Typically, the interaction between Qt Creator and the native debugger is set up automatically and you do not need to do anything. However, you might have an unsupported gdb version installed, your Linux environment might not have gdb installed at all, or you might want to use the debugging tools for Windows.

Note: To use the debugging tools for Windows, you must install them and add the Symbol Server provided by Microsoft to the symbol search path of the debugger. For more information, see Setting the Symbol Server in Windows.

This section explains the options you have for debugging C++ code and provides installation notes for the supported native debuggers.

Supported Native Debugger Versions

The debugger plugin supports different builds of the gdb debugger, both with and without the ability to use Python scripting. The Python enabled versions are preferred, but they are not available on Mac and on older versions of Linux. On Windows, Symbian, and Maemo, only the Python version is supported.

The non-Python versions use the compiled version of the debugging helpers, that you must enable separately. For more information, see Debugging Helpers Based on C++.

The Python version uses a script version of the debugging helpers that does not need any special setup.

The CDB native debugger has similar funtionality to the non-Python gdb debugger engine. Specifically, it also uses compiled C++ code for the debugging helper library.

The following table summarizes the support for debugging C++ code:

Installing Native Debuggers

There are various reasons why the debugger plugin may fail to automatically pick up a suitable native debugger. The native debugger might be missing (which is usually the case for the CDB debugger on Windows which always needs to be installed manually by the user) or the installed version is not supported. Check the table below for the supported versions and other important information about installing native debuggers.

Setting the Symbol Server in Windows

To obtain debugging information for the operating system libraries for debugging Windows applications, add the Symbol Server provided by Microsoft to the symbol search path of the debugger:

1. Select Tools > Options... > Debugger > Cdb.
2. In the Symbol paths field, open the Insert... menu and select Symbol Server....
3. Select a directory where you want to store the cached information and click OK.

   Use a subfolder in a temporary directory, such as C:\temp\symbolcache.

Note: Populating the cache might take a long time on a slow network connection.

Note: The first time you start debugging by using the Debugging tools for Windows, Qt Creator prompts you to add the Symbol Server.