes are needed.

Answer 2

You can always have a look at that enable script and interpret it if it's simple enough like setting a bunch of environment variables: PATH=...;LD_LIBRARY_PATH=....

This is what I've done in an unpackaged plugin that wraps lmod module command.

• The plugin file: https://github.com/LucHermitte/lh-misc/blob/master/plugin/lmod.vim

• The autoload plugin file: https://github.com/LucHermitte/lh-misc/blob/master/autoload/lh/lmod.vim -- this is where the magic happens

  • I execute $LMOD_CMD with the right context in order to extract what it returns (to be evaluated)
  • and then I parse all the assignments and convert them into :let $VAR="value"

(module permits to work on complex environments (like HPC clusters) where numerous softwares, compilers, etc are installed. Some are compatible between them, some are not. With module we can dynamically enable or disable what we need at a given time. On such systems, devtoolset scripts would be typically converted into a lmod module script)