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[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
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c906108c
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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
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4*** Changes since GDB 6.8
5
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UW
6* GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
7remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
8with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
9the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
10
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11* Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
12now complete on file names.
13
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14* When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
15completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
16For instance, consider:
17
18 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
19 # struct example variable;
20 (gdb) p variable.
21
22If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
23completions will be "f1" and "f2".
24
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25* GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
26operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
27macros.
28
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29* New remote packets
30
31qSearch:memory:
32 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
33
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34QStartNoAckMode
35 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
36 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
37 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
38
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39qXfer:osdata:read
40 Obtains additional operating system information
41
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42* Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
43
44 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
45 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
46 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
47
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48* The "disassemble" command now supports an optional /m modifier to print mixed
49source+assembly.
50
c055b101 51* GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
a0ef4274 52DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
c055b101
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53
54* The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
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55and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
56`set/show sh calling-convention'.
c055b101 57
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58* GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
59with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
60
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61* 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
62
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63* Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
64
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65* Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
66which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
67
1fddbabb 68* The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
31fffb02 69list of section offsets.
1fddbabb 70
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71* On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
72conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
73have also been fixed.
74
bfb8797a 75* GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
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76From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
77are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
bfb8797a 78
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79* New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
80
81 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
82 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
83
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84 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
85 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
86 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
87
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88 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
89 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
90
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91 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
92 gdbserver.
93
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94* Python scripting
95
96 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
97 available is determined at configure time.
98
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99* Ada tasking support
100
101 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
102 been introduced:
103
104 info tasks
105 Print the list of Ada tasks.
106 info task N
107 Print detailed information about task number N.
108 task
109 Print the task number of the current task.
110 task N
111 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
112
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113* New commands
114
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115find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
116 val1 [, val2, ...]
117 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
118
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119maint set python print-stack
120maint show python print-stack
121 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
122
123python [CODE]
124 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
125
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126set print symbol-loading
127show print symbol-loading
128 Control printing of symbol loading messages.
129
e0a3ce09 130set debug timestamp
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131show debug timestamp
132 Display timestamps with GDB debugging output.
133
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134set exec-wrapper
135show exec-wrapper
136unset exec-wrapper
137 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
fa4727a6 138
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139set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
140show multiple-symbols
141 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
142 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
143 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
144
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145set breakpoint always-inserted
146show breakpoint always-inserted
147 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
148 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
149 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
150
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151set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
152show arm fallback-mode
153set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
154show arm force-mode
155 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
156 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
157 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
158 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
159
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160set disable-randomization
161show disable-randomization
162 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
163 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
164 multiple debugging sessions.
165
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166set target-async
167 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
168 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
169 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
170 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
171
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172set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
173show tcp auto-retry
174set tcp connect-timeout
175show tcp connect-timeout
176 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
177 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
178 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
179
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180macro define
181macro list
182macro undef
183 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
184 interactively.
185
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186* New native configurations
187
188x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
189
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190info os processes
191 Show operating system information about processes.
192
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193* New targets
194
195x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
196
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197* Removed commands
198
199catch load
200catch unload
201 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
202
75feb17d 203*** Changes in GDB 6.8
f9ed52be 204
af5ca30d
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205* New native configurations
206
207NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
94a0e877 208Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d
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209
210* New targets
211
212NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
94a0e877 213Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d 214
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215* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
216
217 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
218 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
219 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
220 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
221
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222* GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
223(mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
224
fe6fbf8b 225* Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
8d5f9c6f 226is resolved.
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227
228* GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
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229including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
230and in inlined functions.
fe6fbf8b 231
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232* GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
233accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
234more than one contiguous range of addresses.
235
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236* Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
237
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238* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
239registers on PowerPC targets.
240
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241* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
242targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
243
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244* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
245commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
246
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247* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
248extended-remote mode.
249
24a836bd 250* hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
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251The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
252error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
253The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
24a836bd 254
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255* GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
256building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
257target architectures.
258
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259* GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
260Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
261now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
262stored in two consecutive float registers.
263
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264* The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
265breakpoints now.
266
b93b6ca7 267* Improved support for debugging Ada
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268Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
269include:
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270 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
271 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
272 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
273 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
274 of an assignment
275 - Improved command completion in Ada
276 - Several bug fixes
277
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278* GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
279process.
280
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281* New commands
282
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283set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
284show print frame-arguments
285 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
286 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
287
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288remote put
289remote get
290remote delete
291 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
292
293* New MI commands
294
295-target-file-put
296-target-file-get
297-target-file-delete
298 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
299
300* New remote packets
301
302vFile:open:
303vFile:close:
304vFile:pread:
305vFile:pwrite:
306vFile:unlink:
307 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
d0c678e6 308
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309vAttach
310 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
311 mode.
312
313vRun
314 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
315
8d5f9c6f 316*** Changes in GDB 6.7
6dd09645 317
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318* Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
319bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
320Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
321
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UW
322* When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
323symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
324-Bsymbolic linker option.
325
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326* When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
327recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
328is not supported.
329
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330* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
331frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
332
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333* GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
33432-bit or 64-bit register values.
335
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336* Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
337
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338* GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
339target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
340a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
341
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342* Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
343automatically displayed as character or string data.
344
345* The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
346arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
347as strings.
e1f48ead 348
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349* Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
350for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
8d5f9c6f 351only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
123dc839 352
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353* GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
354iWMMXt coprocessor.
fb1e4ffc 355
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356* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
357ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
358has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
359
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360* GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
361
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UW
362* GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
363
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364* The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
365layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
366segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
367
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368* The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
369immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
370
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371* The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
372"library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
373packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
374where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
375Windows and SymbianOS).
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376
377* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
378(DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
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379
380* GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
381according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
cfa9d6d9 382
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383* New commands
384
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385set remoteflow
386show remoteflow
387 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
388 when debugging using remote targets.
389
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390set mem inaccessible-by-default
391show mem inaccessible-by-default
392 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
393 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
394 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
395 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
396 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
397
398set breakpoint auto-hw
399show breakpoint auto-hw
400 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
401 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
402 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
403 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
404 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
405 including "next" and "finish".
406
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407catch exception
408catch exception unhandled
409 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
410
411catch assert
412 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
413
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414set sysroot
415show sysroot
416 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
417 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
418 an alias to "set sysroot".
419
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420info spu
421 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
422 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
423 architecture.
424
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425* New native configurations
426
427OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
428
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429set tdesc filename
430unset tdesc filename
431show tdesc filename
432 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
433 not query the target for its built-in description.
434
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435* New targets
436
54fe9172 437OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
c9bb8148 438MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
c077150c 439Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
c9bb8148 440
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441* New remote packets
442
443QPassSignals:
444 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
445 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
446
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447qXfer:features:read:
448 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
449 features.
6dd09645 450
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UW
451qXfer:spu:read:
452qXfer:spu:write:
453 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
454 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
455
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456qXfer:libraries:read:
457 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
458 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
459 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
460 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
461
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462* Removed targets
463
464Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
465
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466alpha*-*-osf1*
467alpha*-*-osf2*
7ce59000 468d10v-*-*
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469hppa*-*-hiux*
470i[34567]86-ncr-*
471i[34567]86-*-dgux*
472i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
473i[34567]86-*-netware*
474i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
475i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
476i[34567]86-*-sco*
477i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
478i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
479i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
480i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
481i[34567]86-*-unixware*
482i[34567]86-*-sysv*
483i[34567]86-*-isc*
484m68*-cisco*-*
485m68*-tandem-*
ad527d2e 486mips*-*-pe
483367ee 487rs6000-*-lynxos*
ad527d2e 488sh*-*-pe
483367ee 489
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490* Other removed features
491
492target abug
493target cpu32bug
494target est
495target rom68k
496
497 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
498
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499target hms
500target e7000
501target sh3
502target sh3e
503
504 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
505 H8/300.
506
507target ocd
508
509 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
510 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
511 interfaces.
512
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513DWARF 1 support
514
515 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
516 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
517
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518Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
519
520 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
521 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
522 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
523 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
524
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525MIPS ".pdr" sections
526
527 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
528 in debugging information.
529
530Scheme support
531
532 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
533 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
534
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535set mips stack-arg-size
536set mips saved-gpreg-size
537
538 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
539
6dd09645 540*** Changes in GDB 6.6
e374b601 541
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542* New targets
543
544Xtensa xtensa-elf
9c309e77 545Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
ca3bf3bd 546
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547* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
548(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
549running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
550
551* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
552Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
553supported.
554
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555* The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
556broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
557
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558* The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
559stub provides the required support.
560
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561* Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
562longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
563
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564* New commands
565
566set substitute-path
567unset substitute-path
568show substitute-path
569 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
570 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
571 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
572 between compilation and debugging.
573
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574set trace-commands
575show trace-commands
576 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
577 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
578 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
579
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580* REMOVED features
581
582The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
583
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584Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
585an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
586
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587The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
588
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589* New remote packets
590
591qSupported:
592 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
593 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
594 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
595 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
596 target.
597
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598qXfer:auxv:read:
599 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
600 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
601
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602qXfer:memory-map:read:
603 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
604 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
605
606vFlashErase:
607vFlashWrite:
608vFlashDone:
609 Erase and program a flash memory device.
610
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611* Removed remote packets
612
613qPart:auxv:read:
614 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
615 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
616
e374b601 617*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 618
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619* New targets
620
621Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
622
623Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
624
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625* New commands
626
627init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
628 only if it doesn't already have a value.
629
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630The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
631
632checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
633
634restart <n> Return the program state to a
635 previously saved state.
636
637info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
638
639delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
640
641set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
642 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
643
644info forks List forks of the user program that
645 are available to be debugged.
646
647fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
648 forks of the user program that are
649 available to be debugged.
650
651delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
652 that are available to be debugged (and
653 kill the forked process).
654
655detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
656 that are available to be debugged (and
657 allow the process to continue).
658
3950dc3f
NS
659* New architecture
660
661Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
662
0ea3f30e
DJ
663* Improved Windows host support
664
665GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
666native console support, and remote communications using either
667network sockets or serial ports.
668
f79daebb
GM
669* Improved Modula-2 language support
670
671GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
672basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
673pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
674printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
675written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
676GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
677
acab6ab2
MM
678* REMOVED features
679
680The ARM rdi-share module.
681
f4267320
DJ
682The Netware NLM debug server.
683
53e5f3cf 684*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 685
e0ecbda1
MK
686* New native configurations
687
02a677ac 688OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
e0ecbda1
MK
689OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
690
d64a6579
KB
691* New targets
692
693Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
694
b33a6190
AS
695* New command line options
696
697--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
698--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
699 the child (debugged) program exited with.
700--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
701 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
702 specified multiple times and in conjunction
703 with the --command (-x) option.
704
11dced61
AC
705* Deprecated commands removed
706
707The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
708removed:
709
710 Command Replacement
711 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
712 othernames set arm disassembler
713 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
714 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
715 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
716 regs info registers
717
6fe85783
MK
718* New BSD user-level threads support
719
720It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
721library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
722configurations are:
723
724FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
725FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
726OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
727
728Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
729are not yet supported.
730
5260ca71
MS
731* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
732(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
733
e84ecc99
AC
734* REMOVED configurations and files
735
736VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 737Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 738National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 739
31e35378
JB
740* New "set print array-indexes" command
741
742After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
743when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
744behavior.
745
e85e5c83
MK
746* VAX floating point support
747
748GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
749
d91e9901
AS
750* User-defined command support
751
752In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
753to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
754section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
755
f2cb65ca
MC
756*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
757
f47b1503
AS
758* New command line option
759
760GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
761debugging.
762
f2cb65ca
MC
763* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
764
765GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
766information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
767by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
768proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
769to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 770
d08c0230
AC
771* Internationalization
772
773When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
774internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
775continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
776
117ea3cf
PH
777* Ada
778
779Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
780implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
781into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
782
d08c0230
AC
783* New native configurations
784
785GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
786
787* Remote 'p' packet
788
789GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
790packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
791
792* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
793
794GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
795The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
796features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
797i386 application).
798
799GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
800compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
801continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
802configurations:
803
804hppa-*-hpux
805ia64-*-aix
806mips-*-irix*
807*-*-lynx
808mips-*-linux-gnu
809sds protocol
810xdr protocol
811powerpc bdm protocol
812
813Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
814made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
815
816* OBSOLETE configurations and files
817
818Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
819been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
820configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
821permanently REMOVED.
822
823h8300-*-*
824mcore-*-*
825mn10300-*-*
826ns32k-*-*
827sh64-*-*
828v850-*-*
829
ebb7c577
AC
830*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
831
832* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
833
834When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
835heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
836been fixed.
837
838* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
839
840When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
841fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
842IRIX long double values).
843
844* VAX and "next"
845
846A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
847command. This problem has been fixed.
848
860660cb 849*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 850
0dea2468
AC
851* Fix for ``many threads''
852
853On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
854rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
855error message:
856
857 ptrace: No such process.
858 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
859
860This problem has been fixed.
861
2c07db7a
AC
862* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
863
864Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
865GDB to dump core).
866
c23968a2
JB
867* New ``start'' command.
868
869This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
870
71009278
MK
871* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
872
873Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
874live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
875platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
876
877FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
878FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
879NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
880NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
881NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
882OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
883OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
884OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
885OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
886
3c0b7db2
AC
887* Signal trampoline code overhauled
888
889Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
890These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
891of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
892call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
893signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
894
73cc75f3
AC
895Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
896features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
897include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 898
7243600a
BF
899* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
900
6f606e1c
MK
901* New native configurations
902
97dc871c 903GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 904OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
bf2ca189
MK
905OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
906OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 907OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 908NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 909OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 910
a1b461bf
AC
911* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
912
913GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
914The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
915including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
916migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
917compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
918work, was also included.
919
920GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
921module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
922
923h8300-*-*
924mcore-*-*
925mn10300-*-*
926ns32k-*-*
927sh64-*-*
928v850-*-*
929xstormy16-*-*
930
931Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
932made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
933
3c7012f5
AC
934* REMOVED configurations and files
935
936Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
937Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
938Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
939Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
940Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
941AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
942Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
943decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
944riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
945sonymips mips-sony-*
946sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
947
e5fe55f7
AC
948*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
949
950* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
951
952The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
953GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
954command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
955program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
956with GDB".
957
958* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
959
960Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
961libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
962cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
963GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
964shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
965the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
966are created.
967
968Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
969
970* Fixed ISO-C build problems
971
972The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
973non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
974compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
975
976* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
977
978Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
979wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
980
981* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
982
983The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
984permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
985systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
986
987* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
988
989Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
990has been updated to use constant array sizes.
991
992* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
993
994GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
995its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
996panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
997
998* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
999
1000When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
1001by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
1002not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
1003
faae5abe 1004*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 1005
9175c9a3
MC
1006* Removed --with-mmalloc
1007
1008Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
1009conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
1010
3cc87ec0
MK
1011* Changes in AMD64 configurations
1012
1013The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
1014the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
1015and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
1016you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
1017
f0424ef6
MK
1018* Revised SPARC target
1019
1020The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
1021FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
03cebad2
MK
1022support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
1023from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
1024(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 1025
59659be2
ILT
1026* New C++ demangler
1027
1028GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
1029names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
1030with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
1031programs.
1032
9e08b29b
DJ
1033* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
1034
1035GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
1036arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
1037encountered these.
1038
8dfe8985
DC
1039* C++ nested types and namespaces
1040
1041GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
1042improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
1043is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
1044Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
1045namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
1046"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
1047frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
1048if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
1049GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
1050
cced5e27
MK
1051* New native configurations
1052
1053NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 1054OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 1055OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
f2cab569
MK
1056OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
1057OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 1058
b4b4b794
KI
1059* New debugging protocols
1060
1061M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
1062
7989c619
AC
1063* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
1064
1065The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
1066and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
1067tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
1068
5994185b
AC
1069* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1070
1071Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1072been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1073configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1074permanently REMOVED.
1075
1076Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
1077Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
1078Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
1079Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
1080Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
1081AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
1082Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
0748d941
AC
1083decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
1084riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
1085sonymips mips-sony-*
1086sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 1087
0ddabb4c
AC
1088* REMOVED configurations and files
1089
1090SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1091SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4a8269c0
AC
1092Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1093Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1094H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1095HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
1096HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1097HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
1098PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 1099386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4a8269c0
AC
1100Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
1101 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
1102 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f0424ef6
MK
1103SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
1104SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4a8269c0
AC
1105Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1106Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 1107
c7f1390e
DJ
1108*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
1109
1fe43d45
AC
1110* Objective-C
1111
1112Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
1113integrated into GDB.
1114
e6beb428
AC
1115* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
1116
1117DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
1118information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
1119By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
1120backtraces.
1121
1122The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
1123have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
1124DWARF 2 CFI support.
1125
1126* Hosted file I/O.
1127
1128GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
1129file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
1130remote protocol documentation for details.
1131
1132* All targets using the new architecture framework.
1133
1134All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
1135architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
1136to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
1137ppc32 on ppc64).
1138
1139* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
1140
1141GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
1142per-thread variables.
1143
1144* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
1145
1146GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
1147GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
1148
1149* Separate debug info.
1150
1151GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
1152automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
1153of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
1154system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
1155and optional debug files.
1156
1157* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
1158
1159DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
1160describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
1161debugger.
1162
1163GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
1164for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
1165
1166* Java
1167
1168A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
1169Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
1170considered "useable".
1171
85f8f974
DJ
1172* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
1173
1174The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
1175commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
1176kernel.
1177
0fac0b41
DJ
1178* GDB supports logging output to a file
1179
1180There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
1181used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 1182
6ad8ae5c
DJ
1183* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
1184
1185The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
1186disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
1187command.
1188
e286caf2 1189* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5f601589
AC
1190
1191The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
1192registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
1193
d28f9cdf
DJ
1194* Profiling support
1195
1196A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
1197be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
1198session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
1199"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
1200data, for more informative profiling results.
1201
da0f9dcd
AC
1202* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
1203
1204The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
1205option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 1206"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
da0f9dcd
AC
1207
1208Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
1209removed.
1210
fb9b6b35
JJ
1211Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
1212Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
1213Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
1214 in a subsequent -var-update.
1215
954a4db8
MK
1216* New native configurations.
1217
1218FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1219
6760f9e6
JB
1220* Multi-arched targets.
1221
b4263afa 1222HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 1223Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 1224
1b831c93
AC
1225* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1226
1227Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1228been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1229configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1230permanently REMOVED.
1231
8b0e5691 1232Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 1233Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 1234H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
56056df7
AC
1235HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
1236HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1237HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 1238PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
AC
1239Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
1240 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
1241 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
AC
1242Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1243Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 1244
5835abe7
NC
1245* REMOVED configurations and files
1246
1247V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
1248Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1249IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
1250i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1251i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1252i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
1253HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1254 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
1255 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
1256Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1257Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1258Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1259OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1260I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 1261
a094c6fb
AC
1262* MIPS $fp behavior changed
1263
1264The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
1265the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
1266context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
1267address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
1268The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
1269
299ffc64 1270*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 1271
46248966
AC
1272* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
1273
1274When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
1275`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
1276in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
1277library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
1278shared libs like mad''.
1279
b9d14705 1280* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 1281
b9d14705
DJ
1282Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
1283the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
1284arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
1285powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 1286
e0e9281e
JB
1287* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
1288
1289GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
1290and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
1291they expand.
1292
dd73b9bb
AC
1293The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
1294invocations in expression, and shows the result.
1295
1296The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
1297macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
1298
e0e9281e
JB
1299Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
1300information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
1301your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
1302information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
1303
2250ee0c
CV
1304* Multi-arched targets.
1305
6e3ba3b8
JT
1306DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
1307DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 1308NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 1309National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
1310Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
1311Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 1312
cd9bfe15 1313* New targets.
e33ce519 1314
456f8b9d
DB
1315Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
1316
e33ce519 1317
da8ca43d
JT
1318* New native configurations
1319
1320Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 1321SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 1322MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 1323UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 1324
cd9bfe15
AC
1325* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1326
1327Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1328been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1329configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1330permanently REMOVED.
1331
92eb23c5 1332Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 1333OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 1334IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 1335Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 1336Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 1337Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
1338i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1339i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1340i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
1341HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1342 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
1343 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 1344I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 1345
db034ac5
AC
1346* OBSOLETE languages
1347
1348CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
1349
cd9bfe15
AC
1350* REMOVED configurations and files
1351
1352AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1353A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1354AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1355AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1356AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1357
1358testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
1359
20f01a46
DH
1360* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
1361
1362This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
1363commands. The default is 1024.
1364
a5941fbf
MK
1365* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
1366
1367Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
1368
89743e04
MS
1369* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
1370
1371These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
1372to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
1373from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 1374
9fb14e79
JB
1375* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
1376
1377The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
1378including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
1379of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
1380
2037aebb
AC
1381*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
1382
1383* New targets.
1384
1385Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
1386
1387* Bug fixes
1388
1389gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
1390mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
1391Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
1392
1393gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
1394dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
1395Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
1396
1397Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
1398Surprisingly enough, it works now.
1399By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
1400
1401i386 hardware watchpoint support:
1402avoid misses on second run for some targets.
1403By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
1404
37057839 1405*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 1406
1a703748
MS
1407* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
1408
1409This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
1410really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
1411In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
1412target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
1413This can be a significant performance improvement on some
1414(notably embedded) targets.
1415
cefd4ef5
MS
1416* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
1417
55241689
AC
1418This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
1419process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
1420GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
1421hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 1422
352ed7b4
MS
1423* New command line option
1424
1425GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
1426
1427* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
1428
1429There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
1430command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
1431a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
1432be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
1433open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
1434issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
1435a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
1436it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
1437GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
1438is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
1439
fe419ffc
RE
1440* Changes in ARM configurations.
1441
1442Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
1443configuration is fully multi-arch.
1444
eb7cedd9
MK
1445* New native configurations
1446
fe419ffc 1447ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 1448x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 1449AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 1450Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 1451
c9f63e6b
CV
1452* New targets
1453
1454Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
1455
9b4ff276
AC
1456* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1457
1458Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1459been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1460configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1461permanently REMOVED.
1462
1463AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1464A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1465AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1466AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1467AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1468
b4ceaee6 1469testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 1470
e2caac18
AC
1471* REMOVED configurations and files
1472
1473TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 1474WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
1475PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1476PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1477PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 1478Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
1479Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1480 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 1481SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 1482Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
1483Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1484ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 1485Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 1486
c2a727fa
TT
1487* Changes to command line processing
1488
1489The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
1490for the inferior from gdb's command line.
1491
467d8519
TT
1492* Changes to key bindings
1493
1494There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
1495
7072a954
AC
1496*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
1497
1498Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
1499
1500Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
1501corrupted.
1502
1503Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
1504
1505Numerous documentation fixes.
1506
1507Numerous testsuite fixes.
1508
34f47bc4 1509*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
1510
1511* New native configurations
1512
1513Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
1514x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 1515MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
1516MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1517ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 1518s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 1519
bf64bfd6
AC
1520* New targets
1521
def90278 1522Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 1523CRIS cris-axis
55241689 1524UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 1525
17e78a56 1526* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
1527
1528x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 1529Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
1530Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1531 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
1532TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1533WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 1534Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
1535PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1536PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1537PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 1538SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
1539Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1540ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 1541Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 1542
17e78a56
AC
1543stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
1544kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
1545
7fcca85b
AC
1546Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1547been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1548configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1549permanently REMOVED.
1550
a196c81c 1551* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
1552
1553Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1554Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
1555Pyramid pyramid-*-*
1556ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
1557Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 1558ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 1559
6d6b80e5 1560* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 1561
6d6b80e5 1562GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
1563sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
1564present.
1565
bf64bfd6
AC
1566* Other news:
1567
e23194cb
EZ
1568* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
1569
1570* The MI enabled by default.
1571
1572The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
1573revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
1574engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
1575using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
1576which is now deprecated.
1577
1578* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
1579
1580GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
1581main features are supported:
1582
1583 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
1584
1585 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
1586 extension;
1587
1588 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
1589
1590 - a Pascal expression parser.
1591
1592However, some important features are not yet supported.
1593
1594 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
1595
1596 - there are some problems with boolean types;
1597
1598 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
1599 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
1600
1601 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
1602
1603 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
1604
1605* Changes in completion.
1606
1607Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
1608to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
1609users expect at the shell prompt.
1610
1611Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
1612`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
1613program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
1614files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
1615be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
1616considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
1617name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
1618
1619`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
1620
1621* New platform-independent commands:
1622
1623It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
1624hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
1625documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
1626
1627* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
1628
d7275149
MK
1629Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
1630revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
1631many threads as your system allows you to have.
1632
e23194cb
EZ
1633Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
1634
d7275149
MK
1635Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
1636multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
1637
1638* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
1639
1640Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
1641
e23194cb
EZ
1642GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
1643debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
1644supported.)
1645
1646* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
1647
1648Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
1649breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
1650implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
1651put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
1652and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
1653registers.
1654
1655The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
1656debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
1657watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
1658
1659* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
1660
1661New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
1662the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
1663
1664New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
1665display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
1666IDT.
1667
1668New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
1669from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
1670New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
1671a given linear address.
1672
1673GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
1674program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
1675which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
1676
1677DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
1678
6c56c069
EZ
1679It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
1680
e23194cb
EZ
1681* Changes in documentation.
1682
1683All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
1684Documentation License.
1685
1686Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1687manual.
1688
1689TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
1690
1691Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1692manual.
1693
1694The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
1695documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
1696hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
1697
5d6640b1
AC
1698* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
1699
1700The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
1701``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
1702contents of this file.
1703
1a1d8446
AC
1704* gdba.el deleted
1705
1706GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 1707
9debab2f 1708*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 1709
c63ce875
EZ
1710* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
1711
1712Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
1713programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
1714displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
1715greater level of detail.
1716
1717* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
1718
1719It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
1720bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
1721on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
1722written.
1723
1724* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
1725
1726The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
1727necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
1728machines ``out of the box''.
1729
1730The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
1731possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
1732signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
1733would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
1734interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
1735
1736It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
1737standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
1738even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
1739and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
1740terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
1741
1742The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
1743enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
1744also works.
1745
1746DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
1747GDB.
1748
1749It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
1750directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
1751times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
1752breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
1753
ed9a39eb
JM
1754* New native configurations
1755
1756ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 1757PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 1758
7a292a7a
SS
1759* New targets
1760
96baa820 1761Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
1762x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
1763PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
1764TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1765
085dd6e6
JM
1766* OBSOLETE configurations
1767
1768Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1769Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 1770Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 1771ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 1772Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 1773
9debab2f
AC
1774Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1775but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1776these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1777be permanently REMOVED.
1778
5330533d
SS
1779* Gould support removed
1780
1781Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
1782
bc9e5bbf
AC
1783* New features for SVR4
1784
1785On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
1786without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
1787load symbols from the running process's executable file.
1788
1789* Many C++ enhancements
1790
1791C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
1792in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
1793
adf40b2e
JM
1794* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
1795
1796A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
1797sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
1798with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
1799``|<program> <args>'' vis:
1800
1801 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
1802 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
1803
43e526b9
JM
1804* MIPS 64 remote protocol
1805
1806A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
1807expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
1808instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
1809
1810The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
1811added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1812
96baa820
JM
1813* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
1814
1815The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
1816``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
1817include ``set remote P-packet''.
1818
11cf8741
JM
1819* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
1820
1821The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
1822accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
1823``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
1824
7876dd43
DB
1825* ``apropos'' command added.
1826
1827The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
1828documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
1829try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
1830
bc9e5bbf
AC
1831* New MI interface
1832
1833A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
1834interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
1835process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
1836"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
1837enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
1838
1839 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
1840
c906108c
SS
1841*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
1842
1843* New native configurations
1844
1845HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
1846HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 1847M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
1848
1849* New targets
1850
1851Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1852Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
1853Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1854
1855* OBSOLETE configurations
1856
1857Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
1858
1859Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1860but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1861these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1862be permanently REMOVED.
1863
1864* ANSI/ISO C
1865
1866As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
1867buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
1868containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
1869use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
1870available. If this is not true, please report the affected
1871configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
1872information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
1873already.
1874
1875* Readline 2.2
1876
1877GDB now uses readline 2.2.
1878
1879* set extension-language
1880
1881You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
1882languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
1883you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
1884 set extension-language .c c++
1885The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
1886and their associated languages.
1887
1888* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
1889
1890When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
1891you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
1892PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
1893
1894 set processor NAME
1895
1896sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
1897following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
1898
1899 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
1900 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
1901 403 IBM PowerPC 403
1902 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
1903 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
1904 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
1905 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
1906 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
1907 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
1908 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
1909 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
1910
1911At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
1912special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
1913registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
1914only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
1915
1916* HP-UX support
1917
1918Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
1919more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
1920library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
1921support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
1922for xdb and dbx commands.
1923
1924* Catchpoints
1925
1926HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
1927generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
1928to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
1929
1930This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
1931argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
1932output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
1933
1934* Debugging across forks
1935
1936On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
1937in the inferior.
1938
1939* TUI
1940
1941HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
1942it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
1943configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
1944
1945* GDB remote protocol additions
1946
1947A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
1948Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
1949fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
1950allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
1951
1952For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
1953full 64-bit address. The command
1954
1955 set remoteaddresssize 32
1956
1957can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
1958the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
1959will be discarded.
1960
1961In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
1962command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
1963
1964 maint packet heythere
1965
1966sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
1967disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
1968time.
1969
1970The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
1971target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
1972downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
1973
1974* Tracing can collect general expressions
1975
1976You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
1977further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
1978doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
1979
1980* mask-address variable for Mips
1981
1982For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
1983a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
1984of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
1985
1986* Higher serial baud rates
1987
1988GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
1989230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
1990to achieve all of these rates.)
1991
1992* i960 simulator
1993
1994The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
1995builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
1996
1997
1998*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
1999
2000* New native configurations
2001
2002Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
2003Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
2004Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
2005PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
2006PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2007Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
2008Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
2009
2010* New targets
2011
2012Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2013Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
2014Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2015Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
2016MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
2017MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
2018MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
2019Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
2020Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
2021Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2022NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
2023
2024* New debugging protocols
2025
2026ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
2027M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
2028DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
2029PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2030PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2031Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2032
2033* DWARF 2
2034
2035All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
2036format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
2037information.
2038
2039* Java frontend
2040
2041GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
2042only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
2043
2044* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
2045
2046For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
2047loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
2048locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
2049
2050* Live range splitting
2051
2052GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
2053range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
2054more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
2055
2056* Hurd support
2057
2058GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
2059updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
2060
2061* ARM Thumb support
2062
2063GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
2064instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
2065instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
2066accordingly.
2067
2068* MIPS16 support
2069
2070GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
2071instruction set.
2072
2073* Overlay support
2074
2075GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
2076linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
2077will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
2078control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
2079additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
2080in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
2081
2082* info symbol
2083
2084The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
2085the symbol at the specified address.
2086
2087* Trace support
2088
2089The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
2090asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
2091extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
2092includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
2093file tracepoint.c for more details.
2094
2095* MIPS simulator
2096
2097Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
2098by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
2099of most MIPS variants.
2100
2101* Sparc simulator
2102
2103Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
2104by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
2105Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
2106
2107* set architecture
2108
2109For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
2110basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
2111architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
2112the possible architectures.
2113
2114*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
2115
2116* New native configurations
2117
2118Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
2119M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
2120PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
2121PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
2122PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2123RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
2124
2125* New targets
2126
2127ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
2128I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
2129MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
2130MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
2131PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
2132Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
2133Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2134
2135* PowerPC simulator
2136
2137The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
2138contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
2139PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
2140basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
2141performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
2142
2143* Solaris 2.5
2144
2145GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
2146
2147* Windows 95/NT native
2148
2149GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
2150To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
2151which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
2152Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
2153ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
2154
2155* dont-repeat command
2156
2157If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
2158command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
2159useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
2160extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
2161
2162* Send break instead of ^C
2163
2164The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
2165rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
2166GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
2167
2168* Remote protocol timeout
2169
2170The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
2171that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
2172to read from the target. The default value is 2.
2173
2174* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
2175
2176By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
2177loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
2178stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
2179when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
2180in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
2181
2182Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
2183/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
2184automatically on hpux10.
2185
2186* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
2187
2188Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
2189
2190* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
2191
2192When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
2193may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
2194the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
2195every character. The default value is 1050.
2196
2197* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
2198
2199If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
2200a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
2201replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
2202details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
2203remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
2204to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
2205
2206* Speedups for remote debugging
2207
2208GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
2209the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
2210and more efficient S-record downloading.
2211
2212* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
2213
2214GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
2215Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
2216
2217*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
2218
2219* Psymtabs for XCOFF
2220
2221The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
2222can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
2223
2224* Remote targets use caching
2225
2226Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
2227remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
2228it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
2229debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
2230off' turns the the data cache off.
2231
2232* Remote targets may have threads
2233
2234The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
2235in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
2236gdb/remote.c for details.
2237
2238* NetROM support
2239
2240If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
2241support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
2242acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
2243write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
2244support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
2245another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
2246sequence is something like
2247
2248 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
2249 load <prog>
2250 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
2251
2252* Macintosh host
2253
2254GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
2255may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
2256it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
2257available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
2258device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
2259directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
2260scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
2261mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
2262
2263* Autoconf
2264
2265GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
2266but does simplify configuration and building.
2267
2268* hpux10
2269
2270GDB now supports hpux10.
2271
2272*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
2273
2274* New native configurations
2275
2276x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
2277x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
2278NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
2279Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
2280
2281* New targets
2282
2283A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2284HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
2285CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
2286PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
2287WDC 65816 w65-*-*
2288
2289* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
2290
2291GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
2292possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
2293filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
2294the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
2295if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
2296
2297* Arguments to user-defined commands
2298
2299User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
2300Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
2301trivial example:
2302define adder
2303 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
2304
2305To execute the command use:
2306adder 1 2 3
2307
2308Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
2309Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
2310use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
2311
2312* New `if' and `while' commands
2313
2314This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
2315commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
2316expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
2317execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
2318terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
2319`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
2320if the expression is zero.
2321
2322* Fortran source language mode
2323
2324GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
2325Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
2326variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
2327with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
2328Fortran compilers.
2329
2330* Better HPUX support
2331
2332Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
2333running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
2334processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
2335for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
2336that behavior do the following before running the program:
2337
2338 adb -w a.out
2339 __dld_flags?W 0x5
2340 control-d
2341
2342This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
2343To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
2344
2345 adb -w a.out
2346 __dld_flags?W 0x4
2347 control-d
2348
2349You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
2350the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
2351external linkage.
2352
2353GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
2354HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
2355
2356* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
2357
2358You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
2359commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
2360current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
2361"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
2362associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
2363configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
2364
2365* New DOS host serial code
2366
2367This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
2368no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
2369a PC's serial port.
2370
2371*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
2372
2373* New "complete" command
2374
2375This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
2376were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
2377
2378* Trailing space optional in prompt
2379
2380"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
2381allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
2382
2383* Breakpoint hit counts
2384
2385"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
2386has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
2387can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
2388to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
2389less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
2390that breakpoint.
2391
2392* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
2393
2394"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
2395an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
2396arrays actually contain only short strings.
2397
2398* Shared library breakpoints
2399
2400In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
2401breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
2402
2403* Hardware watchpoints
2404
2405There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
2406targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
2407
55241689 2408Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
2409
2410* Annotations
2411
2412Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
2413and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
2414
2415* Improved Irix 5 support
2416
2417GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
2418
2419* Improved HPPA support
2420
2421GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
2422
2423* New native configurations
2424
2425Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
2426HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2427Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
2428RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
2429
2430* New targets
2431
2432OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2433MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
2434Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
2435
2436* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
2437
2438There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
2439This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
2440
2441* Fixes
2442
2443As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
2444and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
2445
2446*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
2447
2448* Irix 5 is now supported
2449
2450* HPPA support
2451
2452GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
2453to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
2454GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
2455of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
2456can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
2457
2458
2459*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
2460
2461* User visible changes:
2462
2463* Remote Debugging
2464
2465The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
2466target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
2467debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
2468integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
2469debugging info for the mips target).
2470
2471* DEC Alpha native support
2472
2473GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
2474debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
2475work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
2476Alpha-specific notes.
2477
2478* Preliminary thread implementation
2479
2480GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
2481
2482* LynxOS native and target support for 386
2483
2484This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
2485to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
2486for details).
2487
2488* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
2489
2490This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
2491mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
2492call methods, ...etc.
2493
2494*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
2495
2496 * User visible changes:
2497
2498Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
2499supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
2500other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
2501somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
2502
2503Filename completion now works.
2504
2505When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
2506arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
2507addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
2508
2509All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
2510vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
2511should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
2512your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
2513to be on the far side of a thin network line.
2514
2515 * DEC alpha support
2516
2517This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
2518cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
2519
2520
2521*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
2522
2523 * Testsuite
2524
2525This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
2526The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
2527via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
2528
2529 * C++ demangling
2530
2531'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
2532emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
2533Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
2534disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
2535use gdb with AT&T cfront.
2536
2537 * Simulators
2538
2539GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
2540So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
2541Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
2542
2543 * New targets supported
2544
2545H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2546H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2547SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
2548Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2549IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
2550
2551Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
2552version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
2553GO32 memory extender.
2554
2555 * New remote protocols
2556
2557MIPS remote debugging protocol.
2558
2559 * New source languages supported
2560
2561This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
2562used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
2563into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
2564
2565
2566*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
2567
2568 * HP Precision Architecture supported
2569
2570GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
2571version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
2572University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
2573compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
2574format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
2575(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
2576
2577Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
2578
2579 * Faster and better demangling
2580
2581We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
2582demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
2583character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
2584only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
2585This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
2586increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
2587symbol lookups.
2588
2589`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
2590from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
2591compiler does not actually implement.
2592
2593 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
2594
2595In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
2596inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
2597recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
2598very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
2599The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
2600circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
2601fix.
2602
2603The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
2604release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
2605
2606 * Improved configure script
2607
2608The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
2609you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
2610host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
2611done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
2612
2613We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
2614version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
2615`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
2616The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
2617only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
2618We hope to make this the default in a future release.
2619
2620 * Documentation improvements
2621
2622There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
2623produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
2624before submitting changes.
2625
2626The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
2627M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
2628`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
2629you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
2630a future texinfo-X.Y release.
2631
2632*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
2633We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
2634been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
2635or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
2636`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
2637around this problem.
2638
2639 * New features
2640
2641GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
2642the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
2643`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
2644the target program.
2645
2646The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
2647how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
2648
2649 * New native hosts supported
2650
2651HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
2652386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
2653
2654 * New targets supported
2655
2656AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
2657
2658 * New file formats supported
2659
2660BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
2661HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
2662
2663 * Major bug fixes
2664
2665Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
2666
2667We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
2668printf_filtered("%s") problems.
2669
2670We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
2671for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
2672release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
2673
2674You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
2675will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
2676
2677We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
2678for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
2679especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
2680libraries.
2681
2682The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
2683information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
2684command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
2685any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
2686when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
2687
2688 * Internal improvements
2689
2690GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
2691debugging of multiple languages in the future.
2692
2693GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
2694Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
2695symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
2696contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
2697shared code that handles any of them.
2698
2699 * New command line options
2700
2701We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
2702
2703 * Mmalloc licensing
2704
2705The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
2706General Public License.
2707
2708*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
2709
2710 * Host/native/target split
2711
2712GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
2713hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
2714target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
2715local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
2716ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
2717
2718The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
2719GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
2720is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
2721code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
2722any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
2723built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
2724handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
2725
2726GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
2727It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
2728plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
2729
2730 * New hosts supported
2731
2732HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
2733386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2734386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
2735
2736 * New targets supported
2737
2738Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
273968030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
2740
2741 * New native hosts supported
2742
2743386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2744 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
2745386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
2746
2747 * New file formats supported
2748
2749BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
2750supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
2751format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
2752
2753 * New commands
2754
2755`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
2756`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
2757These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
2758
2759`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
2760
2761You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
2762scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
2763prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
2764executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
2765
2766 * C++ improvements
2767
2768We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
2769info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
2770symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
2771
2772Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
2773
2774 * Major bug fixes
2775
2776The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
2777fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
2778by the compiler.
2779
2780We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
2781support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
2782
2783John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
2784slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
2785that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
2786purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
2787the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
2788mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
2789
2790Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
2791about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
2792completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
2793we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
2794
2795 * AMD 29k support
2796
2797A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
2798specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
2799calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
2800usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
2801in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
2802
2803We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
2804Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
2805of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
2806resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
2807
2808 * Remote interfaces
2809
2810We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
2811with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
2812message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
2813This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
2814needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
2815breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
2816each instruction being stepped through.
2817
2818The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
2819registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
2820
2821There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
2822find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
2823Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
2824processor with a serial port.
2825
2826 * Configuration
2827
2828Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
2829`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
2830supported, and what files each one uses.
2831
2832 * Library changes
2833
2834There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
2835disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
2836Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
2837disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
2838
2839The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
2840Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
2841can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
2842grants all the rights from the General Public License.
2843
2844 * Documentation
2845
2846The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
2847reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
2848as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
2849encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
2850system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
2851bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
2852
2853And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
2854
2855
2856*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
2857
2858 * Better support for C++ function names
2859
2860GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
2861names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
2862(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
2863single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
2864Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
2865
2866GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
2867the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
2868You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
2869lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
2870for the list of formats.
2871
2872 * G++ symbol mangling problem
2873
2874Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
2875C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
2876directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
2877can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
2878usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
2879about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
2880this problem.)
2881
2882 * New 'maintenance' command
2883
2884All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
2885the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
2886can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
2887
2888 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
2889 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
2890 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
2891 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
2892 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
2893 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
2894
2895The following commands are new:
2896
2897 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
2898 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
2899 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
2900
2901 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
2902
2903We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
2904(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
2905be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
2906read after argv processing.
2907
2908 * New hosts supported
2909
2910Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
2911
55241689 2912GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
2913
2914We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
2915is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
2916for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
2917masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
2918fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
2919It costs extra.
2920
2921 * New targets supported
2922
2923Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2924
2925 * More smarts about finding #include files
2926
2927GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
2928all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
2929greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
2930especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
2931the one that contains your sources.
2932
2933We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
2934breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
2935try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
2936
2937 * Interesting infernals change
2938
2939GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
2940section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
2941target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
2942stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
2943
2944 * Bug fixes (of course!)
2945
2946There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
2947 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
2948 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
2949
2950See the ChangeLog for details.
2951
2952*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
2953
2954 * New machines supported (host and target)
2955
2956IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
2957
2958SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2959
2960 * New malloc package
2961
2962GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
2963Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
2964capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
2965This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
2966pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
2967more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
2968
2969 * info proc
2970
2971The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
2972'help info proc' for details.
2973
2974 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
2975
2976The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
2977Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
2978possible.
2979
2980 * File name changes for MS-DOS
2981
2982Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
2983support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
2984conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
2985environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
2986that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
2987in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
2988
2989 * Cross byte order fixes
2990
2991Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
2992targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
2993
2994 * New -mapped and -readnow options
2995
2996If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
2997system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
2998`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
2999program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
3000called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
3001Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
3002and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
3003the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
3004option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
3005starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
3006
3007You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
3008the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
3009information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
3010slower, but makes future operations faster.
3011
3012The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
3013build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
3014A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
3015use is:
3016
3017 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
3018
3019The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
3020It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
3021shared across multiple host platforms.
3022
3023 * longjmp() handling
3024
3025GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
3026siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
3027all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
3028platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
3029
3030 * Solaris 2.0
3031
3032Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
3033this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
3034reading symbols.
3035
3036 * Bug fixes
3037
3038As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
3039People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
3040crashes and trashed symbol tables.
3041
3042*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
3043
3044 * New machines supported (host and target)
3045
3046SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
3047 (except core files)
3048BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
3049Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
3050
3051 * New machines supported (target)
3052
3053AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3054
3055 * C++ support
3056
3057GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
3058The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
3059per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
3060
3061GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
3062`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
3063extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
3064good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
3065will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
3066released.
3067
3068 * New features for SVR4
3069
3070GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
3071shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
3072only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
3073
3074The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
3075on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
3076it prints the address mappings of the process.
3077
3078If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
3079bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
3080
3081 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
3082
3083Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
3084now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
3085skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
3086make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
3087same code linked statically.
3088
3089 * New Getopt
3090
3091GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
3092version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
3093continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
3094Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
3095added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
3096future by other options that begin with the same letter.
3097
3098 * Bugs fixed
3099
3100The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
3101Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
3102See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
3103
3104
3105*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
3106
3107 * New machines supported (host and target)
3108
3109Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
3110NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
3111Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3112
3113 * Almost SCO Unix support
3114
3115We had hoped to support:
3116SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
3117(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
3118that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
3119about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
3120
3121 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
3122
3123GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
3124debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
3125is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
3126send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
3127reqired (if any).
3128
3129 * New Readline
3130
3131GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
3132is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
3133required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
3134
3135 * Bugs fixed
3136
3137The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
3138Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
3139See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
3140
3141 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
3142
3143GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
3144supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
3145symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
3146
3147Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
3148mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
3149debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
3150mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
3151version 2.
3152
3153Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
3154really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
3155line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
3156variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
3157situation somewhat.
3158
3159When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
3160However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
3161methods.
3162
3163We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
3164DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
3165encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
3166
3167
3168*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
3169
3170 * Improved configuration
3171
3172Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
3173Porting BFD is simpler.
3174
3175 * Stepping improved
3176
3177The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
3178of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
3179in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
3180function that has debugging information is called within the line.
3181
3182 * Bug fixing
3183
3184Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
3185
3186 * New host supported (not target)
3187
3188Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
3189
3190
3191*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
3192
3193 * Multiple source language support
3194
3195GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
3196It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
3197and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
3198language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
3199You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
3200`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
3201
3202 * GDB and Modula-2
3203
3204GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
3205currently under development at the State University of New York at
3206Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
3207continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
3208
3209Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
3210debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
3211symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
3212
3213There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
3214in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
3215
3216 * set write on/off
3217
3218GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
3219a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
3220the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
3221by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
3222effect immediately.
3223
3224 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
3225
3226When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
3227shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
3228The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
3229examining core files.
3230
3231 * set listsize
3232
3233You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
3234The default is 10.
3235
3236 * New machines supported (host and target)
3237
3238SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
3239Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
3240Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
3241
3242 * New hosts supported (not targets)
3243
3244IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
3245
3246 * New targets supported (not hosts)
3247
3248AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3249AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3250Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
3251
3252 * New remote interfaces
3253
3254AMD 29000 Adapt
3255AMD 29000 Minimon
3256
3257
3258*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
3259
3260 * New Facilities
3261
3262Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
3263
3264Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
3265target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
3266is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
3267remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
3268remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
3269also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
3270using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
3271stub on the target system.
3272
3273New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
3274
3275GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
3276library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
3277object file types such as a.out and coff.
3278
3279There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
3280refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
3281
3282
3283 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
3284
3285All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
3286by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
3287
3288For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
3289``Show prompt'' produces the response:
3290Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
3291
3292What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
3293print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
3294will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
3295all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
3296
3297confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
3298 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
3299 it is already running. Default is ON.
3300
3301editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
3302 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
3303 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
3304 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
3305 Default is ON.
3306
3307history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
3308 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
3309 or the value of the environment variable
3310 GDBHISTFILE.
3311
3312history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
3313 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
3314 HISTSIZE.
3315
3316history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
3317 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
3318 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
3319
3320history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
3321 history expansion will be performed on
3322 command line input. The default is OFF.
3323
3324radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
3325 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
3326 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
3327
3328height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
3329 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
3330 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3331 variable TERM.
3332
3333width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
3334 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
3335 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3336 variable TERM.
3337
3338Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
3339``set width'' instead.
3340
3341print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
3342 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
3343 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
3344 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
3345
3346print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
3347 is OFF.
3348
3349print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
3350 "raw" form if off.
3351
3352print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
3353 like instructions.
3354
3355print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
3356
3357
3358 * Support for Epoch Environment.
3359
3360The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
3361new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
3362are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
3363window.
3364
3365
3366 * Support for Shared Libraries
3367
3368GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
3369Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
3370before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
3371happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
3372At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
3373from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
3374shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
3375It can be abbreviated ``share''.
3376
3377sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
3378 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
3379 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
3380
3381info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
3382
3383
3384 * Watchpoints
3385
3386A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
3387expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
3388tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
3389quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
3390problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
3391more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
3392
3393watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
3394
3395info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
3396
3397delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3398disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3399enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3400
3401
3402 * C++ multiple inheritance
3403
3404When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
3405for C++ programs.
3406
3407 * C++ exception handling
3408
3409Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
3410ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
3411the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
3412handler's context).
3413
3414catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
3415 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
3416 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
3417
3418info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
3419 current stack frame.
3420
3421
3422 * Minor command changes
3423
3424The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
3425command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
3426is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
3427
3428The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
3429at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
3430frames without printing.
3431
3432 * New directory command
3433
3434'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
3435The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
3436about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
3437with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
3438find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
3439
3440 * Configuring GDB for compilation
3441
3442For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
3443for more details.
3444
3445GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
3446two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
3447Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
3448where the program that you are debugging will run.
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