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23.2.3 Auto-loading

When a new object file is read (for example, due to the file command, or because the inferior has loaded a shared library), gdb will look for Python support scripts in several ways: objfile-gdb.py (see objfile-gdb.py file) and .debug_gdb_scripts section (see dotdebug_gdb_scripts section).

The auto-loading feature is useful for supplying application-specific debugging commands and scripts.

Auto-loading can be enabled or disabled, and the list of auto-loaded scripts can be printed.

set auto-load-scripts [yes|no]
Enable or disable the auto-loading of Python scripts.


show auto-load-scripts
Show whether auto-loading of Python scripts is enabled or disabled.


info auto-load-scripts [regexp]
Print the list of all scripts that gdb auto-loaded.

Also printed is the list of scripts that were mentioned in the .debug_gdb_scripts section and were not found (see dotdebug_gdb_scripts section). This is useful because their names are not printed when gdb tries to load them and fails. There may be many of them, and printing an error message for each one is problematic.

If regexp is supplied only scripts with matching names are printed.

Example: 

          (gdb) info auto-load-scripts
          Loaded  Script
          Yes     py-section-script.py
                  full name: /tmp/py-section-script.py
          Missing my-foo-pretty-printers.py

When reading an auto-loaded file, gdb sets the current objfile. This is available via the gdb.current_objfile function (see Objfiles In Python). This can be useful for registering objfile-specific pretty-printers.