GDB Debugging Symbols for Rviz

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The binary ROS packages that you can install through apt are not built with debugging symbols, and the default build mode for catkin does not include debugging symbols either.

You will probably need to check out the source for the exact version of rviz that you're using, and built it and your plugin from source in debug mode in order to debug this.

In melodic, the debugging symbols are in an extra package:

sudo apt install ros-melodic-rviz-dbgsym

However, it seems that kinetic builds do not generate these.

Or, if you're not on Ubuntu, there could be a similar package available for your platform. Of course, these are the symbols resulting from RelWithDebInfo build type, so it isn't 100% precise, but it should be enough to give you a gist about where the code is failing.

However, if the bug is in your plugin, then you obviously also have to build your plugin with debugging symbols to get the full stack trace.

Note below: if you won't find the symbols for kinetic, you can always (pretty easily) build rviz locally with all symbols, even in debug mode, and then run the program again in the locally built rviz.