Easier backtrace readability through colour

[drewnoakes]

Firstly, thanks for this project.

I think the readability of backtraces could be greatly improved by using different colours for the different components of the outputs.

(Yes I am debugging a deadlock!)

I feel a little colour would break down the slab of text and clearly separate key features:

• The primary function name in line
• Argument lists within params
• Source path and line number

It seems as though a regexp could be made for this purpose.

[gdbinit]

Hello,

Backtrace is an internal gdb command which gdb scripting has no control whatsoever.
To modify its output the gdb source code must be modified. The problem is which colors to use due to different people using different terminal configurations.
A potential hack could be to redirect output to a temporary file and insert colors there. Might work, check the latest commits for the entrypoint breakpoint that has code for redirection.

Best,
fG!

[drewnoakes]

Thanks for the explanation, @fg!.

[sashanicolas]

You can do it using GDB's Python API: the Frame Filter API and Frame Decorator API.
In fact, the project https://github.com/daskol/gdb-colour-filter already did this. I'm using it.

(I know it's been 4 years, but I got here, maybe others have and will too.)