The GLIB, GDK, and GTK libraries have extensive support for debugging the library and your programs. The amount of debugging being done can be determined both at run time and compile time. COMPILE TIME OPTIONS -------------------- At compile time, the amount of debugging support included is determined by four macros: G_ENABLE_DEBUG If set, enable support for runtime checking. G_DISABLE_ASSERT If set, disable g_assert macros G_DISABLE_CHECKS If set, disable the g_return_if_fail and g_return_val_if_fail macros G_DISABLE_CAST_CHECKS If set, don't check casts between different object types Whether these macros are defined is controlled at configuration time by the --enable-debug option. --enable-debug=minimum [default] Enable only inexpensive sanity checking sets G_DISABLE_CAST_CHECKS --enable-debug=yes Enable all debugging support sets G_ENABLE_DEBUG --enable-debug=no (or --disable-debug) Disable all debugging support (fastest) sets G_DISABLE_ASSERT, G_DISABLE_CHECKS, and G_DISABLE_CAST_CHECKS Note that !G_DISABLE_CHECKS and --enable-debug=no are to be considered not only fast, but dangerous as they tend to destabilize even mostly bug-free software by changing the effect of many bugs from simple warnings into fatal crashes. Thus --enable-debug=no should *not* be used for stable releases of gtk+. RUNTIME OPTIONS ---------------- At run time, if GTK+ was compiled with debugging enabled, different types of debugging information can be printed out. This is controlled by the: GTK_DEBUG and GDK_DEBUG environment variables --gtk-debug and --gdk-debug command line options --gtk-no-debug and --gdk-no-debug command line options First the environment variables are applied, then the command line options are applied in the order given on the command line. Each of these can either be the special value 'all', or a sequence of ':' separated options. (case is ignored). The environment variables and the --gtk-debug and --gdk-debug options add debugging options and the --gtk-no-debug and --gdk-no-debug options remove them. As noted below, some of these are useful in application debugging, but most are only interested to those debugging the libraries For instance: GDK_DEBUG_FLAGS=misc:dnd testgtk --gdk-no-debug dnd --gdk-debug events runs testgtk with the 'misc' and 'events' debugging options. See glib/docs/debugging.txt for information about debugging signal emission and the object system. GDK_DEBUG --------- Application relevant options: 'events' - Show all events received by GTK Options only interesting to library maintainers: 'misc' - Miscellaneous information 'dnd' - Information about drag-and-drop 'xim' - Information about X Input Method support GTK_DEBUG --------- Options only interesting to library maintainers: 'misc' - Miscellaneous information 'text' - Information about text widget internals 'tree' - Information about tree widget internals 'updates' - Visual feedback about window updates - 2001-08-13 Matthias Clasen - 98/02/19 Owen Taylor