DescriptionDominik 'Disconnect3d' Czarnota
2023-03-18 15:33:34 UTC
Hi,
GDB installed on Fedora Linux 13.1-1.fc37 has the gdb.VERSION attribute set to a "Fedora Linux 13.1-1.fc37" string. This can be seen with this command:
$ gdb --quiet --nx --batch --ex 'pi print(repr(gdb.VERSION))'
'Fedora Linux 13.1-1.fc37'
The problem is that this format is incompatible with what a non-patched GDB uses for this field. Let's see how it works on other systems:
1) Ubuntu
$ gdb --quiet --nx --batch --ex 'pi print(repr(gdb.VERSION))'
'10.2'
2) MacOS
$ gdb --quiet --nx --batch --ex 'pi print(repr(gdb.VERSION))'
'12.1'
3) Manjaro (and so Arch Linux)
$ gdb --quiet --nx --batch --ex 'pi print(repr(gdb.VERSION))'
'12.1'
Since normal GDB uses such format, a lot of GDB scripts/plugins like Pwndbg [0] also assume such format and this field is often used to do something based on the GDB version (e.g., use new features or apply workaround for old bugs). You can also see how some GDB scripts parse the gdb.VERSION field here [1].
Please, consider changing this the value of gdb.VERSION to "13.1" or "13.1-1.fc37" so it may be easier to parse.
[0] https://github.com/pwndbg/pwndbg
[1] https://grep.app/search?q=gdb.VERSION&filter[lang][0]=Python