GNOME Builder: "A suitable debugger can't be found" error

Question

I am trying to debug a sample program in Gnome Builder IDE that is written in C, but there is a pop up each time I am pressing the "Debug" button, that says "Failed to initialize debugger: a suitable debugger could not be found".

I am using Manjaro Linux XFCE, the project is make-based, so no meson.

Here is a part of my makefile:

all: koala
WARNINGS = -Wall
DEBUG = -fno-omit-frame-pointer -g
OPTIMIZE = -O2

koala: Makefile koala.c
    gcc -o $@ $(WARNINGS) $(DEBUG) $(OPTIMIZE) koala.c -lm

UPD: Tried debugging on some sample project with Meson - it works. Now I want to figure out how to use it with make projects.

Answer 1

Same issue here: have a C++ project I am building with make on gnome-builder 3.38 and no chance to spawn gdb from the UI.

By searching the Gnome forums, it appears that at the time I am writing this answer Builder doesn't know how to execute the final executable/environment through make. Hence it cannot launch GDB.

Meson is the only option to graphically debug in Builder for now and since Builder is very much targeting Gnome applications develoment, hence Meson, I have not seen a clear roadmap to support GDB via make.