### 13.1 Commands to Set Tracepoints

Before running such a trace experiment, an arbitrary number of tracepoints can be set. A tracepoint is actually a special type of breakpoint (see Set Breaks), so you can manipulate it using standard breakpoint commands. For instance, as with breakpoints, tracepoint numbers are successive integers starting from one, and many of the commands associated with tracepoints take the tracepoint number as their argument, to identify which tracepoint to work on.

For each tracepoint, you can specify, in advance, some arbitrary set of data that you want the target to collect in the trace buffer when it hits that tracepoint. The collected data can include registers, local variables, or global data. Later, you can use gdb commands to examine the values these data had at the time the tracepoint was hit.

Tracepoints do not support every breakpoint feature. Conditional expressions and ignore counts on tracepoints have no effect, and tracepoints cannot run gdb commands when they are hit. Tracepoints may not be thread-specific either.

This section describes commands to set tracepoints and associated conditions and actions.