I figured out how to do it. You want maemo-summoner:
https://wiki.maemo.org/Documentation...Maemo-Summoner

So now what I can do is to use dsmetool -k to stop hildon-status-menu then use maemo-summoner inside gdb to start hildon-status-menu again and I can then breakpoint the things I want. Doesn't get me any closer to figuring out why my connui-statusmenu-cellular clone is broken though