* cp-support.c (first_component_command): Return if no arguments.
[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
CommitLineData
c906108c
SS
1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
75feb17d
DJ
4*** Changes since GDB 6.8
5
ccd213ac
DJ
6* Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
7which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
8
1fddbabb
PA
9* The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
10 list of section offsets.
11
ccd213ac
DJ
12* New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
13
14 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
15 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
16
75feb17d
DJ
17* New commands
18
19set debug timetstamp
20show debug timestamp
21 Display timestamps with GDB debugging output.
22
ccd213ac
DJ
23set exec-wrapper
24show exec-wrapper
25unset exec-wrapper
26 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
fa4727a6 27
75feb17d 28*** Changes in GDB 6.8
f9ed52be 29
af5ca30d
NH
30* New native configurations
31
32NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
94a0e877 33Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d
NH
34
35* New targets
36
37NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
94a0e877 38Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d 39
7a404eba
PA
40* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
41
42 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
43 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
44 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
45 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
46
430ebac9
PA
47* GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
48(mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
49
fe6fbf8b 50* Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
8d5f9c6f 51is resolved.
fe6fbf8b
VP
52
53* GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
8d5f9c6f
DJ
54including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
55and in inlined functions.
fe6fbf8b 56
10665d76
JB
57* GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
58accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
59more than one contiguous range of addresses.
60
7cc46491
DJ
61* Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
62
d71340b8
DJ
63* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
64registers on PowerPC targets.
65
523c4513
DJ
66* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
67targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
68
a6b151f1
DJ
69* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
70commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
71
2d717e4f
DJ
72* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
73extended-remote mode.
74
24a836bd
JB
75* hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
76 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
77 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
78 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
79
d0c678e6
UW
80* GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
81building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
82target architectures.
83
d64a946d
TJB
84* GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
85Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
86now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
87stored in two consecutive float registers.
88
ee163bf5
VP
89* The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
90breakpoints now.
91
b93b6ca7
JB
92* Improved support for debugging Ada
93 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
94 include:
95 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
96 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
97 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
98 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
99 of an assignment
100 - Improved command completion in Ada
101 - Several bug fixes
102
a6b151f1
DJ
103* New commands
104
6d53d0af
JB
105set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
106show print frame-arguments
107 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
108 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
109
a6b151f1
DJ
110remote put
111remote get
112remote delete
113 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
114
115* New MI commands
116
117-target-file-put
118-target-file-get
119-target-file-delete
120 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
121
122* New remote packets
123
124vFile:open:
125vFile:close:
126vFile:pread:
127vFile:pwrite:
128vFile:unlink:
129 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
d0c678e6 130
e85a822c
DJ
131* GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
132process.
133
2d717e4f
DJ
134vAttach
135 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
136 mode.
137
138vRun
139 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
140
8d5f9c6f 141*** Changes in GDB 6.7
6dd09645 142
19d378fc
MS
143* Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
144bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
145Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
146
3a40aaa0
UW
147* When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
148symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
149-Bsymbolic linker option.
150
a6ec25f2
BW
151* When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
152recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
153is not supported.
154
6dd09645
JB
155* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
156frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
157
c9bb8148
DJ
158* GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
15932-bit or 64-bit register values.
160
0d5de010
DJ
161* Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
162
23181151
DJ
163* GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
164target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
165a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
166
ea37ba09
DJ
167* Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
168automatically displayed as character or string data.
169
170* The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
171arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
172as strings.
e1f48ead 173
123dc839
DJ
174* Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
175for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
8d5f9c6f 176only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
123dc839 177
05a4558a
DJ
178* GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
179iWMMXt coprocessor.
fb1e4ffc 180
7c963485
PA
181* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
182ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
183has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
184
b18be20d
DJ
185* GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
186
0ca420ce
UW
187* GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
188
31d99776
DJ
189* The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
190layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
191segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
192
a4642986
MR
193* The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
194immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
195
cfa9d6d9
DJ
196* The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
197"library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
198packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
199where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
200Windows and SymbianOS).
255e7678
DJ
201
202* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
203(DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
f5db8714
JK
204
205* GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
206according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
cfa9d6d9 207
c9bb8148
DJ
208* New commands
209
23776285
MR
210set remoteflow
211show remoteflow
212 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
213 when debugging using remote targets.
214
c9bb8148
DJ
215set mem inaccessible-by-default
216show mem inaccessible-by-default
217 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
218 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
219 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
220 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
221 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
222
223set breakpoint auto-hw
224show breakpoint auto-hw
225 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
226 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
227 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
228 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
229 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
230 including "next" and "finish".
231
0e420bd8
JB
232catch exception
233catch exception unhandled
234 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
235
236catch assert
237 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
238
f822c95b
DJ
239set sysroot
240show sysroot
241 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
242 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
243 an alias to "set sysroot".
244
83cc5c53
UW
245info spu
246 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
247 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
248 architecture.
249
bd372731
MK
250* New native configurations
251
252OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
253
23181151
DJ
254set tdesc filename
255unset tdesc filename
256show tdesc filename
257 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
258 not query the target for its built-in description.
259
c9bb8148
DJ
260* New targets
261
54fe9172 262OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
c9bb8148 263MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
c077150c 264Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
c9bb8148 265
6dd09645
JB
266* New remote packets
267
268QPassSignals:
269 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
270 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
271
23181151
DJ
272qXfer:features:read:
273 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
274 features.
6dd09645 275
83cc5c53
UW
276qXfer:spu:read:
277qXfer:spu:write:
278 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
279 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
280
cfa9d6d9
DJ
281qXfer:libraries:read:
282 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
283 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
284 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
285 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
286
483367ee
DJ
287* Removed targets
288
289Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
290
d08950c4
UW
291alpha*-*-osf1*
292alpha*-*-osf2*
7ce59000 293d10v-*-*
483367ee
DJ
294hppa*-*-hiux*
295i[34567]86-ncr-*
296i[34567]86-*-dgux*
297i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
298i[34567]86-*-netware*
299i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
300i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
301i[34567]86-*-sco*
302i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
303i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
304i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
305i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
306i[34567]86-*-unixware*
307i[34567]86-*-sysv*
308i[34567]86-*-isc*
309m68*-cisco*-*
310m68*-tandem-*
ad527d2e 311mips*-*-pe
483367ee 312rs6000-*-lynxos*
ad527d2e 313sh*-*-pe
483367ee 314
7ce59000
DJ
315* Other removed features
316
317target abug
318target cpu32bug
319target est
320target rom68k
321
322 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
323
ea35711c
DJ
324target hms
325target e7000
326target sh3
327target sh3e
328
329 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
330 H8/300.
331
332target ocd
333
334 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
335 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
336 interfaces.
337
7ce59000
DJ
338DWARF 1 support
339
340 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
341 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
342
54d61198
DJ
343Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
344
345 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
346 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
347 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
348 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
349
ea35711c
DJ
350MIPS ".pdr" sections
351
352 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
353 in debugging information.
354
355Scheme support
356
357 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
358 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
359
1a69e1e4
DJ
360set mips stack-arg-size
361set mips saved-gpreg-size
362
363 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
364
6dd09645 365*** Changes in GDB 6.6
e374b601 366
ca3bf3bd
DJ
367* New targets
368
369Xtensa xtensa-elf
9c309e77 370Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
ca3bf3bd 371
6aec2e11
DJ
372* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
373(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
374running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
375
376* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
377Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
378supported.
379
17218d91
DJ
380* The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
381broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
382
9ebce043
DJ
383* The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
384stub provides the required support.
385
7d3d3ece
DJ
386* Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
387longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
388
4f8253f3
JB
389* New commands
390
391set substitute-path
392unset substitute-path
393show substitute-path
394 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
395 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
396 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
397 between compilation and debugging.
398
9fa66fd7
AS
399set trace-commands
400show trace-commands
401 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
402 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
403 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
404
1f5befc1
DJ
405* REMOVED features
406
407The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
408
2ec3381a
DJ
409Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
410an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
411
3d00d119
DJ
412The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
413
be2a5f71
DJ
414* New remote packets
415
416qSupported:
417 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
418 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
419 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
420 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
421 target.
422
0876f84a
DJ
423qXfer:auxv:read:
424 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
425 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
426
9ebce043
DJ
427qXfer:memory-map:read:
428 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
429 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
430
431vFlashErase:
432vFlashWrite:
433vFlashDone:
434 Erase and program a flash memory device.
435
0876f84a
DJ
436* Removed remote packets
437
438qPart:auxv:read:
439 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
440 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
441
e374b601 442*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 443
96309189
MS
444* New targets
445
446Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
447
448Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
449
53e5f3cf
AS
450* New commands
451
452init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
453 only if it doesn't already have a value.
454
ac264b3b
MS
455The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
456
457checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
458
459restart <n> Return the program state to a
460 previously saved state.
461
462info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
463
464delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
465
466set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
467 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
468
469info forks List forks of the user program that
470 are available to be debugged.
471
472fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
473 forks of the user program that are
474 available to be debugged.
475
476delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
477 that are available to be debugged (and
478 kill the forked process).
479
480detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
481 that are available to be debugged (and
482 allow the process to continue).
483
3950dc3f
NS
484* New architecture
485
486Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
487
0ea3f30e
DJ
488* Improved Windows host support
489
490GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
491native console support, and remote communications using either
492network sockets or serial ports.
493
f79daebb
GM
494* Improved Modula-2 language support
495
496GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
497basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
498pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
499printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
500written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
501GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
502
acab6ab2
MM
503* REMOVED features
504
505The ARM rdi-share module.
506
f4267320
DJ
507The Netware NLM debug server.
508
53e5f3cf 509*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 510
e0ecbda1
MK
511* New native configurations
512
02a677ac 513OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
e0ecbda1
MK
514OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
515
d64a6579
KB
516* New targets
517
518Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
519
b33a6190
AS
520* New command line options
521
522--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
523--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
524 the child (debugged) program exited with.
525--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
526 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
527 specified multiple times and in conjunction
528 with the --command (-x) option.
529
11dced61
AC
530* Deprecated commands removed
531
532The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
533removed:
534
535 Command Replacement
536 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
537 othernames set arm disassembler
538 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
539 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
540 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
541 regs info registers
542
6fe85783
MK
543* New BSD user-level threads support
544
545It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
546library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
547configurations are:
548
549FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
550FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
551OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
552
553Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
554are not yet supported.
555
5260ca71
MS
556* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
557(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
558
e84ecc99
AC
559* REMOVED configurations and files
560
561VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 562Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 563National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 564
31e35378
JB
565* New "set print array-indexes" command
566
567After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
568when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
569behavior.
570
e85e5c83
MK
571* VAX floating point support
572
573GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
574
d91e9901
AS
575* User-defined command support
576
577In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
578to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
579section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
580
f2cb65ca
MC
581*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
582
f47b1503
AS
583* New command line option
584
585GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
586debugging.
587
f2cb65ca
MC
588* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
589
590GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
591information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
592by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
593proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
594to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 595
d08c0230
AC
596* Internationalization
597
598When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
599internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
600continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
601
117ea3cf
PH
602* Ada
603
604Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
605implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
606into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
607
d08c0230
AC
608* New native configurations
609
610GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
611
612* Remote 'p' packet
613
614GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
615packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
616
617* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
618
619GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
620The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
621features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
622i386 application).
623
624GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
625compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
626continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
627configurations:
628
629hppa-*-hpux
630ia64-*-aix
631mips-*-irix*
632*-*-lynx
633mips-*-linux-gnu
634sds protocol
635xdr protocol
636powerpc bdm protocol
637
638Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
639made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
640
641* OBSOLETE configurations and files
642
643Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
644been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
645configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
646permanently REMOVED.
647
648h8300-*-*
649mcore-*-*
650mn10300-*-*
651ns32k-*-*
652sh64-*-*
653v850-*-*
654
ebb7c577
AC
655*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
656
657* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
658
659When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
660heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
661been fixed.
662
663* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
664
665When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
666fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
667IRIX long double values).
668
669* VAX and "next"
670
671A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
672command. This problem has been fixed.
673
860660cb 674*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 675
0dea2468
AC
676* Fix for ``many threads''
677
678On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
679rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
680error message:
681
682 ptrace: No such process.
683 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
684
685This problem has been fixed.
686
2c07db7a
AC
687* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
688
689Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
690GDB to dump core).
691
c23968a2
JB
692* New ``start'' command.
693
694This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
695
71009278
MK
696* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
697
698Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
699live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
700platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
701
702FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
703FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
704NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
705NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
706NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
707OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
708OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
709OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
710OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
711
3c0b7db2
AC
712* Signal trampoline code overhauled
713
714Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
715These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
716of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
717call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
718signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
719
73cc75f3
AC
720Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
721features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
722include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 723
7243600a
BF
724* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
725
6f606e1c
MK
726* New native configurations
727
97dc871c 728GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 729OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
bf2ca189
MK
730OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
731OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 732OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 733NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 734OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 735
a1b461bf
AC
736* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
737
738GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
739The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
740including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
741migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
742compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
743work, was also included.
744
745GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
746module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
747
748h8300-*-*
749mcore-*-*
750mn10300-*-*
751ns32k-*-*
752sh64-*-*
753v850-*-*
754xstormy16-*-*
755
756Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
757made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
758
3c7012f5
AC
759* REMOVED configurations and files
760
761Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
762Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
763Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
764Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
765Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
766AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
767Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
768decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
769riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
770sonymips mips-sony-*
771sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
772
e5fe55f7
AC
773*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
774
775* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
776
777The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
778GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
779command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
780program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
781with GDB".
782
783* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
784
785Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
786libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
787cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
788GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
789shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
790the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
791are created.
792
793Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
794
795* Fixed ISO-C build problems
796
797The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
798non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
799compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
800
801* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
802
803Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
804wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
805
806* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
807
808The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
809permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
810systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
811
812* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
813
814Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
815has been updated to use constant array sizes.
816
817* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
818
819GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
820its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
821panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
822
823* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
824
825When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
826by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
827not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
828
faae5abe 829*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 830
9175c9a3
MC
831* Removed --with-mmalloc
832
833Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
834conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
835
3cc87ec0
MK
836* Changes in AMD64 configurations
837
838The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
839the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
840and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
841you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
842
f0424ef6
MK
843* Revised SPARC target
844
845The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
846FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
03cebad2
MK
847support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
848from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
849(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 850
59659be2
ILT
851* New C++ demangler
852
853GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
854names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
855with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
856programs.
857
9e08b29b
DJ
858* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
859
860GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
861arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
862encountered these.
863
8dfe8985
DC
864* C++ nested types and namespaces
865
866GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
867improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
868is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
869Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
870namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
871"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
872frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
873if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
874GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
875
cced5e27
MK
876* New native configurations
877
878NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 879OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 880OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
f2cab569
MK
881OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
882OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 883
b4b4b794
KI
884* New debugging protocols
885
886M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
887
7989c619
AC
888* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
889
890The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
891and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
892tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
893
5994185b
AC
894* OBSOLETE configurations and files
895
896Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
897been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
898configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
899permanently REMOVED.
900
901Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
902Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
903Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
904Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
905Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
906AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
907Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
0748d941
AC
908decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
909riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
910sonymips mips-sony-*
911sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 912
0ddabb4c
AC
913* REMOVED configurations and files
914
915SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
916SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4a8269c0
AC
917Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
918Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
919H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
920HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
921HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
922HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
923PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 924386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4a8269c0
AC
925Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
926 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
927 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f0424ef6
MK
928SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
929SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4a8269c0
AC
930Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
931Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 932
c7f1390e
DJ
933*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
934
1fe43d45
AC
935* Objective-C
936
937Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
938integrated into GDB.
939
e6beb428
AC
940* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
941
942DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
943information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
944By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
945backtraces.
946
947The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
948have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
949DWARF 2 CFI support.
950
951* Hosted file I/O.
952
953GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
954file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
955remote protocol documentation for details.
956
957* All targets using the new architecture framework.
958
959All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
960architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
961to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
962ppc32 on ppc64).
963
964* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
965
966GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
967per-thread variables.
968
969* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
970
971GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
972GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
973
974* Separate debug info.
975
976GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
977automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
978of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
979system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
980and optional debug files.
981
982* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
983
984DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
985describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
986debugger.
987
988GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
989for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
990
991* Java
992
993A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
994Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
995considered "useable".
996
85f8f974
DJ
997* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
998
999The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
1000commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
1001kernel.
1002
0fac0b41
DJ
1003* GDB supports logging output to a file
1004
1005There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
1006used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 1007
6ad8ae5c
DJ
1008* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
1009
1010The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
1011disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
1012command.
1013
e286caf2 1014* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5f601589
AC
1015
1016The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
1017registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
1018
d28f9cdf
DJ
1019* Profiling support
1020
1021A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
1022be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
1023session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
1024"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
1025data, for more informative profiling results.
1026
da0f9dcd
AC
1027* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
1028
1029The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
1030option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 1031"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
da0f9dcd
AC
1032
1033Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
1034removed.
1035
fb9b6b35
JJ
1036Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
1037Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
1038Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
1039 in a subsequent -var-update.
1040
954a4db8
MK
1041* New native configurations.
1042
1043FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1044
6760f9e6
JB
1045* Multi-arched targets.
1046
b4263afa 1047HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 1048Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 1049
1b831c93
AC
1050* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1051
1052Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1053been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1054configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1055permanently REMOVED.
1056
8b0e5691 1057Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 1058Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 1059H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
56056df7
AC
1060HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
1061HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1062HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 1063PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
AC
1064Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
1065 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
1066 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
AC
1067Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1068Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 1069
5835abe7
NC
1070* REMOVED configurations and files
1071
1072V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
1073Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1074IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
1075i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1076i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1077i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
1078HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1079 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
1080 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
1081Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1082Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1083Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1084OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1085I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 1086
a094c6fb
AC
1087* MIPS $fp behavior changed
1088
1089The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
1090the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
1091context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
1092address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
1093The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
1094
299ffc64 1095*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 1096
46248966
AC
1097* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
1098
1099When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
1100`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
1101in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
1102library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
1103shared libs like mad''.
1104
b9d14705 1105* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 1106
b9d14705
DJ
1107Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
1108the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
1109arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
1110powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 1111
e0e9281e
JB
1112* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
1113
1114GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
1115and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
1116they expand.
1117
dd73b9bb
AC
1118The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
1119invocations in expression, and shows the result.
1120
1121The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
1122macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
1123
e0e9281e
JB
1124Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
1125information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
1126your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
1127information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
1128
2250ee0c
CV
1129* Multi-arched targets.
1130
6e3ba3b8
JT
1131DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
1132DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 1133NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 1134National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
1135Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
1136Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 1137
cd9bfe15 1138* New targets.
e33ce519 1139
456f8b9d
DB
1140Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
1141
e33ce519 1142
da8ca43d
JT
1143* New native configurations
1144
1145Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 1146SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 1147MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 1148UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 1149
cd9bfe15
AC
1150* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1151
1152Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1153been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1154configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1155permanently REMOVED.
1156
92eb23c5 1157Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 1158OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 1159IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 1160Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 1161Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 1162Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
1163i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1164i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1165i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
1166HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1167 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
1168 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 1169I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 1170
db034ac5
AC
1171* OBSOLETE languages
1172
1173CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
1174
cd9bfe15
AC
1175* REMOVED configurations and files
1176
1177AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1178A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1179AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1180AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1181AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1182
1183testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
1184
20f01a46
DH
1185* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
1186
1187This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
1188commands. The default is 1024.
1189
a5941fbf
MK
1190* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
1191
1192Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
1193
89743e04
MS
1194* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
1195
1196These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
1197to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
1198from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 1199
9fb14e79
JB
1200* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
1201
1202The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
1203including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
1204of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
1205
2037aebb
AC
1206*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
1207
1208* New targets.
1209
1210Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
1211
1212* Bug fixes
1213
1214gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
1215mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
1216Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
1217
1218gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
1219dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
1220Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
1221
1222Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
1223Surprisingly enough, it works now.
1224By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
1225
1226i386 hardware watchpoint support:
1227avoid misses on second run for some targets.
1228By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
1229
37057839 1230*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 1231
1a703748
MS
1232* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
1233
1234This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
1235really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
1236In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
1237target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
1238This can be a significant performance improvement on some
1239(notably embedded) targets.
1240
cefd4ef5
MS
1241* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
1242
55241689
AC
1243This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
1244process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
1245GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
1246hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 1247
352ed7b4
MS
1248* New command line option
1249
1250GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
1251
1252* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
1253
1254There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
1255command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
1256a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
1257be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
1258open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
1259issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
1260a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
1261it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
1262GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
1263is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
1264
fe419ffc
RE
1265* Changes in ARM configurations.
1266
1267Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
1268configuration is fully multi-arch.
1269
eb7cedd9
MK
1270* New native configurations
1271
fe419ffc 1272ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 1273x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 1274AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 1275Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 1276
c9f63e6b
CV
1277* New targets
1278
1279Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
1280
9b4ff276
AC
1281* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1282
1283Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1284been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1285configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1286permanently REMOVED.
1287
1288AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1289A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1290AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1291AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1292AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1293
b4ceaee6 1294testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 1295
e2caac18
AC
1296* REMOVED configurations and files
1297
1298TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 1299WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
1300PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1301PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1302PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 1303Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
1304Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1305 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 1306SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 1307Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
1308Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1309ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 1310Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 1311
c2a727fa
TT
1312* Changes to command line processing
1313
1314The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
1315for the inferior from gdb's command line.
1316
467d8519
TT
1317* Changes to key bindings
1318
1319There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
1320
7072a954
AC
1321*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
1322
1323Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
1324
1325Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
1326corrupted.
1327
1328Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
1329
1330Numerous documentation fixes.
1331
1332Numerous testsuite fixes.
1333
34f47bc4 1334*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
1335
1336* New native configurations
1337
1338Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
1339x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 1340MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
1341MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1342ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 1343s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 1344
bf64bfd6
AC
1345* New targets
1346
def90278 1347Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 1348CRIS cris-axis
55241689 1349UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 1350
17e78a56 1351* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
1352
1353x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 1354Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
1355Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1356 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
1357TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1358WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 1359Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
1360PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1361PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1362PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 1363SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
1364Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1365ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 1366Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 1367
17e78a56
AC
1368stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
1369kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
1370
7fcca85b
AC
1371Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1372been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1373configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1374permanently REMOVED.
1375
a196c81c 1376* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
1377
1378Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1379Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
1380Pyramid pyramid-*-*
1381ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
1382Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 1383ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 1384
6d6b80e5 1385* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 1386
6d6b80e5 1387GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
1388sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
1389present.
1390
bf64bfd6
AC
1391* Other news:
1392
e23194cb
EZ
1393* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
1394
1395* The MI enabled by default.
1396
1397The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
1398revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
1399engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
1400using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
1401which is now deprecated.
1402
1403* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
1404
1405GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
1406main features are supported:
1407
1408 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
1409
1410 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
1411 extension;
1412
1413 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
1414
1415 - a Pascal expression parser.
1416
1417However, some important features are not yet supported.
1418
1419 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
1420
1421 - there are some problems with boolean types;
1422
1423 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
1424 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
1425
1426 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
1427
1428 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
1429
1430* Changes in completion.
1431
1432Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
1433to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
1434users expect at the shell prompt.
1435
1436Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
1437`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
1438program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
1439files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
1440be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
1441considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
1442name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
1443
1444`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
1445
1446* New platform-independent commands:
1447
1448It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
1449hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
1450documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
1451
1452* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
1453
d7275149
MK
1454Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
1455revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
1456many threads as your system allows you to have.
1457
e23194cb
EZ
1458Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
1459
d7275149
MK
1460Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
1461multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
1462
1463* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
1464
1465Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
1466
e23194cb
EZ
1467GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
1468debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
1469supported.)
1470
1471* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
1472
1473Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
1474breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
1475implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
1476put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
1477and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
1478registers.
1479
1480The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
1481debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
1482watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
1483
1484* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
1485
1486New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
1487the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
1488
1489New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
1490display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
1491IDT.
1492
1493New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
1494from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
1495New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
1496a given linear address.
1497
1498GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
1499program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
1500which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
1501
1502DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
1503
6c56c069
EZ
1504It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
1505
e23194cb
EZ
1506* Changes in documentation.
1507
1508All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
1509Documentation License.
1510
1511Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1512manual.
1513
1514TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
1515
1516Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1517manual.
1518
1519The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
1520documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
1521hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
1522
5d6640b1
AC
1523* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
1524
1525The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
1526``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
1527contents of this file.
1528
1a1d8446
AC
1529* gdba.el deleted
1530
1531GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 1532
9debab2f 1533*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 1534
c63ce875
EZ
1535* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
1536
1537Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
1538programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
1539displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
1540greater level of detail.
1541
1542* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
1543
1544It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
1545bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
1546on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
1547written.
1548
1549* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
1550
1551The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
1552necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
1553machines ``out of the box''.
1554
1555The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
1556possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
1557signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
1558would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
1559interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
1560
1561It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
1562standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
1563even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
1564and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
1565terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
1566
1567The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
1568enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
1569also works.
1570
1571DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
1572GDB.
1573
1574It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
1575directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
1576times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
1577breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
1578
ed9a39eb
JM
1579* New native configurations
1580
1581ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 1582PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 1583
7a292a7a
SS
1584* New targets
1585
96baa820 1586Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
1587x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
1588PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
1589TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1590
085dd6e6
JM
1591* OBSOLETE configurations
1592
1593Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1594Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 1595Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 1596ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 1597Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 1598
9debab2f
AC
1599Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1600but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1601these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1602be permanently REMOVED.
1603
5330533d
SS
1604* Gould support removed
1605
1606Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
1607
bc9e5bbf
AC
1608* New features for SVR4
1609
1610On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
1611without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
1612load symbols from the running process's executable file.
1613
1614* Many C++ enhancements
1615
1616C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
1617in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
1618
adf40b2e
JM
1619* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
1620
1621A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
1622sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
1623with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
1624``|<program> <args>'' vis:
1625
1626 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
1627 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
1628
43e526b9
JM
1629* MIPS 64 remote protocol
1630
1631A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
1632expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
1633instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
1634
1635The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
1636added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1637
96baa820
JM
1638* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
1639
1640The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
1641``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
1642include ``set remote P-packet''.
1643
11cf8741
JM
1644* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
1645
1646The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
1647accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
1648``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
1649
7876dd43
DB
1650* ``apropos'' command added.
1651
1652The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
1653documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
1654try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
1655
bc9e5bbf
AC
1656* New MI interface
1657
1658A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
1659interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
1660process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
1661"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
1662enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
1663
1664 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
1665
c906108c
SS
1666*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
1667
1668* New native configurations
1669
1670HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
1671HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 1672M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
1673
1674* New targets
1675
1676Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1677Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
1678Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1679
1680* OBSOLETE configurations
1681
1682Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
1683
1684Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1685but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1686these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1687be permanently REMOVED.
1688
1689* ANSI/ISO C
1690
1691As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
1692buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
1693containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
1694use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
1695available. If this is not true, please report the affected
1696configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
1697information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
1698already.
1699
1700* Readline 2.2
1701
1702GDB now uses readline 2.2.
1703
1704* set extension-language
1705
1706You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
1707languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
1708you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
1709 set extension-language .c c++
1710The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
1711and their associated languages.
1712
1713* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
1714
1715When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
1716you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
1717PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
1718
1719 set processor NAME
1720
1721sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
1722following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
1723
1724 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
1725 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
1726 403 IBM PowerPC 403
1727 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
1728 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
1729 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
1730 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
1731 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
1732 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
1733 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
1734 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
1735
1736At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
1737special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
1738registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
1739only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
1740
1741* HP-UX support
1742
1743Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
1744more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
1745library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
1746support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
1747for xdb and dbx commands.
1748
1749* Catchpoints
1750
1751HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
1752generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
1753to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
1754
1755This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
1756argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
1757output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
1758
1759* Debugging across forks
1760
1761On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
1762in the inferior.
1763
1764* TUI
1765
1766HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
1767it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
1768configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
1769
1770* GDB remote protocol additions
1771
1772A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
1773Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
1774fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
1775allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
1776
1777For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
1778full 64-bit address. The command
1779
1780 set remoteaddresssize 32
1781
1782can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
1783the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
1784will be discarded.
1785
1786In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
1787command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
1788
1789 maint packet heythere
1790
1791sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
1792disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
1793time.
1794
1795The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
1796target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
1797downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
1798
1799* Tracing can collect general expressions
1800
1801You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
1802further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
1803doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
1804
1805* mask-address variable for Mips
1806
1807For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
1808a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
1809of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
1810
1811* Higher serial baud rates
1812
1813GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
1814230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
1815to achieve all of these rates.)
1816
1817* i960 simulator
1818
1819The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
1820builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
1821
1822
1823*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
1824
1825* New native configurations
1826
1827Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
1828Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
1829Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1830PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1831PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1832Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
1833Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
1834
1835* New targets
1836
1837Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1838Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
1839Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1840Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
1841MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
1842MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
1843MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
1844Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
1845Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
1846Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1847NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
1848
1849* New debugging protocols
1850
1851ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
1852M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
1853DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
1854PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1855PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1856Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1857
1858* DWARF 2
1859
1860All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
1861format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
1862information.
1863
1864* Java frontend
1865
1866GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
1867only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
1868
1869* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
1870
1871For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
1872loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
1873locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
1874
1875* Live range splitting
1876
1877GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
1878range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
1879more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
1880
1881* Hurd support
1882
1883GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
1884updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
1885
1886* ARM Thumb support
1887
1888GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
1889instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
1890instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
1891accordingly.
1892
1893* MIPS16 support
1894
1895GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
1896instruction set.
1897
1898* Overlay support
1899
1900GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
1901linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
1902will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
1903control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
1904additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
1905in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
1906
1907* info symbol
1908
1909The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
1910the symbol at the specified address.
1911
1912* Trace support
1913
1914The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
1915asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
1916extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
1917includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
1918file tracepoint.c for more details.
1919
1920* MIPS simulator
1921
1922Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
1923by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
1924of most MIPS variants.
1925
1926* Sparc simulator
1927
1928Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
1929by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
1930Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
1931
1932* set architecture
1933
1934For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
1935basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
1936architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
1937the possible architectures.
1938
1939*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
1940
1941* New native configurations
1942
1943Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
1944M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
1945PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
1946PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
1947PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1948RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
1949
1950* New targets
1951
1952ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
1953I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1954MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
1955MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
1956PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
1957Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
1958Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1959
1960* PowerPC simulator
1961
1962The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
1963contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
1964PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
1965basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
1966performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
1967
1968* Solaris 2.5
1969
1970GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
1971
1972* Windows 95/NT native
1973
1974GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
1975To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
1976which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
1977Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
1978ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
1979
1980* dont-repeat command
1981
1982If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
1983command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
1984useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
1985extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
1986
1987* Send break instead of ^C
1988
1989The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
1990rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
1991GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
1992
1993* Remote protocol timeout
1994
1995The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
1996that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
1997to read from the target. The default value is 2.
1998
1999* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
2000
2001By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
2002loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
2003stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
2004when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
2005in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
2006
2007Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
2008/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
2009automatically on hpux10.
2010
2011* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
2012
2013Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
2014
2015* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
2016
2017When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
2018may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
2019the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
2020every character. The default value is 1050.
2021
2022* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
2023
2024If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
2025a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
2026replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
2027details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
2028remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
2029to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
2030
2031* Speedups for remote debugging
2032
2033GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
2034the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
2035and more efficient S-record downloading.
2036
2037* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
2038
2039GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
2040Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
2041
2042*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
2043
2044* Psymtabs for XCOFF
2045
2046The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
2047can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
2048
2049* Remote targets use caching
2050
2051Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
2052remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
2053it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
2054debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
2055off' turns the the data cache off.
2056
2057* Remote targets may have threads
2058
2059The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
2060in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
2061gdb/remote.c for details.
2062
2063* NetROM support
2064
2065If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
2066support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
2067acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
2068write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
2069support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
2070another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
2071sequence is something like
2072
2073 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
2074 load <prog>
2075 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
2076
2077* Macintosh host
2078
2079GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
2080may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
2081it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
2082available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
2083device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
2084directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
2085scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
2086mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
2087
2088* Autoconf
2089
2090GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
2091but does simplify configuration and building.
2092
2093* hpux10
2094
2095GDB now supports hpux10.
2096
2097*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
2098
2099* New native configurations
2100
2101x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
2102x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
2103NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
2104Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
2105
2106* New targets
2107
2108A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2109HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
2110CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
2111PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
2112WDC 65816 w65-*-*
2113
2114* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
2115
2116GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
2117possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
2118filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
2119the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
2120if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
2121
2122* Arguments to user-defined commands
2123
2124User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
2125Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
2126trivial example:
2127define adder
2128 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
2129
2130To execute the command use:
2131adder 1 2 3
2132
2133Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
2134Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
2135use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
2136
2137* New `if' and `while' commands
2138
2139This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
2140commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
2141expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
2142execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
2143terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
2144`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
2145if the expression is zero.
2146
2147* Fortran source language mode
2148
2149GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
2150Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
2151variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
2152with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
2153Fortran compilers.
2154
2155* Better HPUX support
2156
2157Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
2158running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
2159processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
2160for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
2161that behavior do the following before running the program:
2162
2163 adb -w a.out
2164 __dld_flags?W 0x5
2165 control-d
2166
2167This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
2168To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
2169
2170 adb -w a.out
2171 __dld_flags?W 0x4
2172 control-d
2173
2174You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
2175the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
2176external linkage.
2177
2178GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
2179HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
2180
2181* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
2182
2183You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
2184commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
2185current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
2186"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
2187associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
2188configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
2189
2190* New DOS host serial code
2191
2192This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
2193no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
2194a PC's serial port.
2195
2196*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
2197
2198* New "complete" command
2199
2200This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
2201were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
2202
2203* Trailing space optional in prompt
2204
2205"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
2206allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
2207
2208* Breakpoint hit counts
2209
2210"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
2211has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
2212can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
2213to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
2214less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
2215that breakpoint.
2216
2217* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
2218
2219"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
2220an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
2221arrays actually contain only short strings.
2222
2223* Shared library breakpoints
2224
2225In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
2226breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
2227
2228* Hardware watchpoints
2229
2230There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
2231targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
2232
55241689 2233Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
2234
2235* Annotations
2236
2237Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
2238and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
2239
2240* Improved Irix 5 support
2241
2242GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
2243
2244* Improved HPPA support
2245
2246GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
2247
2248* New native configurations
2249
2250Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
2251HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2252Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
2253RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
2254
2255* New targets
2256
2257OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2258MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
2259Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
2260
2261* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
2262
2263There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
2264This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
2265
2266* Fixes
2267
2268As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
2269and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
2270
2271*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
2272
2273* Irix 5 is now supported
2274
2275* HPPA support
2276
2277GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
2278to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
2279GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
2280of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
2281can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
2282
2283
2284*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
2285
2286* User visible changes:
2287
2288* Remote Debugging
2289
2290The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
2291target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
2292debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
2293integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
2294debugging info for the mips target).
2295
2296* DEC Alpha native support
2297
2298GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
2299debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
2300work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
2301Alpha-specific notes.
2302
2303* Preliminary thread implementation
2304
2305GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
2306
2307* LynxOS native and target support for 386
2308
2309This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
2310to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
2311for details).
2312
2313* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
2314
2315This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
2316mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
2317call methods, ...etc.
2318
2319*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
2320
2321 * User visible changes:
2322
2323Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
2324supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
2325other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
2326somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
2327
2328Filename completion now works.
2329
2330When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
2331arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
2332addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
2333
2334All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
2335vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
2336should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
2337your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
2338to be on the far side of a thin network line.
2339
2340 * DEC alpha support
2341
2342This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
2343cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
2344
2345
2346*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
2347
2348 * Testsuite
2349
2350This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
2351The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
2352via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
2353
2354 * C++ demangling
2355
2356'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
2357emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
2358Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
2359disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
2360use gdb with AT&T cfront.
2361
2362 * Simulators
2363
2364GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
2365So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
2366Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
2367
2368 * New targets supported
2369
2370H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2371H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2372SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
2373Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2374IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
2375
2376Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
2377version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
2378GO32 memory extender.
2379
2380 * New remote protocols
2381
2382MIPS remote debugging protocol.
2383
2384 * New source languages supported
2385
2386This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
2387used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
2388into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
2389
2390
2391*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
2392
2393 * HP Precision Architecture supported
2394
2395GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
2396version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
2397University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
2398compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
2399format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
2400(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
2401
2402Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
2403
2404 * Faster and better demangling
2405
2406We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
2407demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
2408character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
2409only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
2410This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
2411increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
2412symbol lookups.
2413
2414`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
2415from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
2416compiler does not actually implement.
2417
2418 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
2419
2420In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
2421inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
2422recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
2423very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
2424The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
2425circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
2426fix.
2427
2428The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
2429release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
2430
2431 * Improved configure script
2432
2433The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
2434you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
2435host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
2436done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
2437
2438We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
2439version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
2440`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
2441The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
2442only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
2443We hope to make this the default in a future release.
2444
2445 * Documentation improvements
2446
2447There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
2448produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
2449before submitting changes.
2450
2451The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
2452M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
2453`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
2454you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
2455a future texinfo-X.Y release.
2456
2457*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
2458We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
2459been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
2460or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
2461`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
2462around this problem.
2463
2464 * New features
2465
2466GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
2467the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
2468`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
2469the target program.
2470
2471The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
2472how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
2473
2474 * New native hosts supported
2475
2476HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
2477386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
2478
2479 * New targets supported
2480
2481AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
2482
2483 * New file formats supported
2484
2485BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
2486HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
2487
2488 * Major bug fixes
2489
2490Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
2491
2492We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
2493printf_filtered("%s") problems.
2494
2495We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
2496for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
2497release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
2498
2499You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
2500will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
2501
2502We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
2503for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
2504especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
2505libraries.
2506
2507The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
2508information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
2509command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
2510any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
2511when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
2512
2513 * Internal improvements
2514
2515GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
2516debugging of multiple languages in the future.
2517
2518GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
2519Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
2520symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
2521contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
2522shared code that handles any of them.
2523
2524 * New command line options
2525
2526We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
2527
2528 * Mmalloc licensing
2529
2530The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
2531General Public License.
2532
2533*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
2534
2535 * Host/native/target split
2536
2537GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
2538hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
2539target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
2540local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
2541ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
2542
2543The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
2544GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
2545is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
2546code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
2547any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
2548built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
2549handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
2550
2551GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
2552It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
2553plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
2554
2555 * New hosts supported
2556
2557HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
2558386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2559386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
2560
2561 * New targets supported
2562
2563Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
256468030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
2565
2566 * New native hosts supported
2567
2568386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2569 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
2570386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
2571
2572 * New file formats supported
2573
2574BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
2575supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
2576format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
2577
2578 * New commands
2579
2580`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
2581`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
2582These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
2583
2584`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
2585
2586You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
2587scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
2588prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
2589executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
2590
2591 * C++ improvements
2592
2593We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
2594info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
2595symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
2596
2597Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
2598
2599 * Major bug fixes
2600
2601The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
2602fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
2603by the compiler.
2604
2605We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
2606support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
2607
2608John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
2609slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
2610that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
2611purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
2612the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
2613mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
2614
2615Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
2616about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
2617completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
2618we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
2619
2620 * AMD 29k support
2621
2622A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
2623specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
2624calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
2625usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
2626in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
2627
2628We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
2629Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
2630of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
2631resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
2632
2633 * Remote interfaces
2634
2635We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
2636with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
2637message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
2638This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
2639needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
2640breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
2641each instruction being stepped through.
2642
2643The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
2644registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
2645
2646There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
2647find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
2648Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
2649processor with a serial port.
2650
2651 * Configuration
2652
2653Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
2654`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
2655supported, and what files each one uses.
2656
2657 * Library changes
2658
2659There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
2660disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
2661Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
2662disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
2663
2664The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
2665Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
2666can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
2667grants all the rights from the General Public License.
2668
2669 * Documentation
2670
2671The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
2672reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
2673as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
2674encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
2675system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
2676bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
2677
2678And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
2679
2680
2681*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
2682
2683 * Better support for C++ function names
2684
2685GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
2686names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
2687(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
2688single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
2689Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
2690
2691GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
2692the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
2693You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
2694lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
2695for the list of formats.
2696
2697 * G++ symbol mangling problem
2698
2699Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
2700C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
2701directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
2702can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
2703usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
2704about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
2705this problem.)
2706
2707 * New 'maintenance' command
2708
2709All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
2710the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
2711can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
2712
2713 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
2714 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
2715 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
2716 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
2717 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
2718 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
2719
2720The following commands are new:
2721
2722 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
2723 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
2724 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
2725
2726 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
2727
2728We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
2729(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
2730be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
2731read after argv processing.
2732
2733 * New hosts supported
2734
2735Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
2736
55241689 2737GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
2738
2739We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
2740is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
2741for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
2742masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
2743fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
2744It costs extra.
2745
2746 * New targets supported
2747
2748Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2749
2750 * More smarts about finding #include files
2751
2752GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
2753all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
2754greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
2755especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
2756the one that contains your sources.
2757
2758We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
2759breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
2760try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
2761
2762 * Interesting infernals change
2763
2764GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
2765section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
2766target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
2767stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
2768
2769 * Bug fixes (of course!)
2770
2771There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
2772 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
2773 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
2774
2775See the ChangeLog for details.
2776
2777*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
2778
2779 * New machines supported (host and target)
2780
2781IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
2782
2783SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2784
2785 * New malloc package
2786
2787GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
2788Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
2789capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
2790This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
2791pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
2792more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
2793
2794 * info proc
2795
2796The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
2797'help info proc' for details.
2798
2799 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
2800
2801The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
2802Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
2803possible.
2804
2805 * File name changes for MS-DOS
2806
2807Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
2808support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
2809conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
2810environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
2811that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
2812in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
2813
2814 * Cross byte order fixes
2815
2816Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
2817targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
2818
2819 * New -mapped and -readnow options
2820
2821If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
2822system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
2823`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
2824program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
2825called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
2826Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
2827and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
2828the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
2829option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
2830starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
2831
2832You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
2833the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
2834information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
2835slower, but makes future operations faster.
2836
2837The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
2838build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
2839A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
2840use is:
2841
2842 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
2843
2844The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
2845It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
2846shared across multiple host platforms.
2847
2848 * longjmp() handling
2849
2850GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
2851siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
2852all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
2853platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
2854
2855 * Solaris 2.0
2856
2857Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
2858this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
2859reading symbols.
2860
2861 * Bug fixes
2862
2863As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
2864People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
2865crashes and trashed symbol tables.
2866
2867*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
2868
2869 * New machines supported (host and target)
2870
2871SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2872 (except core files)
2873BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
2874Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
2875
2876 * New machines supported (target)
2877
2878AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2879
2880 * C++ support
2881
2882GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
2883The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
2884per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
2885
2886GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
2887`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
2888extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
2889good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
2890will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
2891released.
2892
2893 * New features for SVR4
2894
2895GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
2896shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
2897only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
2898
2899The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
2900on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
2901it prints the address mappings of the process.
2902
2903If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
2904bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
2905
2906 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
2907
2908Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
2909now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
2910skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
2911make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
2912same code linked statically.
2913
2914 * New Getopt
2915
2916GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
2917version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
2918continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
2919Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
2920added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
2921future by other options that begin with the same letter.
2922
2923 * Bugs fixed
2924
2925The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2926Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2927See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2928
2929
2930*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
2931
2932 * New machines supported (host and target)
2933
2934Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
2935NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
2936Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2937
2938 * Almost SCO Unix support
2939
2940We had hoped to support:
2941SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2942(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
2943that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
2944about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
2945
2946 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
2947
2948GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
2949debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
2950is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
2951send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
2952reqired (if any).
2953
2954 * New Readline
2955
2956GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
2957is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
2958required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
2959
2960 * Bugs fixed
2961
2962The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2963Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2964See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2965
2966 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
2967
2968GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
2969supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
2970symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
2971
2972Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
2973mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
2974debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
2975mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
2976version 2.
2977
2978Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
2979really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
2980line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
2981variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
2982situation somewhat.
2983
2984When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
2985However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
2986methods.
2987
2988We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
2989DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
2990encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
2991
2992
2993*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
2994
2995 * Improved configuration
2996
2997Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
2998Porting BFD is simpler.
2999
3000 * Stepping improved
3001
3002The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
3003of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
3004in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
3005function that has debugging information is called within the line.
3006
3007 * Bug fixing
3008
3009Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
3010
3011 * New host supported (not target)
3012
3013Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
3014
3015
3016*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
3017
3018 * Multiple source language support
3019
3020GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
3021It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
3022and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
3023language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
3024You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
3025`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
3026
3027 * GDB and Modula-2
3028
3029GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
3030currently under development at the State University of New York at
3031Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
3032continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
3033
3034Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
3035debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
3036symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
3037
3038There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
3039in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
3040
3041 * set write on/off
3042
3043GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
3044a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
3045the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
3046by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
3047effect immediately.
3048
3049 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
3050
3051When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
3052shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
3053The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
3054examining core files.
3055
3056 * set listsize
3057
3058You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
3059The default is 10.
3060
3061 * New machines supported (host and target)
3062
3063SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
3064Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
3065Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
3066
3067 * New hosts supported (not targets)
3068
3069IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
3070
3071 * New targets supported (not hosts)
3072
3073AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3074AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3075Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
3076
3077 * New remote interfaces
3078
3079AMD 29000 Adapt
3080AMD 29000 Minimon
3081
3082
3083*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
3084
3085 * New Facilities
3086
3087Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
3088
3089Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
3090target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
3091is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
3092remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
3093remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
3094also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
3095using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
3096stub on the target system.
3097
3098New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
3099
3100GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
3101library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
3102object file types such as a.out and coff.
3103
3104There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
3105refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
3106
3107
3108 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
3109
3110All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
3111by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
3112
3113For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
3114``Show prompt'' produces the response:
3115Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
3116
3117What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
3118print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
3119will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
3120all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
3121
3122confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
3123 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
3124 it is already running. Default is ON.
3125
3126editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
3127 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
3128 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
3129 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
3130 Default is ON.
3131
3132history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
3133 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
3134 or the value of the environment variable
3135 GDBHISTFILE.
3136
3137history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
3138 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
3139 HISTSIZE.
3140
3141history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
3142 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
3143 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
3144
3145history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
3146 history expansion will be performed on
3147 command line input. The default is OFF.
3148
3149radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
3150 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
3151 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
3152
3153height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
3154 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
3155 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3156 variable TERM.
3157
3158width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
3159 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
3160 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3161 variable TERM.
3162
3163Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
3164``set width'' instead.
3165
3166print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
3167 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
3168 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
3169 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
3170
3171print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
3172 is OFF.
3173
3174print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
3175 "raw" form if off.
3176
3177print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
3178 like instructions.
3179
3180print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
3181
3182
3183 * Support for Epoch Environment.
3184
3185The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
3186new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
3187are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
3188window.
3189
3190
3191 * Support for Shared Libraries
3192
3193GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
3194Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
3195before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
3196happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
3197At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
3198from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
3199shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
3200It can be abbreviated ``share''.
3201
3202sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
3203 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
3204 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
3205
3206info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
3207
3208
3209 * Watchpoints
3210
3211A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
3212expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
3213tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
3214quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
3215problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
3216more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
3217
3218watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
3219
3220info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
3221
3222delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3223disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3224enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3225
3226
3227 * C++ multiple inheritance
3228
3229When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
3230for C++ programs.
3231
3232 * C++ exception handling
3233
3234Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
3235ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
3236the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
3237handler's context).
3238
3239catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
3240 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
3241 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
3242
3243info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
3244 current stack frame.
3245
3246
3247 * Minor command changes
3248
3249The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
3250command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
3251is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
3252
3253The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
3254at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
3255frames without printing.
3256
3257 * New directory command
3258
3259'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
3260The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
3261about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
3262with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
3263find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
3264
3265 * Configuring GDB for compilation
3266
3267For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
3268for more details.
3269
3270GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
3271two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
3272Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
3273where the program that you are debugging will run.
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