Debugging

Making awesome with special cflags give more complete backtrace: make CFLAGS+='-O0 -fno-inline -ggdb3'.

[edit] Debugging with gdb

If you get a crash inside awesome (segmentation fault, signal 11), please give a backtrace. You can achieve that using gdb.

Launch awesome
Attach gdb (using tty1 is better) with gdb -p `pidof awesome`
Type continue at gdb prompt
Wait for the crash
Type bt to get the backtrace, bt full to have more information
You can move between calls by using frame # where # is the frame number, and then you can print variable using print

If awesome crashes at startup then you cannot attach gdb. Use this alternative:

Login on tty1
Start with X :1
Set your DISPLAY environment variable to this X server: export DISPLAY=:1
Run awesome inside with gdb awesome
Launch awesome by running run
When it has crashed, type bt to get the backtrace, bt full to have more information
You can move between calls by using frame # where # is the frame number, and then you can print variable using print

Before running X, in the tty, type: ulimit -c unlimited
startx, and reproduce the segfault of awesome. Ok. Segfaulted ? Good :)
You'll have normally a file named 'core' in your home, or the directory where you have started X
gdb awesome ./core and you get the "gdb prompt"
Type bt to get the backtrace, bt full to have more information
You can move between calls by using frame # where # is the frame number, and then you can print variable using print