A Winter’s Tale: Improving messages and types in GDB’s Python API

By Matheus Branco Borella, University of São Paulo

As a winter associate at Trail of Bits, my goal was to make two improvements to the GNU Project Debugger (GDB): make it run faster and improve its Python API to support and improve tools that rely on it, like Pwndbg. The main goal was to run symbol parsing in parallel and better use all available CPU cores. I ultimately implemented three changes that enhanced GDB’s Python API.

Beyond the …

api beyond bits code cpu debugger gnu main messages parsing patches project python run support tools trail of bits types university winter