The comment was aimed at the differences between different distributions of gdb. The MinGW version (gdb 5.2.1) works with Lazarus, but the version supplied with FreePascal 2.0.0 (gdb 6.2.1) does not. The release notes supplied with the MinGW version mention that he made some changes which make it work it better in Windows. Well then, why don't other distributions pick up those changes? Where does FPC's gdb version come from? If the Lazarus project is so closely tied to the FPC project, why can't the Lazarus team campaign for FPC to distribute a compatible version of gdb?

Yes, I was frustrated at the time. This is not the first time that I have come across version hell with open source libraries and software (mostly to do with trying to setup Linux servers).