How can I ask GCC to use a different standard library?

I have a debug version of libstdc++ 6 in /usr/lib/debug/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/. I would like to tell gcc/g++ to use this library instead of the standard library version without debug symbols. I tried using -nostdlib and passing the library path explicitly with -L, but get linking errors such as

/usr/bin/ld: CMakeFiles/tst_elfmap.dir/perfparser/tests/auto/elfmap/tst_elfmap.cpp.o: undefined reference to symbol '__gxx_personality_v0@@CXXABI_1.3'
//usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6: error adding symbols: DSO missing from command line

It seems that the library version (according to the file name) is the same for the debug and release builds of libstdc++ installed on my system:

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root 19 Oct  4  2019 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6 -> libstdc++.so.6.0.21

Answer

You should make use of LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable like:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/debug/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/

This variable can be used to change the dynamic linkers search paths so, instead of searching for libstdc++ in the system’s library paths, libstdc++ will be searched along LD_LIBRARY_PATH.