Re: Slow "symbol-file" when using GDB 12.1 on Windows hosts

> From: Adrian Oltean <[email protected]>
> CC: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
> Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2023 12:29:25 +0000
> 
> Eli mentioned that the timestamps offered by Process Monitor are not relevant. However,
> I consider that the events and their timestamps are relevant when compared to the
> ones generated by GDB 10. There's no attempt to access "C:\Windows\CSC" when
> using GDB 10. If that file access wouldn't be attempted by GDB 12, I'm pretty sure
> there wouldn't be any slowdown.

Any idea why GDB is accessing all those directories?  I cannot know
what kind of directory structure you have there, and so cannot reason
about the directories being accessed by GDB or whether it should
access some directory.  What are those directories, and why
symbol-file causes GDB to access them?

> By the way, there's no spike in CPU/memory usage when invoking
> "symbol-file" but, on my PC, "C:\Windows\CSC" is completely
> inaccessible with my user account.

That is probably the real culprit: some directory that needs some
special credentials, or which causes GDB to call some network-related
resources which are inaccessible or something.  So understanding why
GDB tries to access that directory and/or making its access faster,
might fix your problem.

> Maybe you guys can also answer (some of) the questions from my initial email?

Which ones?