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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 6.5
5
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6* REMOVED features
7
8The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
9
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10Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
11an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
12
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13* New remote packets
14
15qSupported:
16 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
17 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
18 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
19 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
20 target.
21
e374b601 22*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 23
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24* New targets
25
26Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
27
28Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
29
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30* New commands
31
32init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
33 only if it doesn't already have a value.
34
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35The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
36
37checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
38
39restart <n> Return the program state to a
40 previously saved state.
41
42info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
43
44delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
45
46set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
47 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
48
49info forks List forks of the user program that
50 are available to be debugged.
51
52fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
53 forks of the user program that are
54 available to be debugged.
55
56delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
57 that are available to be debugged (and
58 kill the forked process).
59
60detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
61 that are available to be debugged (and
62 allow the process to continue).
63
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64* New architecture
65
66Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
67
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68* Improved Windows host support
69
70GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
71native console support, and remote communications using either
72network sockets or serial ports.
73
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74* Improved Modula-2 language support
75
76GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
77basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
78pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
79printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
80written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
81GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
82
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83* REMOVED features
84
85The ARM rdi-share module.
86
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87The Netware NLM debug server.
88
53e5f3cf 89*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 90
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91* New native configurations
92
02a677ac 93OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
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94OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
95
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96* New targets
97
98Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
99
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100* New command line options
101
102--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
103--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
104 the child (debugged) program exited with.
105--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
106 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
107 specified multiple times and in conjunction
108 with the --command (-x) option.
109
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110* Deprecated commands removed
111
112The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
113removed:
114
115 Command Replacement
116 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
117 othernames set arm disassembler
118 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
119 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
120 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
121 regs info registers
122
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123* New BSD user-level threads support
124
125It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
126library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
127configurations are:
128
129FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
130FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
131OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
132
133Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
134are not yet supported.
135
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136* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
137(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
138
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139* REMOVED configurations and files
140
141VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 142Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 143National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 144
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145* New "set print array-indexes" command
146
147After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
148when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
149behavior.
150
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151* VAX floating point support
152
153GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
154
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155* User-defined command support
156
157In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
158to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
159section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
160
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161*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
162
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163* New command line option
164
165GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
166debugging.
167
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168* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
169
170GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
171information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
172by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
173proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
174to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 175
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176* Internationalization
177
178When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
179internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
180continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
181
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182* Ada
183
184Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
185implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
186into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
187
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188* New native configurations
189
190GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
191
192* Remote 'p' packet
193
194GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
195packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
196
197* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
198
199GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
200The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
201features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
202i386 application).
203
204GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
205compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
206continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
207configurations:
208
209hppa-*-hpux
210ia64-*-aix
211mips-*-irix*
212*-*-lynx
213mips-*-linux-gnu
214sds protocol
215xdr protocol
216powerpc bdm protocol
217
218Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
219made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
220
221* OBSOLETE configurations and files
222
223Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
224been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
225configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
226permanently REMOVED.
227
228h8300-*-*
229mcore-*-*
230mn10300-*-*
231ns32k-*-*
232sh64-*-*
233v850-*-*
234
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235*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
236
237* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
238
239When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
240heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
241been fixed.
242
243* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
244
245When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
246fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
247IRIX long double values).
248
249* VAX and "next"
250
251A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
252command. This problem has been fixed.
253
860660cb 254*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 255
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256* Fix for ``many threads''
257
258On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
259rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
260error message:
261
262 ptrace: No such process.
263 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
264
265This problem has been fixed.
266
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267* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
268
269Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
270GDB to dump core).
271
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272* New ``start'' command.
273
274This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
275
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276* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
277
278Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
279live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
280platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
281
282FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
283FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
284NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
285NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
286NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
287OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
288OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
289OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
290OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
291
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292* Signal trampoline code overhauled
293
294Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
295These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
296of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
297call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
298signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
299
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300Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
301features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
302include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 303
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304* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
305
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306* New native configurations
307
97dc871c 308GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 309OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
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310OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
311OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 312OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 313NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 314OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 315
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316* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
317
318GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
319The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
320including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
321migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
322compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
323work, was also included.
324
325GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
326module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
327
328h8300-*-*
329mcore-*-*
330mn10300-*-*
331ns32k-*-*
332sh64-*-*
333v850-*-*
334xstormy16-*-*
335
336Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
337made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
338
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339* REMOVED configurations and files
340
341Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
342Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
343Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
344Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
345Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
346AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
347Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
348decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
349riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
350sonymips mips-sony-*
351sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
352
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353*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
354
355* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
356
357The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
358GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
359command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
360program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
361with GDB".
362
363* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
364
365Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
366libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
367cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
368GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
369shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
370the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
371are created.
372
373Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
374
375* Fixed ISO-C build problems
376
377The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
378non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
379compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
380
381* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
382
383Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
384wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
385
386* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
387
388The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
389permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
390systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
391
392* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
393
394Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
395has been updated to use constant array sizes.
396
397* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
398
399GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
400its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
401panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
402
403* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
404
405When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
406by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
407not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
408
faae5abe 409*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 410
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411* Removed --with-mmalloc
412
413Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
414conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
415
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416* Changes in AMD64 configurations
417
418The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
419the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
420and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
421you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
422
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423* Revised SPARC target
424
425The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
426FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
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427support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
428from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
429(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 430
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431* New C++ demangler
432
433GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
434names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
435with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
436programs.
437
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438* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
439
440GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
441arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
442encountered these.
443
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444* C++ nested types and namespaces
445
446GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
447improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
448is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
449Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
450namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
451"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
452frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
453if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
454GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
455
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456* New native configurations
457
458NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 459OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 460OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
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461OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
462OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 463
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464* New debugging protocols
465
466M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
467
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468* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
469
470The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
471and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
472tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
473
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474* OBSOLETE configurations and files
475
476Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
477been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
478configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
479permanently REMOVED.
480
481Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
482Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
483Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
484Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
485Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
486AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
487Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
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488decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
489riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
490sonymips mips-sony-*
491sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 492
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493* REMOVED configurations and files
494
495SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
496SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
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497Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
498Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
499H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
500HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
501HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
502HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
503PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 504386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
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505Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
506 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
507 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
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508SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
509SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
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510Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
511Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 512
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513*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
514
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515* Objective-C
516
517Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
518integrated into GDB.
519
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520* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
521
522DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
523information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
524By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
525backtraces.
526
527The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
528have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
529DWARF 2 CFI support.
530
531* Hosted file I/O.
532
533GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
534file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
535remote protocol documentation for details.
536
537* All targets using the new architecture framework.
538
539All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
540architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
541to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
542ppc32 on ppc64).
543
544* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
545
546GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
547per-thread variables.
548
549* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
550
551GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
552GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
553
554* Separate debug info.
555
556GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
557automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
558of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
559system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
560and optional debug files.
561
562* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
563
564DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
565describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
566debugger.
567
568GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
569for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
570
571* Java
572
573A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
574Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
575considered "useable".
576
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577* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
578
579The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
580commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
581kernel.
582
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583* GDB supports logging output to a file
584
585There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
586used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 587
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588* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
589
590The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
591disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
592command.
593
e286caf2 594* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
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595
596The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
597registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
598
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599* Profiling support
600
601A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
602be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
603session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
604"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
605data, for more informative profiling results.
606
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607* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
608
609The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
610option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 611"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
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612
613Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
614removed.
615
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616Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
617Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
618Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
619 in a subsequent -var-update.
620
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621* New native configurations.
622
623FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
624
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625* Multi-arched targets.
626
b4263afa 627HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 628Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 629
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630* OBSOLETE configurations and files
631
632Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
633been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
634configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
635permanently REMOVED.
636
8b0e5691 637Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 638Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 639H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
56056df7
AC
640HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
641HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
642HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 643PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
AC
644Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
645 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
646 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
AC
647Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
648Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 649
5835abe7
NC
650* REMOVED configurations and files
651
652V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
653Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
654IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
655i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
656i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
657i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
658HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
659 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
660 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
661Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
662Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
663Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
664OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
665I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 666
a094c6fb
AC
667* MIPS $fp behavior changed
668
669The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
670the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
671context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
672address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
673The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
674
299ffc64 675*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 676
46248966
AC
677* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
678
679When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
680`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
681in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
682library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
683shared libs like mad''.
684
b9d14705 685* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 686
b9d14705
DJ
687Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
688the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
689arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
690powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 691
e0e9281e
JB
692* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
693
694GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
695and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
696they expand.
697
dd73b9bb
AC
698The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
699invocations in expression, and shows the result.
700
701The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
702macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
703
e0e9281e
JB
704Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
705information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
706your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
707information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
708
2250ee0c
CV
709* Multi-arched targets.
710
6e3ba3b8
JT
711DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
712DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 713NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 714National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
715Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
716Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 717
cd9bfe15 718* New targets.
e33ce519 719
456f8b9d
DB
720Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
721
e33ce519 722
da8ca43d
JT
723* New native configurations
724
725Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 726SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 727MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 728UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 729
cd9bfe15
AC
730* OBSOLETE configurations and files
731
732Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
733been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
734configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
735permanently REMOVED.
736
92eb23c5 737Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 738OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 739IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 740Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 741Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 742Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
743i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
744i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
745i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
746HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
747 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
748 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 749I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 750
db034ac5
AC
751* OBSOLETE languages
752
753CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
754
cd9bfe15
AC
755* REMOVED configurations and files
756
757AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
758A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
759AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
760AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
761AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
762
763testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
764
20f01a46
DH
765* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
766
767This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
768commands. The default is 1024.
769
a5941fbf
MK
770* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
771
772Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
773
89743e04
MS
774* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
775
776These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
777to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
778from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 779
9fb14e79
JB
780* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
781
782The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
783including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
784of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
785
2037aebb
AC
786*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
787
788* New targets.
789
790Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
791
792* Bug fixes
793
794gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
795mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
796Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
797
798gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
799dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
800Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
801
802Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
803Surprisingly enough, it works now.
804By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
805
806i386 hardware watchpoint support:
807avoid misses on second run for some targets.
808By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
809
37057839 810*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 811
1a703748
MS
812* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
813
814This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
815really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
816In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
817target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
818This can be a significant performance improvement on some
819(notably embedded) targets.
820
cefd4ef5
MS
821* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
822
55241689
AC
823This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
824process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
825GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
826hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 827
352ed7b4
MS
828* New command line option
829
830GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
831
832* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
833
834There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
835command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
836a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
837be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
838open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
839issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
840a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
841it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
842GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
843is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
844
fe419ffc
RE
845* Changes in ARM configurations.
846
847Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
848configuration is fully multi-arch.
849
eb7cedd9
MK
850* New native configurations
851
fe419ffc 852ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 853x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 854AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 855Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 856
c9f63e6b
CV
857* New targets
858
859Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
860
9b4ff276
AC
861* OBSOLETE configurations and files
862
863Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
864been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
865configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
866permanently REMOVED.
867
868AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
869A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
870AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
871AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
872AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
873
b4ceaee6 874testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 875
e2caac18
AC
876* REMOVED configurations and files
877
878TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 879WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
880PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
881PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
882PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 883Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
884Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
885 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 886SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 887Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
888Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
889ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 890Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 891
c2a727fa
TT
892* Changes to command line processing
893
894The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
895for the inferior from gdb's command line.
896
467d8519
TT
897* Changes to key bindings
898
899There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
900
7072a954
AC
901*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
902
903Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
904
905Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
906corrupted.
907
908Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
909
910Numerous documentation fixes.
911
912Numerous testsuite fixes.
913
34f47bc4 914*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
915
916* New native configurations
917
918Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
919x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 920MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
921MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
922ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 923s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 924
bf64bfd6
AC
925* New targets
926
def90278 927Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 928CRIS cris-axis
55241689 929UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 930
17e78a56 931* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
932
933x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 934Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
935Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
936 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
937TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
938WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 939Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
940PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
941PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
942PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 943SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
944Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
945ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 946Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 947
17e78a56
AC
948stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
949kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
950
7fcca85b
AC
951Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
952been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
953configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
954permanently REMOVED.
955
a196c81c 956* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
957
958Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
959Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
960Pyramid pyramid-*-*
961ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
962Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 963ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 964
6d6b80e5 965* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 966
6d6b80e5 967GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
968sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
969present.
970
bf64bfd6
AC
971* Other news:
972
e23194cb
EZ
973* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
974
975* The MI enabled by default.
976
977The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
978revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
979engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
980using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
981which is now deprecated.
982
983* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
984
985GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
986main features are supported:
987
988 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
989
990 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
991 extension;
992
993 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
994
995 - a Pascal expression parser.
996
997However, some important features are not yet supported.
998
999 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
1000
1001 - there are some problems with boolean types;
1002
1003 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
1004 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
1005
1006 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
1007
1008 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
1009
1010* Changes in completion.
1011
1012Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
1013to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
1014users expect at the shell prompt.
1015
1016Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
1017`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
1018program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
1019files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
1020be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
1021considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
1022name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
1023
1024`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
1025
1026* New platform-independent commands:
1027
1028It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
1029hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
1030documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
1031
1032* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
1033
d7275149
MK
1034Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
1035revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
1036many threads as your system allows you to have.
1037
e23194cb
EZ
1038Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
1039
d7275149
MK
1040Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
1041multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
1042
1043* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
1044
1045Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
1046
e23194cb
EZ
1047GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
1048debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
1049supported.)
1050
1051* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
1052
1053Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
1054breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
1055implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
1056put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
1057and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
1058registers.
1059
1060The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
1061debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
1062watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
1063
1064* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
1065
1066New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
1067the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
1068
1069New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
1070display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
1071IDT.
1072
1073New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
1074from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
1075New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
1076a given linear address.
1077
1078GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
1079program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
1080which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
1081
1082DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
1083
6c56c069
EZ
1084It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
1085
e23194cb
EZ
1086* Changes in documentation.
1087
1088All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
1089Documentation License.
1090
1091Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1092manual.
1093
1094TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
1095
1096Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1097manual.
1098
1099The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
1100documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
1101hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
1102
5d6640b1
AC
1103* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
1104
1105The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
1106``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
1107contents of this file.
1108
1a1d8446
AC
1109* gdba.el deleted
1110
1111GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 1112
9debab2f 1113*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 1114
c63ce875
EZ
1115* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
1116
1117Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
1118programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
1119displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
1120greater level of detail.
1121
1122* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
1123
1124It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
1125bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
1126on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
1127written.
1128
1129* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
1130
1131The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
1132necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
1133machines ``out of the box''.
1134
1135The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
1136possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
1137signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
1138would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
1139interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
1140
1141It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
1142standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
1143even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
1144and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
1145terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
1146
1147The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
1148enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
1149also works.
1150
1151DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
1152GDB.
1153
1154It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
1155directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
1156times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
1157breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
1158
ed9a39eb
JM
1159* New native configurations
1160
1161ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 1162PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 1163
7a292a7a
SS
1164* New targets
1165
96baa820 1166Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
1167x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
1168PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
1169TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1170
085dd6e6
JM
1171* OBSOLETE configurations
1172
1173Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1174Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 1175Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 1176ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 1177Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 1178
9debab2f
AC
1179Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1180but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1181these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1182be permanently REMOVED.
1183
5330533d
SS
1184* Gould support removed
1185
1186Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
1187
bc9e5bbf
AC
1188* New features for SVR4
1189
1190On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
1191without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
1192load symbols from the running process's executable file.
1193
1194* Many C++ enhancements
1195
1196C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
1197in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
1198
adf40b2e
JM
1199* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
1200
1201A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
1202sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
1203with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
1204``|<program> <args>'' vis:
1205
1206 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
1207 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
1208
43e526b9
JM
1209* MIPS 64 remote protocol
1210
1211A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
1212expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
1213instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
1214
1215The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
1216added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1217
96baa820
JM
1218* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
1219
1220The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
1221``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
1222include ``set remote P-packet''.
1223
11cf8741
JM
1224* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
1225
1226The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
1227accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
1228``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
1229
7876dd43
DB
1230* ``apropos'' command added.
1231
1232The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
1233documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
1234try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
1235
bc9e5bbf
AC
1236* New MI interface
1237
1238A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
1239interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
1240process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
1241"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
1242enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
1243
1244 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
1245
c906108c
SS
1246*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
1247
1248* New native configurations
1249
1250HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
1251HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 1252M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
1253
1254* New targets
1255
1256Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1257Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
1258Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1259
1260* OBSOLETE configurations
1261
1262Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
1263
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
1269* ANSI/ISO C
1270
1271As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
1272buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
1273containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
1274use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
1275available. If this is not true, please report the affected
1276configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
1277information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
1278already.
1279
1280* Readline 2.2
1281
1282GDB now uses readline 2.2.
1283
1284* set extension-language
1285
1286You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
1287languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
1288you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
1289 set extension-language .c c++
1290The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
1291and their associated languages.
1292
1293* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
1294
1295When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
1296you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
1297PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
1298
1299 set processor NAME
1300
1301sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
1302following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
1303
1304 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
1305 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
1306 403 IBM PowerPC 403
1307 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
1308 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
1309 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
1310 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
1311 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
1312 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
1313 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
1314 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
1315
1316At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
1317special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
1318registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
1319only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
1320
1321* HP-UX support
1322
1323Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
1324more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
1325library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
1326support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
1327for xdb and dbx commands.
1328
1329* Catchpoints
1330
1331HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
1332generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
1333to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
1334
1335This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
1336argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
1337output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
1338
1339* Debugging across forks
1340
1341On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
1342in the inferior.
1343
1344* TUI
1345
1346HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
1347it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
1348configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
1349
1350* GDB remote protocol additions
1351
1352A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
1353Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
1354fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
1355allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
1356
1357For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
1358full 64-bit address. The command
1359
1360 set remoteaddresssize 32
1361
1362can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
1363the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
1364will be discarded.
1365
1366In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
1367command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
1368
1369 maint packet heythere
1370
1371sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
1372disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
1373time.
1374
1375The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
1376target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
1377downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
1378
1379* Tracing can collect general expressions
1380
1381You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
1382further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
1383doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
1384
1385* mask-address variable for Mips
1386
1387For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
1388a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
1389of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
1390
1391* Higher serial baud rates
1392
1393GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
1394230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
1395to achieve all of these rates.)
1396
1397* i960 simulator
1398
1399The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
1400builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
1401
1402
1403*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
1404
1405* New native configurations
1406
1407Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
1408Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
1409Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1410PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1411PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1412Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
1413Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
1414
1415* New targets
1416
1417Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1418Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
1419Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1420Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
1421MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
1422MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
1423MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
1424Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
1425Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
1426Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1427NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
1428
1429* New debugging protocols
1430
1431ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
1432M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
1433DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
1434PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1435PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1436Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1437
1438* DWARF 2
1439
1440All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
1441format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
1442information.
1443
1444* Java frontend
1445
1446GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
1447only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
1448
1449* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
1450
1451For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
1452loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
1453locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
1454
1455* Live range splitting
1456
1457GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
1458range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
1459more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
1460
1461* Hurd support
1462
1463GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
1464updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
1465
1466* ARM Thumb support
1467
1468GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
1469instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
1470instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
1471accordingly.
1472
1473* MIPS16 support
1474
1475GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
1476instruction set.
1477
1478* Overlay support
1479
1480GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
1481linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
1482will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
1483control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
1484additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
1485in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
1486
1487* info symbol
1488
1489The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
1490the symbol at the specified address.
1491
1492* Trace support
1493
1494The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
1495asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
1496extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
1497includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
1498file tracepoint.c for more details.
1499
1500* MIPS simulator
1501
1502Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
1503by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
1504of most MIPS variants.
1505
1506* Sparc simulator
1507
1508Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
1509by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
1510Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
1511
1512* set architecture
1513
1514For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
1515basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
1516architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
1517the possible architectures.
1518
1519*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
1520
1521* New native configurations
1522
1523Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
1524M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
1525PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
1526PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
1527PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1528RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
1529
1530* New targets
1531
1532ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
1533I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1534MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
1535MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
1536PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
1537Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
1538Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1539
1540* PowerPC simulator
1541
1542The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
1543contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
1544PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
1545basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
1546performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
1547
1548* Solaris 2.5
1549
1550GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
1551
1552* Windows 95/NT native
1553
1554GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
1555To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
1556which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
1557Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
1558ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
1559
1560* dont-repeat command
1561
1562If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
1563command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
1564useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
1565extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
1566
1567* Send break instead of ^C
1568
1569The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
1570rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
1571GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
1572
1573* Remote protocol timeout
1574
1575The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
1576that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
1577to read from the target. The default value is 2.
1578
1579* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
1580
1581By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
1582loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
1583stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
1584when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
1585in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
1586
1587Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
1588/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
1589automatically on hpux10.
1590
1591* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
1592
1593Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
1594
1595* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
1596
1597When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
1598may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
1599the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
1600every character. The default value is 1050.
1601
1602* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
1603
1604If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
1605a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
1606replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
1607details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
1608remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
1609to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
1610
1611* Speedups for remote debugging
1612
1613GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
1614the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
1615and more efficient S-record downloading.
1616
1617* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
1618
1619GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
1620Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
1621
1622*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
1623
1624* Psymtabs for XCOFF
1625
1626The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
1627can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
1628
1629* Remote targets use caching
1630
1631Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
1632remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
1633it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
1634debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
1635off' turns the the data cache off.
1636
1637* Remote targets may have threads
1638
1639The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
1640in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
1641gdb/remote.c for details.
1642
1643* NetROM support
1644
1645If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
1646support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
1647acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
1648write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
1649support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
1650another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
1651sequence is something like
1652
1653 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
1654 load <prog>
1655 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
1656
1657* Macintosh host
1658
1659GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
1660may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
1661it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
1662available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
1663device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
1664directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
1665scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
1666mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
1667
1668* Autoconf
1669
1670GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
1671but does simplify configuration and building.
1672
1673* hpux10
1674
1675GDB now supports hpux10.
1676
1677*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
1678
1679* New native configurations
1680
1681x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
1682x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
1683NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
1684Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
1685
1686* New targets
1687
1688A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1689HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
1690CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
1691PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
1692WDC 65816 w65-*-*
1693
1694* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
1695
1696GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
1697possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
1698filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
1699the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
1700if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
1701
1702* Arguments to user-defined commands
1703
1704User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
1705Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
1706trivial example:
1707define adder
1708 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
1709
1710To execute the command use:
1711adder 1 2 3
1712
1713Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
1714Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
1715use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
1716
1717* New `if' and `while' commands
1718
1719This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
1720commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
1721expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
1722execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
1723terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
1724`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
1725if the expression is zero.
1726
1727* Fortran source language mode
1728
1729GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
1730Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
1731variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
1732with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
1733Fortran compilers.
1734
1735* Better HPUX support
1736
1737Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
1738running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
1739processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
1740for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
1741that behavior do the following before running the program:
1742
1743 adb -w a.out
1744 __dld_flags?W 0x5
1745 control-d
1746
1747This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
1748To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
1749
1750 adb -w a.out
1751 __dld_flags?W 0x4
1752 control-d
1753
1754You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
1755the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
1756external linkage.
1757
1758GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
1759HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
1760
1761* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
1762
1763You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
1764commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
1765current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
1766"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
1767associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
1768configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
1769
1770* New DOS host serial code
1771
1772This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
1773no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
1774a PC's serial port.
1775
1776*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
1777
1778* New "complete" command
1779
1780This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
1781were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
1782
1783* Trailing space optional in prompt
1784
1785"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
1786allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
1787
1788* Breakpoint hit counts
1789
1790"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
1791has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
1792can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
1793to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
1794less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
1795that breakpoint.
1796
1797* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
1798
1799"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
1800an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
1801arrays actually contain only short strings.
1802
1803* Shared library breakpoints
1804
1805In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
1806breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
1807
1808* Hardware watchpoints
1809
1810There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
1811targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
1812
55241689 1813Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
1814
1815* Annotations
1816
1817Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
1818and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
1819
1820* Improved Irix 5 support
1821
1822GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
1823
1824* Improved HPPA support
1825
1826GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
1827
1828* New native configurations
1829
1830Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
1831HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1832Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
1833RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
1834
1835* New targets
1836
1837OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1838MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
1839Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
1840
1841* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
1842
1843There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
1844This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
1845
1846* Fixes
1847
1848As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
1849and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
1850
1851*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
1852
1853* Irix 5 is now supported
1854
1855* HPPA support
1856
1857GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
1858to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
1859GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
1860of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
1861can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
1862
1863
1864*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
1865
1866* User visible changes:
1867
1868* Remote Debugging
1869
1870The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
1871target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
1872debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
1873integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
1874debugging info for the mips target).
1875
1876* DEC Alpha native support
1877
1878GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
1879debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
1880work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
1881Alpha-specific notes.
1882
1883* Preliminary thread implementation
1884
1885GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
1886
1887* LynxOS native and target support for 386
1888
1889This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
1890to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
1891for details).
1892
1893* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
1894
1895This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
1896mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
1897call methods, ...etc.
1898
1899*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
1900
1901 * User visible changes:
1902
1903Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
1904supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
1905other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
1906somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
1907
1908Filename completion now works.
1909
1910When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
1911arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
1912addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
1913
1914All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
1915vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
1916should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
1917your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
1918to be on the far side of a thin network line.
1919
1920 * DEC alpha support
1921
1922This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
1923cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
1924
1925
1926*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
1927
1928 * Testsuite
1929
1930This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
1931The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
1932via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
1933
1934 * C++ demangling
1935
1936'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
1937emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
1938Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
1939disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
1940use gdb with AT&T cfront.
1941
1942 * Simulators
1943
1944GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
1945So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
1946Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
1947
1948 * New targets supported
1949
1950H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1951H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1952SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
1953Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1954IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
1955
1956Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
1957version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
1958GO32 memory extender.
1959
1960 * New remote protocols
1961
1962MIPS remote debugging protocol.
1963
1964 * New source languages supported
1965
1966This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
1967used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
1968into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
1969
1970
1971*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
1972
1973 * HP Precision Architecture supported
1974
1975GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
1976version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
1977University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
1978compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
1979format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
1980(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
1981
1982Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
1983
1984 * Faster and better demangling
1985
1986We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
1987demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
1988character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
1989only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
1990This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
1991increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
1992symbol lookups.
1993
1994`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
1995from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
1996compiler does not actually implement.
1997
1998 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
1999
2000In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
2001inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
2002recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
2003very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
2004The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
2005circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
2006fix.
2007
2008The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
2009release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
2010
2011 * Improved configure script
2012
2013The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
2014you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
2015host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
2016done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
2017
2018We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
2019version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
2020`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
2021The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
2022only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
2023We hope to make this the default in a future release.
2024
2025 * Documentation improvements
2026
2027There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
2028produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
2029before submitting changes.
2030
2031The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
2032M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
2033`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
2034you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
2035a future texinfo-X.Y release.
2036
2037*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
2038We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
2039been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
2040or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
2041`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
2042around this problem.
2043
2044 * New features
2045
2046GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
2047the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
2048`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
2049the target program.
2050
2051The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
2052how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
2053
2054 * New native hosts supported
2055
2056HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
2057386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
2058
2059 * New targets supported
2060
2061AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
2062
2063 * New file formats supported
2064
2065BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
2066HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
2067
2068 * Major bug fixes
2069
2070Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
2071
2072We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
2073printf_filtered("%s") problems.
2074
2075We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
2076for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
2077release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
2078
2079You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
2080will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
2081
2082We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
2083for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
2084especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
2085libraries.
2086
2087The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
2088information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
2089command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
2090any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
2091when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
2092
2093 * Internal improvements
2094
2095GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
2096debugging of multiple languages in the future.
2097
2098GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
2099Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
2100symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
2101contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
2102shared code that handles any of them.
2103
2104 * New command line options
2105
2106We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
2107
2108 * Mmalloc licensing
2109
2110The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
2111General Public License.
2112
2113*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
2114
2115 * Host/native/target split
2116
2117GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
2118hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
2119target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
2120local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
2121ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
2122
2123The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
2124GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
2125is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
2126code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
2127any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
2128built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
2129handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
2130
2131GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
2132It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
2133plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
2134
2135 * New hosts supported
2136
2137HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
2138386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2139386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
2140
2141 * New targets supported
2142
2143Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
214468030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
2145
2146 * New native hosts supported
2147
2148386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2149 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
2150386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
2151
2152 * New file formats supported
2153
2154BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
2155supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
2156format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
2157
2158 * New commands
2159
2160`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
2161`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
2162These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
2163
2164`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
2165
2166You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
2167scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
2168prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
2169executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
2170
2171 * C++ improvements
2172
2173We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
2174info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
2175symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
2176
2177Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
2178
2179 * Major bug fixes
2180
2181The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
2182fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
2183by the compiler.
2184
2185We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
2186support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
2187
2188John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
2189slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
2190that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
2191purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
2192the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
2193mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
2194
2195Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
2196about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
2197completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
2198we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
2199
2200 * AMD 29k support
2201
2202A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
2203specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
2204calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
2205usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
2206in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
2207
2208We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
2209Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
2210of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
2211resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
2212
2213 * Remote interfaces
2214
2215We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
2216with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
2217message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
2218This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
2219needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
2220breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
2221each instruction being stepped through.
2222
2223The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
2224registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
2225
2226There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
2227find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
2228Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
2229processor with a serial port.
2230
2231 * Configuration
2232
2233Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
2234`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
2235supported, and what files each one uses.
2236
2237 * Library changes
2238
2239There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
2240disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
2241Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
2242disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
2243
2244The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
2245Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
2246can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
2247grants all the rights from the General Public License.
2248
2249 * Documentation
2250
2251The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
2252reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
2253as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
2254encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
2255system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
2256bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
2257
2258And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
2259
2260
2261*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
2262
2263 * Better support for C++ function names
2264
2265GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
2266names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
2267(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
2268single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
2269Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
2270
2271GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
2272the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
2273You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
2274lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
2275for the list of formats.
2276
2277 * G++ symbol mangling problem
2278
2279Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
2280C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
2281directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
2282can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
2283usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
2284about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
2285this problem.)
2286
2287 * New 'maintenance' command
2288
2289All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
2290the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
2291can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
2292
2293 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
2294 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
2295 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
2296 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
2297 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
2298 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
2299
2300The following commands are new:
2301
2302 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
2303 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
2304 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
2305
2306 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
2307
2308We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
2309(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
2310be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
2311read after argv processing.
2312
2313 * New hosts supported
2314
2315Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
2316
55241689 2317GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
2318
2319We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
2320is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
2321for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
2322masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
2323fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
2324It costs extra.
2325
2326 * New targets supported
2327
2328Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2329
2330 * More smarts about finding #include files
2331
2332GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
2333all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
2334greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
2335especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
2336the one that contains your sources.
2337
2338We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
2339breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
2340try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
2341
2342 * Interesting infernals change
2343
2344GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
2345section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
2346target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
2347stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
2348
2349 * Bug fixes (of course!)
2350
2351There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
2352 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
2353 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
2354
2355See the ChangeLog for details.
2356
2357*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
2358
2359 * New machines supported (host and target)
2360
2361IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
2362
2363SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2364
2365 * New malloc package
2366
2367GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
2368Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
2369capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
2370This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
2371pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
2372more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
2373
2374 * info proc
2375
2376The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
2377'help info proc' for details.
2378
2379 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
2380
2381The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
2382Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
2383possible.
2384
2385 * File name changes for MS-DOS
2386
2387Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
2388support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
2389conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
2390environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
2391that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
2392in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
2393
2394 * Cross byte order fixes
2395
2396Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
2397targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
2398
2399 * New -mapped and -readnow options
2400
2401If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
2402system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
2403`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
2404program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
2405called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
2406Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
2407and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
2408the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
2409option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
2410starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
2411
2412You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
2413the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
2414information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
2415slower, but makes future operations faster.
2416
2417The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
2418build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
2419A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
2420use is:
2421
2422 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
2423
2424The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
2425It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
2426shared across multiple host platforms.
2427
2428 * longjmp() handling
2429
2430GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
2431siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
2432all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
2433platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
2434
2435 * Solaris 2.0
2436
2437Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
2438this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
2439reading symbols.
2440
2441 * Bug fixes
2442
2443As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
2444People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
2445crashes and trashed symbol tables.
2446
2447*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
2448
2449 * New machines supported (host and target)
2450
2451SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2452 (except core files)
2453BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
2454Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
2455
2456 * New machines supported (target)
2457
2458AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2459
2460 * C++ support
2461
2462GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
2463The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
2464per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
2465
2466GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
2467`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
2468extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
2469good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
2470will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
2471released.
2472
2473 * New features for SVR4
2474
2475GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
2476shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
2477only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
2478
2479The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
2480on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
2481it prints the address mappings of the process.
2482
2483If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
2484bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
2485
2486 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
2487
2488Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
2489now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
2490skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
2491make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
2492same code linked statically.
2493
2494 * New Getopt
2495
2496GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
2497version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
2498continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
2499Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
2500added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
2501future by other options that begin with the same letter.
2502
2503 * Bugs fixed
2504
2505The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2506Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2507See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2508
2509
2510*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
2511
2512 * New machines supported (host and target)
2513
2514Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
2515NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
2516Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2517
2518 * Almost SCO Unix support
2519
2520We had hoped to support:
2521SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2522(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
2523that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
2524about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
2525
2526 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
2527
2528GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
2529debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
2530is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
2531send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
2532reqired (if any).
2533
2534 * New Readline
2535
2536GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
2537is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
2538required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
2539
2540 * Bugs fixed
2541
2542The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2543Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2544See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2545
2546 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
2547
2548GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
2549supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
2550symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
2551
2552Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
2553mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
2554debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
2555mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
2556version 2.
2557
2558Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
2559really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
2560line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
2561variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
2562situation somewhat.
2563
2564When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
2565However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
2566methods.
2567
2568We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
2569DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
2570encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
2571
2572
2573*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
2574
2575 * Improved configuration
2576
2577Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
2578Porting BFD is simpler.
2579
2580 * Stepping improved
2581
2582The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
2583of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
2584in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
2585function that has debugging information is called within the line.
2586
2587 * Bug fixing
2588
2589Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
2590
2591 * New host supported (not target)
2592
2593Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
2594
2595
2596*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
2597
2598 * Multiple source language support
2599
2600GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
2601It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
2602and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
2603language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
2604You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
2605`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
2606
2607 * GDB and Modula-2
2608
2609GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
2610currently under development at the State University of New York at
2611Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
2612continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
2613
2614Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
2615debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
2616symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
2617
2618There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
2619in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
2620
2621 * set write on/off
2622
2623GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
2624a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
2625the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
2626by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
2627effect immediately.
2628
2629 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
2630
2631When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
2632shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
2633The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
2634examining core files.
2635
2636 * set listsize
2637
2638You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
2639The default is 10.
2640
2641 * New machines supported (host and target)
2642
2643SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2644Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
2645Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
2646
2647 * New hosts supported (not targets)
2648
2649IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
2650
2651 * New targets supported (not hosts)
2652
2653AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2654AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2655Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
2656
2657 * New remote interfaces
2658
2659AMD 29000 Adapt
2660AMD 29000 Minimon
2661
2662
2663*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
2664
2665 * New Facilities
2666
2667Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
2668
2669Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
2670target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
2671is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
2672remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
2673remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
2674also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
2675using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
2676stub on the target system.
2677
2678New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
2679
2680GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
2681library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
2682object file types such as a.out and coff.
2683
2684There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
2685refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
2686
2687
2688 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
2689
2690All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
2691by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
2692
2693For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
2694``Show prompt'' produces the response:
2695Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
2696
2697What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
2698print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
2699will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
2700all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
2701
2702confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
2703 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
2704 it is already running. Default is ON.
2705
2706editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
2707 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
2708 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
2709 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
2710 Default is ON.
2711
2712history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
2713 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
2714 or the value of the environment variable
2715 GDBHISTFILE.
2716
2717history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
2718 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
2719 HISTSIZE.
2720
2721history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
2722 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
2723 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
2724
2725history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
2726 history expansion will be performed on
2727 command line input. The default is OFF.
2728
2729radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
2730 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
2731 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
2732
2733height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
2734 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
2735 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2736 variable TERM.
2737
2738width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
2739 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
2740 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2741 variable TERM.
2742
2743Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
2744``set width'' instead.
2745
2746print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
2747 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
2748 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
2749 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
2750
2751print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
2752 is OFF.
2753
2754print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
2755 "raw" form if off.
2756
2757print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
2758 like instructions.
2759
2760print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
2761
2762
2763 * Support for Epoch Environment.
2764
2765The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
2766new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
2767are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
2768window.
2769
2770
2771 * Support for Shared Libraries
2772
2773GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
2774Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
2775before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
2776happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
2777At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
2778from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
2779shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
2780It can be abbreviated ``share''.
2781
2782sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
2783 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
2784 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
2785
2786info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
2787
2788
2789 * Watchpoints
2790
2791A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
2792expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
2793tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
2794quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
2795problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
2796more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
2797
2798watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
2799
2800info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
2801
2802delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2803disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2804enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2805
2806
2807 * C++ multiple inheritance
2808
2809When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
2810for C++ programs.
2811
2812 * C++ exception handling
2813
2814Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
2815ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
2816the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
2817handler's context).
2818
2819catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
2820 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
2821 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
2822
2823info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
2824 current stack frame.
2825
2826
2827 * Minor command changes
2828
2829The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
2830command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
2831is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
2832
2833The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
2834at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
2835frames without printing.
2836
2837 * New directory command
2838
2839'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
2840The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
2841about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
2842with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
2843find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
2844
2845 * Configuring GDB for compilation
2846
2847For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
2848for more details.
2849
2850GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
2851two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
2852Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
2853where the program that you are debugging will run.
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