Question

I was figuring out a problem where starting the application from GDB results in a symbol lookup error, but starting it from the shell works.

It turns out that whenever you start a program from within GDB it will start a new shell and thus override all environment variables I had set before starting GDB (like LD_LIBRARY_PATH).

This is not really the behavior I want. Can someone explain the rationale behind this, or tell me how I can turn this off?

Answer 1

I am guessing that you unconditionally set LD_LIBRARY_PATH in your ~/.cshrc or the like. So if from a shell prompt you do this:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=foo  # or for csh:
setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH foo
$SHELL -c 'echo $LD_LIBRARY_PATH'

the result is something other than foo. Don’t do that.

Usually this happens to CSH users, who neglected to protect their ~/.cshrc against non-interactive shells. It could also happen to BASH users who set their BASH_ENV.