You can build the gdb executable manually on OS X 10.11.

First, run this if you haven't already installed the Command Line Tools for Xcode:

  xcode-select --install

Then run these commands:

  curl -o gdb-7.11.tar.xz https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gdb/gdb-7.11.tar.xz
  tar zxf gdb-7.11.tar.xz
  cd gdb-7.11
  ./configure
  make
  make install

This should place the executable at /usr/local/bin/gdb. The final step is to codesign it. Instructions: http://sourceware.org/gdb/wiki/BuildingOnDarwin

`tar xfJ gdb-7.11.tar.xz` for .xz files

Good point. GNU tar requires using the correct option, -J, when extracting an xz-compressed tarball.

But OS X tar is bsdtar, which ignores -z and -J when extracting because it automatically recognizes compression and does the right thing. So it turns out both our suggestions happen to work on OS X.

nonsense, gnu tar unpacks anything with tar xf <file> just fine.

Oh, good point, I wasn't aware that GNU tar also supported automatic compression recognition. I should have tested it. Thanks!

More on code signing gdb here: http://www.getlazarus.org/setup/macintosh/

A related question is: does it make sense to use this on OS X? lldb is certainly better integrated with the system, does gdb really have benefits that make up for that?

I dont develop much on osx anymore, but I suspect this will be available in homebrew at some point.

brew install gdb