External programs and GDB Debugger

The "Run a program before debugging" option in Remote GDB Debugger options allows to automatically run a program (such as a debugging server) when starting a debugging session. If you enable it, the following options become available:

Command line

        Command line of the program to run. The following special symbols can be used:

%i: input file name from the Process options dialog %p: port number from the Process options dialog %e: file name of a temporary ELF file created from the database contents Initial SP

        IDA will set the SP (or a similar register) after connecting to the server

Choose a configuration

        Load one of the pre-defined configurations (command line, memory map and SP value)
        described in the gdb_arch.cfg file.

Memory map

        Edit the memory map for the external server. It will be used during debugging.

One use of these options is to debug small code snippets using the QEMU emulator.