Multithread C/C++ Debugging on Emulators and Rooted Devices from Android 1.5

In Android 2.2 Google announced ndk-gdb script which ease the debugging on the device. Later it turns out that it is not capable of debugging any other thread than the main thread.

In Android 2.3 Google ships fixed setup so you are now finally able to debug multithread application.

In fact multithread debugging is possible at least from Android 1.5. But you have to set up the environment yourself. Due to permissions limitation it is only possible on rooted devices. But it is possible on emulator as emulator is always rooted!

How C/C++ Debugging Works on Android

How debugging of C/C++ code works on Android? Nothing special actually. Gdb itself has a feature for remote debugging.

Using Eclipse for Android C/C++ Debugging

Yes. You can use Eclipse for debugging of C/C++ code. I personally prefer cgdb but if you want to debug in Eclipse here is how.

Using cgdb with ndk-debug (and cgdb tutorial)

Android ndk (http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/index.html) comes with ndk-gdb command that starts gdb debugger and connects it to Android application.

cgdb (http://cgdb.sourceforge.net/) is superior console front-end to gdb so it seems logical to use it for debugging of Android applications. Following modification of ndk-gdb script will cause that cgdb will be invoked instead of gdb.

Using Eclipse for Android C/C++ Development

Programming in C/C++ on Android is just awesome! This tutorial shows how to setup Eclipse for using C/C++ together with Java in Android projects.