Xcode 4.2 jumps to main.m every time after stopping simulator

This is more of a general annoyance. Every time after stopping the simulator, Xcode jumps to main.m for some reason. On the left nav, it jumps to the Debug Navigator.

Is there a way to fix this?

It's annoying because I might be testing a certain line of code, and now each time, I need to make a couple of clicks just to go back to that code.

This problem is not new, seems to get worse though. At the time of writing this, I was on the GM seed, but this problem persists in XCode 4.2 final. This was not a problem in previous versions of XCode.


When we start debug from xcode, the debugger sets itself up to monitor signals from OS. When we press stop button in XCode (or hit cmd + R - which first stops existing instance running and then try to start new one, somewhat equalant to we press manually stop first and then run) SIGKILL is sent to the debugger.

Whenever the cause of interruption is from outside the app (in other words all cases where SIGKILL is sent, like stop button press) , debugger jumps to main, since main is the root of the app and the place where your app meets the OS. Debugger has no way to identify why this SIGKILL is issued (pressing stop button in xcode/ press cmd + R/ delete app from multitasking bar etc), but it treats SIGKILL as outside interrupt, and nothing related with your code. So it jumps to main.

If the cause of interruption is from inside the app (like app crash/SIGABRT) debugger handles it and jumps to the place of crash, which we normally see.

I do not consider this as an xcode bug, rather a normal way of handling SIGKILL. But if you want to stay at your code and do not want to jump to main you can do two things

  1. You can do as Gabe suggested. As BBonified said, it is like a band-aide, but I think it should work (personally I never tried that)

  2. Report a bug/request for a feature here. Let me tell you you are not the first one to do so. Already a bug has been reported. See this and this. But I don't have much hope of a positive action from Apple

And I agree with you, it is sometimes annoying. Especially if you have experienced differently in previous XCode versions. But we can only take what they give here.


I guess it's fair to call it a bug, Xcode 3 specifically suppressed this useless artefact.

I've had success (four times and counting) with this one-liner in ~/.gdbinit:

handle SIGKILL nostop noprint nopass

Taken from this gdb manual:

http://www.delorie.com/gnu/docs/gdb/gdb_39.html

Not sure if it applies to lldb as well.