no debugging symbols found when using gdb

You should also try -ggdb instead of -g if you're compiling for Android!

The most frequent cause of "no debugging symbols found" when -g is present is that there is some "stray" -s or -S argument somewhere on the link line.

From man ld:

   -s
   --strip-all
       Omit all symbol information from the output file.

   -S
   --strip-debug
       Omit debugger symbol information (but not all symbols) from the output file.

The application has to be both compiled and linked with -g option. I.e. you need to put -g in both CPPFLAGS and LDFLAGS.

Some Linux distributions don't use the gdb style debugging symbols. (IIRC they prefer dwarf2.)

In general, gcc and gdb will be in sync as to what kind of debugging symbols they use, and forcing a particular style will just cause problems; unless you know that you need something else, use just -g.