GDB allows collecting tracepoint information, as a non-intrusive operation, without a need for a breakpoint and a context switch to gdb. The data collected by tracepoints can be viewed, frame-by-frame, within gdb, or dumped to a file using the save-tracepoints command.

Trying to open the saved tracepoint file doesn't work well, for both the native file format as well as CTF file format.

It seems that the file cannot be parsed, using the source command as documented by gdb, or the Eclipse Compass tracepoints analyzer external tools.

Using the following work around (as found here) works nicely, running inside the gdb session:

tfind start
while ($trace_frame != -1)
> pipe tdump | tee output.txt
> tfind
> end

Sends all tracepoint information to the file output.txt which is what I was looking for.

(Another option of calling python code that collects the data into a file also worked, but is even more "non straight forward" for this operation).

The question is whether there is a more straight-forward way for doing it? Maybe there was a change in the file format which requires a new version of the viewer tools? Or is this work-around the right way to get the information into a readable file?