C.6 System-wide configuration and settings

GDB can be configured to have a system-wide init file; this file will be read and executed at startup (see What GDB does during startup).

Here is the corresponding configure option:

--with-system-gdbinit=file

Specify that the default location of the system-wide init file is file.

If GDB has been configured with the option --prefix=$prefix, it may be subject to relocation. Two possible cases:

• If the default location of this init file contains $prefix, it will be subject to relocation. Suppose that the configure options are --prefix=$prefix --with-system-gdbinit=$prefix/etc/gdbinit; if GDB is moved from $prefix to $install, the system init file is looked for as $install/etc/gdbinit instead of $prefix/etc/gdbinit.
• By contrast, if the default location does not contain the prefix, it will not be relocated. E.g. if GDB has been configured with --prefix=/usr/local --with-system-gdbinit=/usr/share/gdb/gdbinit, then GDB will always look for /usr/share/gdb/gdbinit, wherever GDB is installed.

If the configured location of the system-wide init file (as given by the --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the system-wide init file in the directory specified by the --data-directory command-line option. Note that the system-wide init file is only read once, during GDB initialization. If the data-directory is changed after GDB has started with the set data-directory command, the file will not be reread.