In such a case, it must be some incompatibility in interface between gdb 7.8 and kdevelop because issuing backtrace command from gdb toolview manually does produce a valid frame stack output but entries are greyed (cannot be clicked on). Debugging same code with gdb 7.8 manually (outside kdevelop) works fine as far as I was able to determine. This seems to be some really silly problem, slight change in format of gdb which throws off the toolviews, I wish I had more time to learn how kdevelop toolviews interface with gdb and fix it.