If you need to execute occasional shell commands during your
debugging session, there is no need to leave or suspend GDB; you can
just use the shell command.
shell command string
SHELL determines which
shell to run. Otherwise GDB uses the default shell
(/bin/sh on Unix systems, COMMAND.COM on MS-DOS, etc.).
The utility make is often needed in development environments.
You do not have to use the shell command for this purpose in
GDB:
make make-args
make program with the specified
arguments. This is equivalent to shell make make-args.