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[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
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4*** Changes since GDB 6.6
5
6* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
7frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
8
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9* GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
1032-bit or 64-bit register values.
11
12* New commands
13
14set mem inaccessible-by-default
15show mem inaccessible-by-default
16 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
17 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
18 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
19 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
20 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
21
22set breakpoint auto-hw
23show breakpoint auto-hw
24 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
25 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
26 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
27 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
28 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
29 including "next" and "finish".
30
31* New targets
32
33MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
34
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35* New remote packets
36
37QPassSignals:
38 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
39 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
40
41
42*** Changes in GDB 6.6
e374b601 43
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44* New targets
45
46Xtensa xtensa-elf
9c309e77 47Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
ca3bf3bd 48
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49* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
50(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
51running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
52
53* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
54Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
55supported.
56
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57* The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
58broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
59
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60* Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
61longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
62
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63* New commands
64
65set substitute-path
66unset substitute-path
67show substitute-path
68 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
69 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
70 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
71 between compilation and debugging.
72
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73set trace-commands
74show trace-commands
75 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
76 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
77 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
78
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79* REMOVED features
80
81The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
82
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83Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
84an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
85
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86The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
87
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88* New remote packets
89
90qSupported:
91 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
92 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
93 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
94 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
95 target.
96
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97qXfer:auxv:read:
98 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
99 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
100
101* Removed remote packets
102
103qPart:auxv:read:
104 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
105 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
106
e374b601 107*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 108
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109* New targets
110
111Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
112
113Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
114
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115* New commands
116
117init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
118 only if it doesn't already have a value.
119
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120The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
121
122checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
123
124restart <n> Return the program state to a
125 previously saved state.
126
127info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
128
129delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
130
131set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
132 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
133
134info forks List forks of the user program that
135 are available to be debugged.
136
137fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
138 forks of the user program that are
139 available to be debugged.
140
141delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
142 that are available to be debugged (and
143 kill the forked process).
144
145detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
146 that are available to be debugged (and
147 allow the process to continue).
148
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149* New architecture
150
151Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
152
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153* Improved Windows host support
154
155GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
156native console support, and remote communications using either
157network sockets or serial ports.
158
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159* Improved Modula-2 language support
160
161GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
162basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
163pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
164printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
165written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
166GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
167
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168* REMOVED features
169
170The ARM rdi-share module.
171
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172The Netware NLM debug server.
173
53e5f3cf 174*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 175
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176* New native configurations
177
02a677ac 178OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
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179OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
180
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181* New targets
182
183Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
184
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185* New command line options
186
187--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
188--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
189 the child (debugged) program exited with.
190--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
191 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
192 specified multiple times and in conjunction
193 with the --command (-x) option.
194
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195* Deprecated commands removed
196
197The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
198removed:
199
200 Command Replacement
201 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
202 othernames set arm disassembler
203 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
204 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
205 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
206 regs info registers
207
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208* New BSD user-level threads support
209
210It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
211library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
212configurations are:
213
214FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
215FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
216OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
217
218Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
219are not yet supported.
220
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221* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
222(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
223
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224* REMOVED configurations and files
225
226VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 227Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 228National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 229
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230* New "set print array-indexes" command
231
232After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
233when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
234behavior.
235
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236* VAX floating point support
237
238GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
239
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240* User-defined command support
241
242In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
243to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
244section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
245
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246*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
247
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248* New command line option
249
250GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
251debugging.
252
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253* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
254
255GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
256information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
257by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
258proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
259to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 260
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261* Internationalization
262
263When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
264internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
265continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
266
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267* Ada
268
269Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
270implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
271into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
272
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273* New native configurations
274
275GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
276
277* Remote 'p' packet
278
279GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
280packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
281
282* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
283
284GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
285The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
286features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
287i386 application).
288
289GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
290compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
291continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
292configurations:
293
294hppa-*-hpux
295ia64-*-aix
296mips-*-irix*
297*-*-lynx
298mips-*-linux-gnu
299sds protocol
300xdr protocol
301powerpc bdm protocol
302
303Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
304made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
305
306* OBSOLETE configurations and files
307
308Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
309been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
310configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
311permanently REMOVED.
312
313h8300-*-*
314mcore-*-*
315mn10300-*-*
316ns32k-*-*
317sh64-*-*
318v850-*-*
319
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320*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
321
322* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
323
324When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
325heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
326been fixed.
327
328* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
329
330When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
331fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
332IRIX long double values).
333
334* VAX and "next"
335
336A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
337command. This problem has been fixed.
338
860660cb 339*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 340
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341* Fix for ``many threads''
342
343On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
344rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
345error message:
346
347 ptrace: No such process.
348 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
349
350This problem has been fixed.
351
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352* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
353
354Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
355GDB to dump core).
356
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357* New ``start'' command.
358
359This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
360
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361* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
362
363Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
364live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
365platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
366
367FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
368FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
369NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
370NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
371NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
372OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
373OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
374OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
375OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
376
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377* Signal trampoline code overhauled
378
379Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
380These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
381of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
382call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
383signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
384
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385Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
386features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
387include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 388
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389* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
390
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391* New native configurations
392
97dc871c 393GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 394OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
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395OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
396OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 397OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 398NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 399OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 400
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401* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
402
403GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
404The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
405including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
406migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
407compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
408work, was also included.
409
410GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
411module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
412
413h8300-*-*
414mcore-*-*
415mn10300-*-*
416ns32k-*-*
417sh64-*-*
418v850-*-*
419xstormy16-*-*
420
421Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
422made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
423
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424* REMOVED configurations and files
425
426Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
427Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
428Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
429Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
430Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
431AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
432Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
433decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
434riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
435sonymips mips-sony-*
436sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
437
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438*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
439
440* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
441
442The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
443GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
444command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
445program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
446with GDB".
447
448* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
449
450Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
451libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
452cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
453GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
454shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
455the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
456are created.
457
458Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
459
460* Fixed ISO-C build problems
461
462The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
463non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
464compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
465
466* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
467
468Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
469wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
470
471* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
472
473The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
474permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
475systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
476
477* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
478
479Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
480has been updated to use constant array sizes.
481
482* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
483
484GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
485its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
486panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
487
488* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
489
490When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
491by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
492not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
493
faae5abe 494*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 495
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496* Removed --with-mmalloc
497
498Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
499conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
500
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501* Changes in AMD64 configurations
502
503The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
504the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
505and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
506you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
507
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508* Revised SPARC target
509
510The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
511FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
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512support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
513from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
514(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 515
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516* New C++ demangler
517
518GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
519names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
520with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
521programs.
522
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523* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
524
525GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
526arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
527encountered these.
528
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529* C++ nested types and namespaces
530
531GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
532improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
533is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
534Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
535namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
536"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
537frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
538if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
539GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
540
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541* New native configurations
542
543NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 544OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 545OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
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546OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
547OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 548
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549* New debugging protocols
550
551M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
552
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553* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
554
555The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
556and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
557tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
558
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559* OBSOLETE configurations and files
560
561Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
562been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
563configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
564permanently REMOVED.
565
566Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
567Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
568Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
569Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
570Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
571AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
572Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
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573decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
574riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
575sonymips mips-sony-*
576sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 577
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578* REMOVED configurations and files
579
580SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
581SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
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582Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
583Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
584H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
585HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
586HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
587HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
588PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 589386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
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590Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
591 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
592 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
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593SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
594SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
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595Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
596Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 597
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598*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
599
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600* Objective-C
601
602Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
603integrated into GDB.
604
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605* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
606
607DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
608information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
609By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
610backtraces.
611
612The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
613have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
614DWARF 2 CFI support.
615
616* Hosted file I/O.
617
618GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
619file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
620remote protocol documentation for details.
621
622* All targets using the new architecture framework.
623
624All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
625architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
626to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
627ppc32 on ppc64).
628
629* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
630
631GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
632per-thread variables.
633
634* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
635
636GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
637GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
638
639* Separate debug info.
640
641GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
642automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
643of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
644system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
645and optional debug files.
646
647* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
648
649DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
650describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
651debugger.
652
653GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
654for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
655
656* Java
657
658A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
659Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
660considered "useable".
661
85f8f974
DJ
662* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
663
664The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
665commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
666kernel.
667
0fac0b41
DJ
668* GDB supports logging output to a file
669
670There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
671used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 672
6ad8ae5c
DJ
673* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
674
675The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
676disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
677command.
678
e286caf2 679* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5f601589
AC
680
681The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
682registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
683
d28f9cdf
DJ
684* Profiling support
685
686A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
687be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
688session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
689"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
690data, for more informative profiling results.
691
da0f9dcd
AC
692* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
693
694The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
695option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 696"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
da0f9dcd
AC
697
698Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
699removed.
700
fb9b6b35
JJ
701Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
702Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
703Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
704 in a subsequent -var-update.
705
954a4db8
MK
706* New native configurations.
707
708FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
709
6760f9e6
JB
710* Multi-arched targets.
711
b4263afa 712HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 713Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 714
1b831c93
AC
715* OBSOLETE configurations and files
716
717Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
718been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
719configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
720permanently REMOVED.
721
8b0e5691 722Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 723Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 724H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
56056df7
AC
725HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
726HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
727HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 728PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
AC
729Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
730 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
731 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
AC
732Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
733Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 734
5835abe7
NC
735* REMOVED configurations and files
736
737V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
738Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
739IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
740i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
741i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
742i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
743HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
744 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
745 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
746Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
747Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
748Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
749OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
750I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 751
a094c6fb
AC
752* MIPS $fp behavior changed
753
754The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
755the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
756context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
757address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
758The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
759
299ffc64 760*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 761
46248966
AC
762* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
763
764When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
765`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
766in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
767library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
768shared libs like mad''.
769
b9d14705 770* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 771
b9d14705
DJ
772Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
773the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
774arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
775powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 776
e0e9281e
JB
777* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
778
779GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
780and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
781they expand.
782
dd73b9bb
AC
783The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
784invocations in expression, and shows the result.
785
786The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
787macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
788
e0e9281e
JB
789Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
790information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
791your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
792information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
793
2250ee0c
CV
794* Multi-arched targets.
795
6e3ba3b8
JT
796DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
797DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 798NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 799National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
800Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
801Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 802
cd9bfe15 803* New targets.
e33ce519 804
456f8b9d
DB
805Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
806
e33ce519 807
da8ca43d
JT
808* New native configurations
809
810Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 811SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 812MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 813UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 814
cd9bfe15
AC
815* OBSOLETE configurations and files
816
817Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
818been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
819configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
820permanently REMOVED.
821
92eb23c5 822Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 823OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 824IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 825Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 826Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 827Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
828i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
829i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
830i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
831HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
832 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
833 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 834I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 835
db034ac5
AC
836* OBSOLETE languages
837
838CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
839
cd9bfe15
AC
840* REMOVED configurations and files
841
842AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
843A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
844AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
845AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
846AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
847
848testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
849
20f01a46
DH
850* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
851
852This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
853commands. The default is 1024.
854
a5941fbf
MK
855* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
856
857Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
858
89743e04
MS
859* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
860
861These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
862to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
863from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 864
9fb14e79
JB
865* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
866
867The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
868including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
869of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
870
2037aebb
AC
871*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
872
873* New targets.
874
875Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
876
877* Bug fixes
878
879gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
880mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
881Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
882
883gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
884dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
885Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
886
887Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
888Surprisingly enough, it works now.
889By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
890
891i386 hardware watchpoint support:
892avoid misses on second run for some targets.
893By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
894
37057839 895*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 896
1a703748
MS
897* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
898
899This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
900really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
901In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
902target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
903This can be a significant performance improvement on some
904(notably embedded) targets.
905
cefd4ef5
MS
906* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
907
55241689
AC
908This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
909process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
910GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
911hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 912
352ed7b4
MS
913* New command line option
914
915GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
916
917* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
918
919There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
920command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
921a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
922be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
923open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
924issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
925a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
926it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
927GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
928is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
929
fe419ffc
RE
930* Changes in ARM configurations.
931
932Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
933configuration is fully multi-arch.
934
eb7cedd9
MK
935* New native configurations
936
fe419ffc 937ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 938x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 939AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 940Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 941
c9f63e6b
CV
942* New targets
943
944Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
945
9b4ff276
AC
946* OBSOLETE configurations and files
947
948Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
949been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
950configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
951permanently REMOVED.
952
953AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
954A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
955AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
956AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
957AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
958
b4ceaee6 959testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 960
e2caac18
AC
961* REMOVED configurations and files
962
963TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 964WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
965PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
966PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
967PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 968Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
969Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
970 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 971SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 972Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
973Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
974ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 975Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 976
c2a727fa
TT
977* Changes to command line processing
978
979The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
980for the inferior from gdb's command line.
981
467d8519
TT
982* Changes to key bindings
983
984There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
985
7072a954
AC
986*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
987
988Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
989
990Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
991corrupted.
992
993Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
994
995Numerous documentation fixes.
996
997Numerous testsuite fixes.
998
34f47bc4 999*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
1000
1001* New native configurations
1002
1003Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
1004x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 1005MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
1006MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1007ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 1008s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 1009
bf64bfd6
AC
1010* New targets
1011
def90278 1012Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 1013CRIS cris-axis
55241689 1014UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 1015
17e78a56 1016* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
1017
1018x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 1019Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
1020Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1021 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
1022TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1023WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 1024Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
1025PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1026PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1027PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 1028SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
1029Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1030ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 1031Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 1032
17e78a56
AC
1033stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
1034kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
1035
7fcca85b
AC
1036Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1037been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1038configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1039permanently REMOVED.
1040
a196c81c 1041* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
1042
1043Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1044Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
1045Pyramid pyramid-*-*
1046ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
1047Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 1048ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 1049
6d6b80e5 1050* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 1051
6d6b80e5 1052GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
1053sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
1054present.
1055
bf64bfd6
AC
1056* Other news:
1057
e23194cb
EZ
1058* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
1059
1060* The MI enabled by default.
1061
1062The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
1063revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
1064engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
1065using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
1066which is now deprecated.
1067
1068* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
1069
1070GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
1071main features are supported:
1072
1073 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
1074
1075 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
1076 extension;
1077
1078 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
1079
1080 - a Pascal expression parser.
1081
1082However, some important features are not yet supported.
1083
1084 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
1085
1086 - there are some problems with boolean types;
1087
1088 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
1089 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
1090
1091 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
1092
1093 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
1094
1095* Changes in completion.
1096
1097Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
1098to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
1099users expect at the shell prompt.
1100
1101Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
1102`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
1103program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
1104files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
1105be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
1106considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
1107name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
1108
1109`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
1110
1111* New platform-independent commands:
1112
1113It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
1114hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
1115documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
1116
1117* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
1118
d7275149
MK
1119Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
1120revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
1121many threads as your system allows you to have.
1122
e23194cb
EZ
1123Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
1124
d7275149
MK
1125Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
1126multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
1127
1128* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
1129
1130Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
1131
e23194cb
EZ
1132GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
1133debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
1134supported.)
1135
1136* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
1137
1138Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
1139breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
1140implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
1141put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
1142and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
1143registers.
1144
1145The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
1146debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
1147watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
1148
1149* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
1150
1151New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
1152the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
1153
1154New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
1155display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
1156IDT.
1157
1158New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
1159from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
1160New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
1161a given linear address.
1162
1163GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
1164program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
1165which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
1166
1167DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
1168
6c56c069
EZ
1169It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
1170
e23194cb
EZ
1171* Changes in documentation.
1172
1173All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
1174Documentation License.
1175
1176Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1177manual.
1178
1179TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
1180
1181Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1182manual.
1183
1184The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
1185documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
1186hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
1187
5d6640b1
AC
1188* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
1189
1190The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
1191``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
1192contents of this file.
1193
1a1d8446
AC
1194* gdba.el deleted
1195
1196GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 1197
9debab2f 1198*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 1199
c63ce875
EZ
1200* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
1201
1202Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
1203programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
1204displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
1205greater level of detail.
1206
1207* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
1208
1209It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
1210bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
1211on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
1212written.
1213
1214* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
1215
1216The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
1217necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
1218machines ``out of the box''.
1219
1220The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
1221possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
1222signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
1223would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
1224interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
1225
1226It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
1227standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
1228even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
1229and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
1230terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
1231
1232The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
1233enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
1234also works.
1235
1236DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
1237GDB.
1238
1239It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
1240directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
1241times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
1242breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
1243
ed9a39eb
JM
1244* New native configurations
1245
1246ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 1247PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 1248
7a292a7a
SS
1249* New targets
1250
96baa820 1251Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
1252x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
1253PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
1254TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1255
085dd6e6
JM
1256* OBSOLETE configurations
1257
1258Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1259Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 1260Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 1261ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 1262Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 1263
9debab2f
AC
1264Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1265but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1266these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1267be permanently REMOVED.
1268
5330533d
SS
1269* Gould support removed
1270
1271Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
1272
bc9e5bbf
AC
1273* New features for SVR4
1274
1275On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
1276without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
1277load symbols from the running process's executable file.
1278
1279* Many C++ enhancements
1280
1281C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
1282in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
1283
adf40b2e
JM
1284* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
1285
1286A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
1287sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
1288with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
1289``|<program> <args>'' vis:
1290
1291 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
1292 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
1293
43e526b9
JM
1294* MIPS 64 remote protocol
1295
1296A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
1297expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
1298instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
1299
1300The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
1301added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1302
96baa820
JM
1303* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
1304
1305The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
1306``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
1307include ``set remote P-packet''.
1308
11cf8741
JM
1309* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
1310
1311The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
1312accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
1313``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
1314
7876dd43
DB
1315* ``apropos'' command added.
1316
1317The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
1318documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
1319try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
1320
bc9e5bbf
AC
1321* New MI interface
1322
1323A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
1324interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
1325process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
1326"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
1327enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
1328
1329 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
1330
c906108c
SS
1331*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
1332
1333* New native configurations
1334
1335HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
1336HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 1337M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
1338
1339* New targets
1340
1341Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1342Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
1343Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1344
1345* OBSOLETE configurations
1346
1347Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
1348
1349Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1350but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1351these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1352be permanently REMOVED.
1353
1354* ANSI/ISO C
1355
1356As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
1357buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
1358containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
1359use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
1360available. If this is not true, please report the affected
1361configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
1362information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
1363already.
1364
1365* Readline 2.2
1366
1367GDB now uses readline 2.2.
1368
1369* set extension-language
1370
1371You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
1372languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
1373you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
1374 set extension-language .c c++
1375The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
1376and their associated languages.
1377
1378* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
1379
1380When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
1381you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
1382PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
1383
1384 set processor NAME
1385
1386sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
1387following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
1388
1389 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
1390 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
1391 403 IBM PowerPC 403
1392 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
1393 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
1394 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
1395 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
1396 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
1397 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
1398 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
1399 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
1400
1401At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
1402special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
1403registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
1404only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
1405
1406* HP-UX support
1407
1408Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
1409more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
1410library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
1411support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
1412for xdb and dbx commands.
1413
1414* Catchpoints
1415
1416HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
1417generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
1418to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
1419
1420This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
1421argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
1422output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
1423
1424* Debugging across forks
1425
1426On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
1427in the inferior.
1428
1429* TUI
1430
1431HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
1432it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
1433configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
1434
1435* GDB remote protocol additions
1436
1437A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
1438Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
1439fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
1440allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
1441
1442For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
1443full 64-bit address. The command
1444
1445 set remoteaddresssize 32
1446
1447can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
1448the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
1449will be discarded.
1450
1451In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
1452command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
1453
1454 maint packet heythere
1455
1456sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
1457disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
1458time.
1459
1460The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
1461target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
1462downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
1463
1464* Tracing can collect general expressions
1465
1466You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
1467further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
1468doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
1469
1470* mask-address variable for Mips
1471
1472For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
1473a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
1474of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
1475
1476* Higher serial baud rates
1477
1478GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
1479230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
1480to achieve all of these rates.)
1481
1482* i960 simulator
1483
1484The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
1485builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
1486
1487
1488*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
1489
1490* New native configurations
1491
1492Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
1493Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
1494Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1495PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1496PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1497Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
1498Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
1499
1500* New targets
1501
1502Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1503Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
1504Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1505Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
1506MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
1507MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
1508MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
1509Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
1510Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
1511Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1512NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
1513
1514* New debugging protocols
1515
1516ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
1517M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
1518DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
1519PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1520PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1521Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1522
1523* DWARF 2
1524
1525All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
1526format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
1527information.
1528
1529* Java frontend
1530
1531GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
1532only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
1533
1534* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
1535
1536For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
1537loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
1538locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
1539
1540* Live range splitting
1541
1542GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
1543range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
1544more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
1545
1546* Hurd support
1547
1548GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
1549updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
1550
1551* ARM Thumb support
1552
1553GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
1554instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
1555instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
1556accordingly.
1557
1558* MIPS16 support
1559
1560GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
1561instruction set.
1562
1563* Overlay support
1564
1565GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
1566linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
1567will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
1568control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
1569additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
1570in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
1571
1572* info symbol
1573
1574The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
1575the symbol at the specified address.
1576
1577* Trace support
1578
1579The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
1580asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
1581extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
1582includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
1583file tracepoint.c for more details.
1584
1585* MIPS simulator
1586
1587Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
1588by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
1589of most MIPS variants.
1590
1591* Sparc simulator
1592
1593Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
1594by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
1595Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
1596
1597* set architecture
1598
1599For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
1600basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
1601architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
1602the possible architectures.
1603
1604*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
1605
1606* New native configurations
1607
1608Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
1609M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
1610PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
1611PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
1612PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1613RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
1614
1615* New targets
1616
1617ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
1618I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1619MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
1620MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
1621PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
1622Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
1623Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1624
1625* PowerPC simulator
1626
1627The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
1628contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
1629PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
1630basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
1631performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
1632
1633* Solaris 2.5
1634
1635GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
1636
1637* Windows 95/NT native
1638
1639GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
1640To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
1641which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
1642Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
1643ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
1644
1645* dont-repeat command
1646
1647If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
1648command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
1649useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
1650extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
1651
1652* Send break instead of ^C
1653
1654The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
1655rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
1656GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
1657
1658* Remote protocol timeout
1659
1660The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
1661that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
1662to read from the target. The default value is 2.
1663
1664* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
1665
1666By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
1667loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
1668stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
1669when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
1670in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
1671
1672Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
1673/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
1674automatically on hpux10.
1675
1676* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
1677
1678Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
1679
1680* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
1681
1682When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
1683may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
1684the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
1685every character. The default value is 1050.
1686
1687* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
1688
1689If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
1690a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
1691replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
1692details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
1693remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
1694to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
1695
1696* Speedups for remote debugging
1697
1698GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
1699the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
1700and more efficient S-record downloading.
1701
1702* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
1703
1704GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
1705Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
1706
1707*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
1708
1709* Psymtabs for XCOFF
1710
1711The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
1712can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
1713
1714* Remote targets use caching
1715
1716Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
1717remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
1718it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
1719debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
1720off' turns the the data cache off.
1721
1722* Remote targets may have threads
1723
1724The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
1725in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
1726gdb/remote.c for details.
1727
1728* NetROM support
1729
1730If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
1731support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
1732acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
1733write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
1734support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
1735another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
1736sequence is something like
1737
1738 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
1739 load <prog>
1740 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
1741
1742* Macintosh host
1743
1744GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
1745may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
1746it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
1747available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
1748device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
1749directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
1750scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
1751mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
1752
1753* Autoconf
1754
1755GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
1756but does simplify configuration and building.
1757
1758* hpux10
1759
1760GDB now supports hpux10.
1761
1762*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
1763
1764* New native configurations
1765
1766x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
1767x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
1768NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
1769Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
1770
1771* New targets
1772
1773A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1774HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
1775CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
1776PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
1777WDC 65816 w65-*-*
1778
1779* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
1780
1781GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
1782possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
1783filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
1784the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
1785if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
1786
1787* Arguments to user-defined commands
1788
1789User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
1790Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
1791trivial example:
1792define adder
1793 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
1794
1795To execute the command use:
1796adder 1 2 3
1797
1798Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
1799Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
1800use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
1801
1802* New `if' and `while' commands
1803
1804This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
1805commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
1806expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
1807execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
1808terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
1809`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
1810if the expression is zero.
1811
1812* Fortran source language mode
1813
1814GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
1815Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
1816variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
1817with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
1818Fortran compilers.
1819
1820* Better HPUX support
1821
1822Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
1823running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
1824processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
1825for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
1826that behavior do the following before running the program:
1827
1828 adb -w a.out
1829 __dld_flags?W 0x5
1830 control-d
1831
1832This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
1833To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
1834
1835 adb -w a.out
1836 __dld_flags?W 0x4
1837 control-d
1838
1839You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
1840the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
1841external linkage.
1842
1843GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
1844HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
1845
1846* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
1847
1848You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
1849commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
1850current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
1851"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
1852associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
1853configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
1854
1855* New DOS host serial code
1856
1857This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
1858no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
1859a PC's serial port.
1860
1861*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
1862
1863* New "complete" command
1864
1865This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
1866were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
1867
1868* Trailing space optional in prompt
1869
1870"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
1871allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
1872
1873* Breakpoint hit counts
1874
1875"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
1876has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
1877can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
1878to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
1879less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
1880that breakpoint.
1881
1882* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
1883
1884"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
1885an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
1886arrays actually contain only short strings.
1887
1888* Shared library breakpoints
1889
1890In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
1891breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
1892
1893* Hardware watchpoints
1894
1895There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
1896targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
1897
55241689 1898Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
1899
1900* Annotations
1901
1902Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
1903and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
1904
1905* Improved Irix 5 support
1906
1907GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
1908
1909* Improved HPPA support
1910
1911GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
1912
1913* New native configurations
1914
1915Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
1916HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1917Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
1918RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
1919
1920* New targets
1921
1922OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1923MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
1924Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
1925
1926* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
1927
1928There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
1929This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
1930
1931* Fixes
1932
1933As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
1934and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
1935
1936*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
1937
1938* Irix 5 is now supported
1939
1940* HPPA support
1941
1942GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
1943to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
1944GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
1945of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
1946can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
1947
1948
1949*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
1950
1951* User visible changes:
1952
1953* Remote Debugging
1954
1955The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
1956target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
1957debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
1958integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
1959debugging info for the mips target).
1960
1961* DEC Alpha native support
1962
1963GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
1964debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
1965work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
1966Alpha-specific notes.
1967
1968* Preliminary thread implementation
1969
1970GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
1971
1972* LynxOS native and target support for 386
1973
1974This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
1975to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
1976for details).
1977
1978* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
1979
1980This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
1981mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
1982call methods, ...etc.
1983
1984*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
1985
1986 * User visible changes:
1987
1988Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
1989supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
1990other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
1991somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
1992
1993Filename completion now works.
1994
1995When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
1996arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
1997addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
1998
1999All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
2000vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
2001should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
2002your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
2003to be on the far side of a thin network line.
2004
2005 * DEC alpha support
2006
2007This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
2008cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
2009
2010
2011*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
2012
2013 * Testsuite
2014
2015This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
2016The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
2017via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
2018
2019 * C++ demangling
2020
2021'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
2022emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
2023Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
2024disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
2025use gdb with AT&T cfront.
2026
2027 * Simulators
2028
2029GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
2030So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
2031Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
2032
2033 * New targets supported
2034
2035H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2036H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2037SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
2038Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2039IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
2040
2041Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
2042version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
2043GO32 memory extender.
2044
2045 * New remote protocols
2046
2047MIPS remote debugging protocol.
2048
2049 * New source languages supported
2050
2051This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
2052used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
2053into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
2054
2055
2056*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
2057
2058 * HP Precision Architecture supported
2059
2060GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
2061version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
2062University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
2063compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
2064format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
2065(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
2066
2067Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
2068
2069 * Faster and better demangling
2070
2071We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
2072demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
2073character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
2074only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
2075This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
2076increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
2077symbol lookups.
2078
2079`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
2080from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
2081compiler does not actually implement.
2082
2083 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
2084
2085In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
2086inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
2087recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
2088very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
2089The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
2090circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
2091fix.
2092
2093The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
2094release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
2095
2096 * Improved configure script
2097
2098The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
2099you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
2100host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
2101done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
2102
2103We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
2104version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
2105`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
2106The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
2107only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
2108We hope to make this the default in a future release.
2109
2110 * Documentation improvements
2111
2112There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
2113produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
2114before submitting changes.
2115
2116The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
2117M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
2118`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
2119you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
2120a future texinfo-X.Y release.
2121
2122*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
2123We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
2124been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
2125or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
2126`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
2127around this problem.
2128
2129 * New features
2130
2131GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
2132the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
2133`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
2134the target program.
2135
2136The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
2137how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
2138
2139 * New native hosts supported
2140
2141HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
2142386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
2143
2144 * New targets supported
2145
2146AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
2147
2148 * New file formats supported
2149
2150BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
2151HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
2152
2153 * Major bug fixes
2154
2155Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
2156
2157We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
2158printf_filtered("%s") problems.
2159
2160We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
2161for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
2162release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
2163
2164You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
2165will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
2166
2167We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
2168for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
2169especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
2170libraries.
2171
2172The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
2173information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
2174command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
2175any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
2176when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
2177
2178 * Internal improvements
2179
2180GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
2181debugging of multiple languages in the future.
2182
2183GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
2184Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
2185symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
2186contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
2187shared code that handles any of them.
2188
2189 * New command line options
2190
2191We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
2192
2193 * Mmalloc licensing
2194
2195The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
2196General Public License.
2197
2198*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
2199
2200 * Host/native/target split
2201
2202GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
2203hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
2204target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
2205local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
2206ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
2207
2208The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
2209GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
2210is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
2211code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
2212any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
2213built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
2214handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
2215
2216GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
2217It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
2218plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
2219
2220 * New hosts supported
2221
2222HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
2223386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2224386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
2225
2226 * New targets supported
2227
2228Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
222968030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
2230
2231 * New native hosts supported
2232
2233386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2234 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
2235386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
2236
2237 * New file formats supported
2238
2239BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
2240supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
2241format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
2242
2243 * New commands
2244
2245`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
2246`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
2247These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
2248
2249`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
2250
2251You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
2252scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
2253prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
2254executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
2255
2256 * C++ improvements
2257
2258We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
2259info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
2260symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
2261
2262Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
2263
2264 * Major bug fixes
2265
2266The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
2267fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
2268by the compiler.
2269
2270We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
2271support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
2272
2273John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
2274slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
2275that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
2276purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
2277the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
2278mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
2279
2280Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
2281about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
2282completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
2283we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
2284
2285 * AMD 29k support
2286
2287A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
2288specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
2289calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
2290usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
2291in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
2292
2293We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
2294Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
2295of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
2296resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
2297
2298 * Remote interfaces
2299
2300We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
2301with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
2302message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
2303This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
2304needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
2305breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
2306each instruction being stepped through.
2307
2308The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
2309registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
2310
2311There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
2312find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
2313Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
2314processor with a serial port.
2315
2316 * Configuration
2317
2318Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
2319`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
2320supported, and what files each one uses.
2321
2322 * Library changes
2323
2324There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
2325disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
2326Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
2327disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
2328
2329The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
2330Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
2331can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
2332grants all the rights from the General Public License.
2333
2334 * Documentation
2335
2336The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
2337reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
2338as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
2339encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
2340system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
2341bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
2342
2343And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
2344
2345
2346*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
2347
2348 * Better support for C++ function names
2349
2350GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
2351names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
2352(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
2353single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
2354Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
2355
2356GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
2357the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
2358You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
2359lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
2360for the list of formats.
2361
2362 * G++ symbol mangling problem
2363
2364Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
2365C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
2366directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
2367can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
2368usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
2369about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
2370this problem.)
2371
2372 * New 'maintenance' command
2373
2374All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
2375the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
2376can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
2377
2378 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
2379 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
2380 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
2381 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
2382 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
2383 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
2384
2385The following commands are new:
2386
2387 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
2388 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
2389 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
2390
2391 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
2392
2393We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
2394(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
2395be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
2396read after argv processing.
2397
2398 * New hosts supported
2399
2400Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
2401
55241689 2402GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
2403
2404We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
2405is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
2406for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
2407masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
2408fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
2409It costs extra.
2410
2411 * New targets supported
2412
2413Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2414
2415 * More smarts about finding #include files
2416
2417GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
2418all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
2419greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
2420especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
2421the one that contains your sources.
2422
2423We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
2424breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
2425try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
2426
2427 * Interesting infernals change
2428
2429GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
2430section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
2431target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
2432stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
2433
2434 * Bug fixes (of course!)
2435
2436There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
2437 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
2438 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
2439
2440See the ChangeLog for details.
2441
2442*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
2443
2444 * New machines supported (host and target)
2445
2446IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
2447
2448SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2449
2450 * New malloc package
2451
2452GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
2453Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
2454capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
2455This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
2456pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
2457more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
2458
2459 * info proc
2460
2461The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
2462'help info proc' for details.
2463
2464 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
2465
2466The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
2467Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
2468possible.
2469
2470 * File name changes for MS-DOS
2471
2472Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
2473support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
2474conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
2475environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
2476that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
2477in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
2478
2479 * Cross byte order fixes
2480
2481Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
2482targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
2483
2484 * New -mapped and -readnow options
2485
2486If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
2487system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
2488`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
2489program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
2490called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
2491Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
2492and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
2493the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
2494option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
2495starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
2496
2497You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
2498the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
2499information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
2500slower, but makes future operations faster.
2501
2502The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
2503build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
2504A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
2505use is:
2506
2507 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
2508
2509The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
2510It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
2511shared across multiple host platforms.
2512
2513 * longjmp() handling
2514
2515GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
2516siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
2517all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
2518platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
2519
2520 * Solaris 2.0
2521
2522Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
2523this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
2524reading symbols.
2525
2526 * Bug fixes
2527
2528As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
2529People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
2530crashes and trashed symbol tables.
2531
2532*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
2533
2534 * New machines supported (host and target)
2535
2536SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2537 (except core files)
2538BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
2539Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
2540
2541 * New machines supported (target)
2542
2543AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2544
2545 * C++ support
2546
2547GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
2548The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
2549per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
2550
2551GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
2552`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
2553extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
2554good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
2555will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
2556released.
2557
2558 * New features for SVR4
2559
2560GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
2561shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
2562only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
2563
2564The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
2565on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
2566it prints the address mappings of the process.
2567
2568If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
2569bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
2570
2571 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
2572
2573Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
2574now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
2575skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
2576make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
2577same code linked statically.
2578
2579 * New Getopt
2580
2581GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
2582version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
2583continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
2584Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
2585added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
2586future by other options that begin with the same letter.
2587
2588 * Bugs fixed
2589
2590The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2591Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2592See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2593
2594
2595*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
2596
2597 * New machines supported (host and target)
2598
2599Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
2600NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
2601Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2602
2603 * Almost SCO Unix support
2604
2605We had hoped to support:
2606SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2607(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
2608that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
2609about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
2610
2611 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
2612
2613GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
2614debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
2615is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
2616send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
2617reqired (if any).
2618
2619 * New Readline
2620
2621GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
2622is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
2623required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
2624
2625 * Bugs fixed
2626
2627The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2628Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2629See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2630
2631 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
2632
2633GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
2634supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
2635symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
2636
2637Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
2638mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
2639debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
2640mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
2641version 2.
2642
2643Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
2644really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
2645line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
2646variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
2647situation somewhat.
2648
2649When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
2650However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
2651methods.
2652
2653We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
2654DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
2655encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
2656
2657
2658*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
2659
2660 * Improved configuration
2661
2662Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
2663Porting BFD is simpler.
2664
2665 * Stepping improved
2666
2667The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
2668of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
2669in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
2670function that has debugging information is called within the line.
2671
2672 * Bug fixing
2673
2674Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
2675
2676 * New host supported (not target)
2677
2678Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
2679
2680
2681*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
2682
2683 * Multiple source language support
2684
2685GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
2686It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
2687and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
2688language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
2689You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
2690`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
2691
2692 * GDB and Modula-2
2693
2694GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
2695currently under development at the State University of New York at
2696Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
2697continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
2698
2699Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
2700debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
2701symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
2702
2703There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
2704in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
2705
2706 * set write on/off
2707
2708GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
2709a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
2710the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
2711by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
2712effect immediately.
2713
2714 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
2715
2716When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
2717shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
2718The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
2719examining core files.
2720
2721 * set listsize
2722
2723You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
2724The default is 10.
2725
2726 * New machines supported (host and target)
2727
2728SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2729Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
2730Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
2731
2732 * New hosts supported (not targets)
2733
2734IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
2735
2736 * New targets supported (not hosts)
2737
2738AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2739AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2740Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
2741
2742 * New remote interfaces
2743
2744AMD 29000 Adapt
2745AMD 29000 Minimon
2746
2747
2748*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
2749
2750 * New Facilities
2751
2752Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
2753
2754Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
2755target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
2756is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
2757remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
2758remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
2759also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
2760using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
2761stub on the target system.
2762
2763New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
2764
2765GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
2766library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
2767object file types such as a.out and coff.
2768
2769There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
2770refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
2771
2772
2773 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
2774
2775All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
2776by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
2777
2778For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
2779``Show prompt'' produces the response:
2780Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
2781
2782What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
2783print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
2784will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
2785all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
2786
2787confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
2788 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
2789 it is already running. Default is ON.
2790
2791editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
2792 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
2793 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
2794 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
2795 Default is ON.
2796
2797history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
2798 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
2799 or the value of the environment variable
2800 GDBHISTFILE.
2801
2802history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
2803 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
2804 HISTSIZE.
2805
2806history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
2807 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
2808 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
2809
2810history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
2811 history expansion will be performed on
2812 command line input. The default is OFF.
2813
2814radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
2815 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
2816 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
2817
2818height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
2819 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
2820 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2821 variable TERM.
2822
2823width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
2824 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
2825 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2826 variable TERM.
2827
2828Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
2829``set width'' instead.
2830
2831print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
2832 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
2833 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
2834 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
2835
2836print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
2837 is OFF.
2838
2839print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
2840 "raw" form if off.
2841
2842print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
2843 like instructions.
2844
2845print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
2846
2847
2848 * Support for Epoch Environment.
2849
2850The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
2851new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
2852are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
2853window.
2854
2855
2856 * Support for Shared Libraries
2857
2858GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
2859Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
2860before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
2861happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
2862At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
2863from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
2864shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
2865It can be abbreviated ``share''.
2866
2867sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
2868 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
2869 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
2870
2871info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
2872
2873
2874 * Watchpoints
2875
2876A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
2877expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
2878tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
2879quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
2880problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
2881more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
2882
2883watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
2884
2885info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
2886
2887delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2888disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2889enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2890
2891
2892 * C++ multiple inheritance
2893
2894When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
2895for C++ programs.
2896
2897 * C++ exception handling
2898
2899Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
2900ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
2901the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
2902handler's context).
2903
2904catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
2905 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
2906 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
2907
2908info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
2909 current stack frame.
2910
2911
2912 * Minor command changes
2913
2914The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
2915command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
2916is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
2917
2918The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
2919at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
2920frames without printing.
2921
2922 * New directory command
2923
2924'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
2925The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
2926about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
2927with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
2928find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
2929
2930 * Configuring GDB for compilation
2931
2932For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
2933for more details.
2934
2935GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
2936two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
2937Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
2938where the program that you are debugging will run.
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