Hi Nordic team,
I’m seeing a repeatable configure hang with NCS v3.3.0 sysbuild on macOS. The visible build output stops after:
-- Found GnuLd: .../arm-zephyr-eabi/bin/ld.bfd (found version "2.38")
After inspecting the process tree, CMake is blocked waiting on:
.../opt/zephyr-sdk/arm-zephyr-eabi/bin/arm-zephyr-eabi-gdb-py --configuration
The arm-zephyr-eabi-gdb-py process sits indefinitely in uninterruptible wait (U state), and the parent CMake process never continues.
Environment:
- macOS 15.6 / Darwin 24.6.0
- NCS v3.3.0
- Zephyr 4.3.99
- Sysbuild enabled
The hang happens during the inner application CMake configure launched by sysbuild.
I tried passing this workaround:
-DCMAKE_GDB=/usr/bin/false
That works for non-sysbuild builds, but with sysbuild it does not reliably solve the issue because the inner application configure does not inherit CMAKE_GDB from the top-level sysbuild configure.
I added a timeout to the command in zephyr (zephyr/cmake/bintools/gnu/target.cmake line 21):
if(CMAKE_GDB)
execute_process(
COMMAND ${CMAKE_GDB} --configuration
TIMEOUT 5
RESULTS_VARIABLE GDB_CFG_ERR
OUTPUT_QUIET
ERROR_QUIET
)
endif()
This falls back to arm-zephyr-eabi-gdb when arm-zephyr-eabi-gdb-py times out.
Questions:
- Is this a known issue with arm-zephyr-eabi-gdb-py --configuration on macOS?
- Is there a recommended way to disable or override the GDB probe for sysbuild inner image configures?
- Should sysbuild propagate CMAKE_GDB to the application image, or is there another supported cache variable for this?
