[xixor2]

> While a simple series of steps it's still pretty complex compares to the equivalent in gdb:

Oh come on. If you're developing with visual studio, you've already got it open and have been compiling with it.

Debugging in VS is literally click the mouse where you want to stop, F5, full call stack/local variables there in front of you.

Given the list above, if you reproduce a similar list for gdb it is also pretty tedious: run a terminal emulator, spawn a new shell, cd to the directory you want to work in, compile the program with gcc with the appropriate flags, run gdb with the appropriate arguments.