Comment 16 for bug 111869

I assume you haven't even looked at the issue. valgrind clearly _can_
provide a more usefull backtrace, I'm not sure why you're ignoring this fact.
Hence a %ebp chain is in place, which gdb can use to skip frames where no
debug info exists. Currently gdb is so heavily confused if even _one_
intermediate frame has no debug info, that even higher frames that _do_
have debug info are not parsed anymore. That's the bug, gdb clearly can
do exactly the same as valgrind and use %ebp to skip the frame.
That would be much better than what it currently does. gdb clearly tries
to do something: it walks the stack somewhat, it just is heavily confused
by the addresses. If it absolutely would have to give up, then gdb
should just say so, instead of running wild in memory.

And the claim is, that gdb did this some time ago. At least earlier versions
were more usefull even in absence of debug information, that's nothing you
can discuss away by claiming "it's impossible". It is possible, and this
bug report is a request to make it happen again.