2003-11-29 Michael Chastain <mec.gnu@mindspring.com>
[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
CommitLineData
c906108c
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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
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4*** Changes since GDB 6.0:
5
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6* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
7
8GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
9arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
10encountered these.
11
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12* New native configurations
13
14NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
15
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16* New debugging protocols
17
18M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
19
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20* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
21
22The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
23and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
24tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
25
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26* REMOVED configurations and files
27
28SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
29SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
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30Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
31Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
32H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
33HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
34HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
35HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
36PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
37Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
38 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
39 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
40Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
41Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 42
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43*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
44
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45* Objective-C
46
47Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
48integrated into GDB.
49
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50* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
51
52DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
53information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
54By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
55backtraces.
56
57The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
58have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
59DWARF 2 CFI support.
60
61* Hosted file I/O.
62
63GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
64file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
65remote protocol documentation for details.
66
67* All targets using the new architecture framework.
68
69All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
70architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
71to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
72ppc32 on ppc64).
73
74* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
75
76GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
77per-thread variables.
78
79* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
80
81GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
82GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
83
84* Separate debug info.
85
86GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
87automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
88of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
89system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
90and optional debug files.
91
92* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
93
94DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
95describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
96debugger.
97
98GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
99for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
100
101* Java
102
103A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
104Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
105considered "useable".
106
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107* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
108
109The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
110commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
111kernel.
112
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113* GDB supports logging output to a file
114
115There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
116used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 117
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118* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
119
120The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
121disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
122command.
123
e286caf2 124* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
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125
126The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
127registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
128
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129* Profiling support
130
131A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
132be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
133session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
134"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
135data, for more informative profiling results.
136
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137* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
138
139The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
140option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 141"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
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142
143Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
144removed.
145
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146Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
147Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
148Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
149 in a subsequent -var-update.
150
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151* New native configurations.
152
153FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
154
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155* Multi-arched targets.
156
b4263afa 157HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 158Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 159
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160* OBSOLETE configurations and files
161
162Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
163been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
164configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
165permanently REMOVED.
166
8b0e5691 167Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 168Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 169H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
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170HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
171HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
172HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 173PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
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174Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
175 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
176 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
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177Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
178Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 179
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180* REMOVED configurations and files
181
182V850EA ISA
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183Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
184IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
185i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
186i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
187i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
188HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
189 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
190 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
191Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
192Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
193Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
194OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
195I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 196
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197* MIPS $fp behavior changed
198
199The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
200the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
201context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
202address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
203The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
204
299ffc64 205*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 206
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207* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
208
209When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
210`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
211in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
212library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
213shared libs like mad''.
214
b9d14705 215* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 216
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217Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
218the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
219arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
220powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 221
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222* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
223
224GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
225and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
226they expand.
227
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228The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
229invocations in expression, and shows the result.
230
231The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
232macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
233
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234Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
235information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
236your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
237information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
238
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239* Multi-arched targets.
240
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241DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
242DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 243NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 244National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
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245Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
246Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 247
cd9bfe15 248* New targets.
e33ce519 249
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250Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
251
e33ce519 252
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253* New native configurations
254
255Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 256SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 257MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 258UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 259
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260* OBSOLETE configurations and files
261
262Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
263been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
264configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
265permanently REMOVED.
266
92eb23c5 267Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 268OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 269IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 270Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 271Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 272Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
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273i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
274i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
275i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
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276HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
277 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
278 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 279I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 280
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281* OBSOLETE languages
282
283CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
284
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285* REMOVED configurations and files
286
287AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
288A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
289AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
290AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
291AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
292
293testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
294
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295* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
296
297This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
298commands. The default is 1024.
299
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300* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
301
302Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
303
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304* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
305
306These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
307to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
308from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 309
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310* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
311
312The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
313including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
314of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
315
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316*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
317
318* New targets.
319
320Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
321
322* Bug fixes
323
324gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
325mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
326Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
327
328gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
329dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
330Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
331
332Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
333Surprisingly enough, it works now.
334By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
335
336i386 hardware watchpoint support:
337avoid misses on second run for some targets.
338By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
339
37057839 340*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 341
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342* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
343
344This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
345really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
346In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
347target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
348This can be a significant performance improvement on some
349(notably embedded) targets.
350
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351* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
352
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353This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
354process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
355GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
356hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 357
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358* New command line option
359
360GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
361
362* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
363
364There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
365command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
366a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
367be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
368open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
369issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
370a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
371it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
372GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
373is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
374
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375* Changes in ARM configurations.
376
377Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
378configuration is fully multi-arch.
379
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380* New native configurations
381
fe419ffc 382ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 383x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 384AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 385Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 386
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387* New targets
388
389Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
390
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391* OBSOLETE configurations and files
392
393Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
394been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
395configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
396permanently REMOVED.
397
398AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
399A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
400AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
401AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
402AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
403
b4ceaee6 404testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 405
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406* REMOVED configurations and files
407
408TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 409WDC 65816 w65-*-*
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410PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
411PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
412PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 413Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
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414Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
415 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 416SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 417Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
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418Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
419ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 420Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 421
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422* Changes to command line processing
423
424The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
425for the inferior from gdb's command line.
426
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427* Changes to key bindings
428
429There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
430
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431*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
432
433Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
434
435Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
436corrupted.
437
438Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
439
440Numerous documentation fixes.
441
442Numerous testsuite fixes.
443
34f47bc4 444*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
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445
446* New native configurations
447
448Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
449x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 450MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
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451MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
452ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 453s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 454
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455* New targets
456
def90278 457Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 458CRIS cris-axis
55241689 459UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 460
17e78a56 461* OBSOLETE configurations and files
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462
463x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 464Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
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465Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
466 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
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467TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
468WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 469Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
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470PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
471PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
472PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 473SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
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474Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
475ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 476Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 477
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478stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
479kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
480
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481Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
482been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
483configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
484permanently REMOVED.
485
a196c81c 486* REMOVED configurations and files
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487
488Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
489Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
490Pyramid pyramid-*-*
491ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
492Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 493ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 494
6d6b80e5 495* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 496
6d6b80e5 497GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
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498sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
499present.
500
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501* Other news:
502
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503* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
504
505* The MI enabled by default.
506
507The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
508revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
509engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
510using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
511which is now deprecated.
512
513* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
514
515GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
516main features are supported:
517
518 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
519
520 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
521 extension;
522
523 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
524
525 - a Pascal expression parser.
526
527However, some important features are not yet supported.
528
529 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
530
531 - there are some problems with boolean types;
532
533 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
534 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
535
536 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
537
538 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
539
540* Changes in completion.
541
542Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
543to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
544users expect at the shell prompt.
545
546Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
547`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
548program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
549files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
550be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
551considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
552name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
553
554`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
555
556* New platform-independent commands:
557
558It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
559hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
560documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
561
562* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
563
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564Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
565revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
566many threads as your system allows you to have.
567
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568Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
569
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570Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
571multi-threaded programs though.
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572
573* Changes in MIPS configurations.
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574
575Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
576
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577GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
578debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
579supported.)
580
581* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
582
583Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
584breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
585implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
586put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
587and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
588registers.
589
590The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
591debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
592watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
593
594* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
595
596New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
597the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
598
599New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
600display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
601IDT.
602
603New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
604from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
605New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
606a given linear address.
607
608GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
609program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
610which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
611
612DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
613
6c56c069
EZ
614It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
615
e23194cb
EZ
616* Changes in documentation.
617
618All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
619Documentation License.
620
621Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
622manual.
623
624TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
625
626Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
627manual.
628
629The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
630documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
631hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
632
5d6640b1
AC
633* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
634
635The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
636``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
637contents of this file.
638
1a1d8446
AC
639* gdba.el deleted
640
641GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 642
9debab2f 643*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 644
c63ce875
EZ
645* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
646
647Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
648programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
649displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
650greater level of detail.
651
652* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
653
654It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
655bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
656on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
657written.
658
659* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
660
661The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
662necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
663machines ``out of the box''.
664
665The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
666possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
667signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
668would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
669interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
670
671It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
672standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
673even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
674and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
675terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
676
677The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
678enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
679also works.
680
681DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
682GDB.
683
684It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
685directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
686times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
687breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
688
ed9a39eb
JM
689* New native configurations
690
691ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 692PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 693
7a292a7a
SS
694* New targets
695
96baa820 696Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
697x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
698PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
699TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
700
085dd6e6
JM
701* OBSOLETE configurations
702
703Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
704Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 705Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 706ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 707Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 708
9debab2f
AC
709Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
710but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
711these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
712be permanently REMOVED.
713
5330533d
SS
714* Gould support removed
715
716Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
717
bc9e5bbf
AC
718* New features for SVR4
719
720On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
721without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
722load symbols from the running process's executable file.
723
724* Many C++ enhancements
725
726C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
727in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
728
adf40b2e
JM
729* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
730
731A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
732sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
733with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
734``|<program> <args>'' vis:
735
736 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
737 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
738
43e526b9
JM
739* MIPS 64 remote protocol
740
741A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
742expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
743instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
744
745The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
746added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
747
96baa820
JM
748* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
749
750The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
751``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
752include ``set remote P-packet''.
753
11cf8741
JM
754* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
755
756The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
757accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
758``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
759
7876dd43
DB
760* ``apropos'' command added.
761
762The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
763documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
764try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
765
bc9e5bbf
AC
766* New MI interface
767
768A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
769interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
770process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
771"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
772enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
773
774 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
775
c906108c
SS
776*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
777
778* New native configurations
779
780HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
781HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 782M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
783
784* New targets
785
786Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
787Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
788Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
789
790* OBSOLETE configurations
791
792Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
793
794Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
795but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
796these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
797be permanently REMOVED.
798
799* ANSI/ISO C
800
801As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
802buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
803containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
804use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
805available. If this is not true, please report the affected
806configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
807information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
808already.
809
810* Readline 2.2
811
812GDB now uses readline 2.2.
813
814* set extension-language
815
816You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
817languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
818you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
819 set extension-language .c c++
820The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
821and their associated languages.
822
823* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
824
825When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
826you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
827PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
828
829 set processor NAME
830
831sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
832following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
833
834 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
835 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
836 403 IBM PowerPC 403
837 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
838 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
839 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
840 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
841 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
842 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
843 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
844 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
845
846At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
847special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
848registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
849only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
850
851* HP-UX support
852
853Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
854more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
855library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
856support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
857for xdb and dbx commands.
858
859* Catchpoints
860
861HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
862generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
863to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
864
865This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
866argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
867output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
868
869* Debugging across forks
870
871On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
872in the inferior.
873
874* TUI
875
876HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
877it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
878configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
879
880* GDB remote protocol additions
881
882A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
883Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
884fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
885allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
886
887For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
888full 64-bit address. The command
889
890 set remoteaddresssize 32
891
892can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
893the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
894will be discarded.
895
896In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
897command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
898
899 maint packet heythere
900
901sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
902disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
903time.
904
905The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
906target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
907downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
908
909* Tracing can collect general expressions
910
911You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
912further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
913doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
914
915* mask-address variable for Mips
916
917For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
918a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
919of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
920
921* Higher serial baud rates
922
923GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
924230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
925to achieve all of these rates.)
926
927* i960 simulator
928
929The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
930builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
931
932
933*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
934
935* New native configurations
936
937Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
938Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
939Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
940PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
941PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
942Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
943Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
944
945* New targets
946
947Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
948Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
949Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
950Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
951MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
952MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
953MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
954Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
955Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
956Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
957NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
958
959* New debugging protocols
960
961ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
962M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
963DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
964PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
965PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
966Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
967
968* DWARF 2
969
970All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
971format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
972information.
973
974* Java frontend
975
976GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
977only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
978
979* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
980
981For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
982loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
983locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
984
985* Live range splitting
986
987GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
988range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
989more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
990
991* Hurd support
992
993GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
994updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
995
996* ARM Thumb support
997
998GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
999instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
1000instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
1001accordingly.
1002
1003* MIPS16 support
1004
1005GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
1006instruction set.
1007
1008* Overlay support
1009
1010GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
1011linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
1012will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
1013control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
1014additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
1015in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
1016
1017* info symbol
1018
1019The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
1020the symbol at the specified address.
1021
1022* Trace support
1023
1024The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
1025asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
1026extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
1027includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
1028file tracepoint.c for more details.
1029
1030* MIPS simulator
1031
1032Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
1033by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
1034of most MIPS variants.
1035
1036* Sparc simulator
1037
1038Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
1039by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
1040Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
1041
1042* set architecture
1043
1044For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
1045basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
1046architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
1047the possible architectures.
1048
1049*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
1050
1051* New native configurations
1052
1053Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
1054M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
1055PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
1056PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
1057PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1058RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
1059
1060* New targets
1061
1062ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
1063I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1064MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
1065MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
1066PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
1067Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
1068Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1069
1070* PowerPC simulator
1071
1072The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
1073contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
1074PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
1075basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
1076performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
1077
1078* Solaris 2.5
1079
1080GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
1081
1082* Windows 95/NT native
1083
1084GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
1085To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
1086which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
1087Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
1088ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
1089
1090* dont-repeat command
1091
1092If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
1093command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
1094useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
1095extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
1096
1097* Send break instead of ^C
1098
1099The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
1100rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
1101GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
1102
1103* Remote protocol timeout
1104
1105The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
1106that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
1107to read from the target. The default value is 2.
1108
1109* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
1110
1111By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
1112loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
1113stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
1114when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
1115in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
1116
1117Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
1118/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
1119automatically on hpux10.
1120
1121* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
1122
1123Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
1124
1125* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
1126
1127When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
1128may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
1129the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
1130every character. The default value is 1050.
1131
1132* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
1133
1134If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
1135a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
1136replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
1137details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
1138remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
1139to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
1140
1141* Speedups for remote debugging
1142
1143GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
1144the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
1145and more efficient S-record downloading.
1146
1147* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
1148
1149GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
1150Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
1151
1152*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
1153
1154* Psymtabs for XCOFF
1155
1156The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
1157can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
1158
1159* Remote targets use caching
1160
1161Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
1162remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
1163it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
1164debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
1165off' turns the the data cache off.
1166
1167* Remote targets may have threads
1168
1169The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
1170in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
1171gdb/remote.c for details.
1172
1173* NetROM support
1174
1175If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
1176support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
1177acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
1178write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
1179support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
1180another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
1181sequence is something like
1182
1183 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
1184 load <prog>
1185 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
1186
1187* Macintosh host
1188
1189GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
1190may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
1191it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
1192available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
1193device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
1194directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
1195scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
1196mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
1197
1198* Autoconf
1199
1200GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
1201but does simplify configuration and building.
1202
1203* hpux10
1204
1205GDB now supports hpux10.
1206
1207*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
1208
1209* New native configurations
1210
1211x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
1212x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
1213NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
1214Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
1215
1216* New targets
1217
1218A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1219HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
1220CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
1221PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
1222WDC 65816 w65-*-*
1223
1224* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
1225
1226GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
1227possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
1228filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
1229the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
1230if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
1231
1232* Arguments to user-defined commands
1233
1234User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
1235Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
1236trivial example:
1237define adder
1238 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
1239
1240To execute the command use:
1241adder 1 2 3
1242
1243Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
1244Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
1245use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
1246
1247* New `if' and `while' commands
1248
1249This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
1250commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
1251expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
1252execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
1253terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
1254`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
1255if the expression is zero.
1256
1257* Fortran source language mode
1258
1259GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
1260Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
1261variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
1262with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
1263Fortran compilers.
1264
1265* Better HPUX support
1266
1267Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
1268running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
1269processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
1270for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
1271that behavior do the following before running the program:
1272
1273 adb -w a.out
1274 __dld_flags?W 0x5
1275 control-d
1276
1277This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
1278To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
1279
1280 adb -w a.out
1281 __dld_flags?W 0x4
1282 control-d
1283
1284You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
1285the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
1286external linkage.
1287
1288GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
1289HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
1290
1291* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
1292
1293You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
1294commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
1295current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
1296"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
1297associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
1298configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
1299
1300* New DOS host serial code
1301
1302This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
1303no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
1304a PC's serial port.
1305
1306*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
1307
1308* New "complete" command
1309
1310This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
1311were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
1312
1313* Trailing space optional in prompt
1314
1315"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
1316allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
1317
1318* Breakpoint hit counts
1319
1320"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
1321has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
1322can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
1323to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
1324less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
1325that breakpoint.
1326
1327* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
1328
1329"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
1330an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
1331arrays actually contain only short strings.
1332
1333* Shared library breakpoints
1334
1335In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
1336breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
1337
1338* Hardware watchpoints
1339
1340There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
1341targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
1342
55241689 1343Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
1344
1345* Annotations
1346
1347Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
1348and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
1349
1350* Improved Irix 5 support
1351
1352GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
1353
1354* Improved HPPA support
1355
1356GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
1357
1358* New native configurations
1359
1360Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
1361HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1362Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
1363RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
1364
1365* New targets
1366
1367OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1368MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
1369Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
1370
1371* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
1372
1373There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
1374This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
1375
1376* Fixes
1377
1378As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
1379and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
1380
1381*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
1382
1383* Irix 5 is now supported
1384
1385* HPPA support
1386
1387GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
1388to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
1389GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
1390of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
1391can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
1392
1393
1394*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
1395
1396* User visible changes:
1397
1398* Remote Debugging
1399
1400The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
1401target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
1402debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
1403integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
1404debugging info for the mips target).
1405
1406* DEC Alpha native support
1407
1408GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
1409debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
1410work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
1411Alpha-specific notes.
1412
1413* Preliminary thread implementation
1414
1415GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
1416
1417* LynxOS native and target support for 386
1418
1419This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
1420to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
1421for details).
1422
1423* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
1424
1425This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
1426mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
1427call methods, ...etc.
1428
1429*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
1430
1431 * User visible changes:
1432
1433Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
1434supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
1435other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
1436somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
1437
1438Filename completion now works.
1439
1440When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
1441arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
1442addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
1443
1444All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
1445vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
1446should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
1447your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
1448to be on the far side of a thin network line.
1449
1450 * DEC alpha support
1451
1452This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
1453cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
1454
1455
1456*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
1457
1458 * Testsuite
1459
1460This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
1461The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
1462via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
1463
1464 * C++ demangling
1465
1466'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
1467emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
1468Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
1469disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
1470use gdb with AT&T cfront.
1471
1472 * Simulators
1473
1474GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
1475So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
1476Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
1477
1478 * New targets supported
1479
1480H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1481H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1482SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
1483Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1484IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
1485
1486Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
1487version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
1488GO32 memory extender.
1489
1490 * New remote protocols
1491
1492MIPS remote debugging protocol.
1493
1494 * New source languages supported
1495
1496This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
1497used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
1498into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
1499
1500
1501*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
1502
1503 * HP Precision Architecture supported
1504
1505GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
1506version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
1507University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
1508compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
1509format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
1510(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
1511
1512Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
1513
1514 * Faster and better demangling
1515
1516We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
1517demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
1518character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
1519only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
1520This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
1521increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
1522symbol lookups.
1523
1524`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
1525from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
1526compiler does not actually implement.
1527
1528 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
1529
1530In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
1531inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
1532recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
1533very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
1534The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
1535circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
1536fix.
1537
1538The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
1539release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
1540
1541 * Improved configure script
1542
1543The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
1544you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
1545host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
1546done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
1547
1548We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
1549version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
1550`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
1551The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
1552only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
1553We hope to make this the default in a future release.
1554
1555 * Documentation improvements
1556
1557There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
1558produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
1559before submitting changes.
1560
1561The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
1562M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
1563`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
1564you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
1565a future texinfo-X.Y release.
1566
1567*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
1568We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
1569been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
1570or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
1571`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
1572around this problem.
1573
1574 * New features
1575
1576GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
1577the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
1578`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
1579the target program.
1580
1581The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
1582how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
1583
1584 * New native hosts supported
1585
1586HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
1587386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
1588
1589 * New targets supported
1590
1591AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
1592
1593 * New file formats supported
1594
1595BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
1596HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
1597
1598 * Major bug fixes
1599
1600Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
1601
1602We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
1603printf_filtered("%s") problems.
1604
1605We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
1606for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
1607release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
1608
1609You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
1610will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
1611
1612We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
1613for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
1614especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
1615libraries.
1616
1617The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
1618information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
1619command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
1620any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
1621when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
1622
1623 * Internal improvements
1624
1625GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
1626debugging of multiple languages in the future.
1627
1628GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
1629Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
1630symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
1631contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
1632shared code that handles any of them.
1633
1634 * New command line options
1635
1636We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
1637
1638 * Mmalloc licensing
1639
1640The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
1641General Public License.
1642
1643*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
1644
1645 * Host/native/target split
1646
1647GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
1648hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
1649target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
1650local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
1651ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
1652
1653The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
1654GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
1655is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
1656code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
1657any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
1658built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
1659handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
1660
1661GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
1662It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
1663plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
1664
1665 * New hosts supported
1666
1667HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
1668386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1669386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
1670
1671 * New targets supported
1672
1673Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
167468030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
1675
1676 * New native hosts supported
1677
1678386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1679 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
1680386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
1681
1682 * New file formats supported
1683
1684BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
1685supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
1686format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
1687
1688 * New commands
1689
1690`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
1691`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
1692These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
1693
1694`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
1695
1696You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
1697scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
1698prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
1699executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
1700
1701 * C++ improvements
1702
1703We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
1704info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
1705symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
1706
1707Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
1708
1709 * Major bug fixes
1710
1711The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
1712fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
1713by the compiler.
1714
1715We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
1716support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
1717
1718John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
1719slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
1720that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
1721purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
1722the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
1723mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
1724
1725Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
1726about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
1727completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
1728we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
1729
1730 * AMD 29k support
1731
1732A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
1733specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
1734calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
1735usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
1736in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
1737
1738We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
1739Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
1740of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
1741resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
1742
1743 * Remote interfaces
1744
1745We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
1746with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
1747message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
1748This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
1749needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
1750breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
1751each instruction being stepped through.
1752
1753The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
1754registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
1755
1756There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
1757find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
1758Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
1759processor with a serial port.
1760
1761 * Configuration
1762
1763Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
1764`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
1765supported, and what files each one uses.
1766
1767 * Library changes
1768
1769There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
1770disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
1771Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
1772disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
1773
1774The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
1775Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
1776can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
1777grants all the rights from the General Public License.
1778
1779 * Documentation
1780
1781The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
1782reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
1783as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
1784encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
1785system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
1786bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
1787
1788And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
1789
1790
1791*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
1792
1793 * Better support for C++ function names
1794
1795GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
1796names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
1797(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
1798single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
1799Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
1800
1801GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
1802the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
1803You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
1804lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
1805for the list of formats.
1806
1807 * G++ symbol mangling problem
1808
1809Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
1810C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
1811directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
1812can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
1813usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
1814about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
1815this problem.)
1816
1817 * New 'maintenance' command
1818
1819All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
1820the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
1821can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
1822
1823 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
1824 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
1825 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
1826 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
1827 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
1828 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
1829
1830The following commands are new:
1831
1832 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
1833 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
1834 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
1835
1836 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
1837
1838We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
1839(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
1840be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
1841read after argv processing.
1842
1843 * New hosts supported
1844
1845Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
1846
55241689 1847GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
1848
1849We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
1850is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
1851for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
1852masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
1853fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
1854It costs extra.
1855
1856 * New targets supported
1857
1858Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1859
1860 * More smarts about finding #include files
1861
1862GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
1863all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
1864greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
1865especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
1866the one that contains your sources.
1867
1868We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
1869breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
1870try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
1871
1872 * Interesting infernals change
1873
1874GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
1875section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
1876target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
1877stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
1878
1879 * Bug fixes (of course!)
1880
1881There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
1882 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
1883 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
1884
1885See the ChangeLog for details.
1886
1887*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
1888
1889 * New machines supported (host and target)
1890
1891IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
1892
1893SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1894
1895 * New malloc package
1896
1897GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
1898Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
1899capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
1900This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
1901pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
1902more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
1903
1904 * info proc
1905
1906The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
1907'help info proc' for details.
1908
1909 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
1910
1911The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
1912Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
1913possible.
1914
1915 * File name changes for MS-DOS
1916
1917Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
1918support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
1919conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
1920environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
1921that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
1922in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
1923
1924 * Cross byte order fixes
1925
1926Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
1927targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
1928
1929 * New -mapped and -readnow options
1930
1931If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
1932system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
1933`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
1934program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
1935called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
1936Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
1937and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
1938the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
1939option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
1940starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
1941
1942You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
1943the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
1944information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
1945slower, but makes future operations faster.
1946
1947The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
1948build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
1949A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
1950use is:
1951
1952 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
1953
1954The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
1955It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
1956shared across multiple host platforms.
1957
1958 * longjmp() handling
1959
1960GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
1961siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
1962all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
1963platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
1964
1965 * Solaris 2.0
1966
1967Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
1968this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
1969reading symbols.
1970
1971 * Bug fixes
1972
1973As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
1974People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
1975crashes and trashed symbol tables.
1976
1977*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
1978
1979 * New machines supported (host and target)
1980
1981SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
1982 (except core files)
1983BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
1984Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
1985
1986 * New machines supported (target)
1987
1988AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1989
1990 * C++ support
1991
1992GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
1993The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
1994per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
1995
1996GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
1997`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
1998extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
1999good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
2000will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
2001released.
2002
2003 * New features for SVR4
2004
2005GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
2006shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
2007only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
2008
2009The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
2010on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
2011it prints the address mappings of the process.
2012
2013If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
2014bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
2015
2016 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
2017
2018Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
2019now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
2020skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
2021make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
2022same code linked statically.
2023
2024 * New Getopt
2025
2026GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
2027version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
2028continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
2029Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
2030added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
2031future by other options that begin with the same letter.
2032
2033 * Bugs fixed
2034
2035The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2036Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2037See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2038
2039
2040*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
2041
2042 * New machines supported (host and target)
2043
2044Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
2045NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
2046Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2047
2048 * Almost SCO Unix support
2049
2050We had hoped to support:
2051SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2052(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
2053that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
2054about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
2055
2056 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
2057
2058GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
2059debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
2060is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
2061send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
2062reqired (if any).
2063
2064 * New Readline
2065
2066GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
2067is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
2068required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
2069
2070 * Bugs fixed
2071
2072The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2073Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2074See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2075
2076 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
2077
2078GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
2079supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
2080symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
2081
2082Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
2083mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
2084debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
2085mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
2086version 2.
2087
2088Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
2089really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
2090line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
2091variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
2092situation somewhat.
2093
2094When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
2095However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
2096methods.
2097
2098We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
2099DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
2100encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
2101
2102
2103*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
2104
2105 * Improved configuration
2106
2107Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
2108Porting BFD is simpler.
2109
2110 * Stepping improved
2111
2112The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
2113of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
2114in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
2115function that has debugging information is called within the line.
2116
2117 * Bug fixing
2118
2119Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
2120
2121 * New host supported (not target)
2122
2123Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
2124
2125
2126*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
2127
2128 * Multiple source language support
2129
2130GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
2131It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
2132and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
2133language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
2134You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
2135`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
2136
2137 * GDB and Modula-2
2138
2139GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
2140currently under development at the State University of New York at
2141Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
2142continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
2143
2144Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
2145debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
2146symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
2147
2148There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
2149in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
2150
2151 * set write on/off
2152
2153GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
2154a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
2155the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
2156by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
2157effect immediately.
2158
2159 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
2160
2161When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
2162shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
2163The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
2164examining core files.
2165
2166 * set listsize
2167
2168You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
2169The default is 10.
2170
2171 * New machines supported (host and target)
2172
2173SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2174Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
2175Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
2176
2177 * New hosts supported (not targets)
2178
2179IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
2180
2181 * New targets supported (not hosts)
2182
2183AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2184AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2185Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
2186
2187 * New remote interfaces
2188
2189AMD 29000 Adapt
2190AMD 29000 Minimon
2191
2192
2193*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
2194
2195 * New Facilities
2196
2197Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
2198
2199Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
2200target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
2201is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
2202remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
2203remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
2204also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
2205using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
2206stub on the target system.
2207
2208New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
2209
2210GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
2211library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
2212object file types such as a.out and coff.
2213
2214There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
2215refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
2216
2217
2218 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
2219
2220All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
2221by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
2222
2223For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
2224``Show prompt'' produces the response:
2225Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
2226
2227What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
2228print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
2229will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
2230all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
2231
2232confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
2233 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
2234 it is already running. Default is ON.
2235
2236editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
2237 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
2238 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
2239 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
2240 Default is ON.
2241
2242history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
2243 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
2244 or the value of the environment variable
2245 GDBHISTFILE.
2246
2247history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
2248 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
2249 HISTSIZE.
2250
2251history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
2252 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
2253 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
2254
2255history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
2256 history expansion will be performed on
2257 command line input. The default is OFF.
2258
2259radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
2260 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
2261 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
2262
2263height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
2264 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
2265 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2266 variable TERM.
2267
2268width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
2269 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
2270 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2271 variable TERM.
2272
2273Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
2274``set width'' instead.
2275
2276print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
2277 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
2278 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
2279 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
2280
2281print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
2282 is OFF.
2283
2284print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
2285 "raw" form if off.
2286
2287print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
2288 like instructions.
2289
2290print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
2291
2292
2293 * Support for Epoch Environment.
2294
2295The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
2296new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
2297are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
2298window.
2299
2300
2301 * Support for Shared Libraries
2302
2303GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
2304Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
2305before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
2306happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
2307At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
2308from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
2309shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
2310It can be abbreviated ``share''.
2311
2312sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
2313 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
2314 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
2315
2316info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
2317
2318
2319 * Watchpoints
2320
2321A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
2322expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
2323tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
2324quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
2325problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
2326more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
2327
2328watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
2329
2330info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
2331
2332delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2333disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2334enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2335
2336
2337 * C++ multiple inheritance
2338
2339When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
2340for C++ programs.
2341
2342 * C++ exception handling
2343
2344Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
2345ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
2346the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
2347handler's context).
2348
2349catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
2350 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
2351 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
2352
2353info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
2354 current stack frame.
2355
2356
2357 * Minor command changes
2358
2359The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
2360command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
2361is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
2362
2363The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
2364at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
2365frames without printing.
2366
2367 * New directory command
2368
2369'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
2370The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
2371about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
2372with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
2373find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
2374
2375 * Configuring GDB for compilation
2376
2377For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
2378for more details.
2379
2380GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
2381two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
2382Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
2383where the program that you are debugging will run.
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