GCC doesn't produce line number information even with -g option

Question

I have built and installed GCC 4.8.1 from source:

$ gcc -v
Using built-in specs.
COLLECT_GCC=gcc
COLLECT_LTO_WRAPP         


        

Answer 1

Your gdb is too old -- you need a more recent gdb (I use 7.6) to understand the debugging info generated by gcc 4.8.1

Answer 2

Usually GCC uses dwarf as its main debugging file format, you need to enable dwarf support when building gcc with the flag --with-dwarf2.

While building your compiled object you can use -ggdb instead of -g which is a more specific solution but just for gdb.