valgrind-arm64

Containerized Valgrind and GDB to allow Apple Silicon users to debug code on their machines without the need for a VM.

My idea stems from necessity, I am taking a university course in Computer Systems at Sapienza University of Rome, and I had to install a bulky virtual machine on my MacBook just to run those two programs.

I set up my Dockerfile to create a new directory to set as working directory, this is for ease of use and compatibility among different machines (by not specifying a single directory on my personal machine anyone can use this). Feel free to substitute it with your preferred directory.

Please note that the following steps are taken inside the same directory as the Dockerfile

First, you have to build your docker container: docker build -t valgrind . After that, run that same container: docker run -d -it --name valgrind_gdb valgrind

With the container open, you may now attach that running container to VSC using the Dev Containers extension on VSC, and by selecting attach to running container.

OPTIONAL

When inside the VSC terminal, edit via nano or your favorite editor the .gdbinit file, by entering nano ~/.gdbinit and paste inside that file the following:

define go
    start
    layout src
    layout regs
    focus cmd
end

This enables the source and registers layout when debugging using gdb, activated by the new command "go".

The optional section was taken from the material provided by my professors

Done