Problem is that when I use libevdev (which is needed for game controllers under Linux), it locks up x11 events until I produce an input on a game controller. Libevdev documentation is cryptic and incomplete, with many implementations using read() instead of libevdev_next_event() for some reason. Only help with it is how to configure it on various Linux distros, or that which library already solves this issue, except they would force me to use them for a lot of other things, and would still force me to write abstractions to make things looking nice.
Excellent, feel free to open a new thread for your new problem then.
I used CLion on Linux, it does a good job of wrapping GDB and making it painless. Learning GDB is a valuable skill though.