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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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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* GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
30 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
31 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
32
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33* New remote packets
34
35qSearch:memory:
36 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
37
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38QStartNoAckMode
39 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
40 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
41 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
42
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43qXfer:osdata:read
44 Obtains additional operating system information
45
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46qXfer:siginfo:read
47qXfer:siginfo:write
48 Read or write additional signal information.
49
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50* Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
51
52 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
53 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
54 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
55
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56* The "disassemble" command now supports an optional /m modifier to print mixed
57source+assembly.
58
c055b101 59* GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
a0ef4274 60DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
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61
62* The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
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63and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
64`set/show sh calling-convention'.
c055b101 65
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66* GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
67with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
68
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69* 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
70
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71* Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
72
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73* Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
74which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
75
1fddbabb 76* The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
31fffb02 77list of section offsets.
1fddbabb 78
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79* On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
80conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
81have also been fixed.
82
bfb8797a 83* GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
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84From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
85are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
bfb8797a 86
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87* New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
88
89 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
90 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
91
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92 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
93 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
94 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
95
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96 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
97 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
98
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99 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
100 gdbserver.
101
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102* Python scripting
103
104 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
105 available is determined at configure time.
106
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107 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
108
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109* Ada tasking support
110
111 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
112 been introduced:
113
114 info tasks
115 Print the list of Ada tasks.
116 info task N
117 Print detailed information about task number N.
118 task
119 Print the task number of the current task.
120 task N
121 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
122
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123* Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
124add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
125
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126* New commands
127
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128find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
129 val1 [, val2, ...]
130 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
131
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132maint set python print-stack
133maint show python print-stack
134 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
135
136python [CODE]
137 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
138
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139set print symbol-loading
140show print symbol-loading
141 Control printing of symbol loading messages.
142
e0a3ce09 143set debug timestamp
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144show debug timestamp
145 Display timestamps with GDB debugging output.
146
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147set exec-wrapper
148show exec-wrapper
149unset exec-wrapper
150 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
fa4727a6 151
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152set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
153show multiple-symbols
154 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
155 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
156 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
157
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158set breakpoint always-inserted
159show breakpoint always-inserted
160 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
161 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
162 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
163
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164set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
165show arm fallback-mode
166set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
167show arm force-mode
168 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
169 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
170 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
171 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
172
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173set disable-randomization
174show disable-randomization
175 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
176 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
177 multiple debugging sessions.
178
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179set target-async
180 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
181 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
182 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
183 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
184
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185set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
186show tcp auto-retry
187set tcp connect-timeout
188show tcp connect-timeout
189 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
190 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
191 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
192
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193macro define
194macro list
195macro undef
196 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
197 interactively.
198
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199info os processes
200 Show operating system information about processes.
201
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202* New native configurations
203
204x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
205
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206x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
207
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208* New targets
209
210x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
4c1d2973 211x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
75a2d5e7 212
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213* Removed commands
214
215catch load
216catch unload
217 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
218
75feb17d 219*** Changes in GDB 6.8
f9ed52be 220
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221* New native configurations
222
223NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
94a0e877 224Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
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225
226* New targets
227
228NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
94a0e877 229Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d 230
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231* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
232
233 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
234 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
235 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
236 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
237
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238* GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
239(mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
240
fe6fbf8b 241* Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
8d5f9c6f 242is resolved.
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243
244* GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
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245including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
246and in inlined functions.
fe6fbf8b 247
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248* GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
249accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
250more than one contiguous range of addresses.
251
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252* Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
253
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254* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
255registers on PowerPC targets.
256
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257* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
258targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
259
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260* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
261commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
262
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263* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
264extended-remote mode.
265
24a836bd 266* hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
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267The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
268error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
269The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
24a836bd 270
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271* GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
272building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
273target architectures.
274
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275* GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
276Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
277now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
278stored in two consecutive float registers.
279
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280* The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
281breakpoints now.
282
b93b6ca7 283* Improved support for debugging Ada
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284Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
285include:
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286 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
287 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
288 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
289 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
290 of an assignment
291 - Improved command completion in Ada
292 - Several bug fixes
293
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294* GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
295process.
296
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297* New commands
298
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299set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
300show print frame-arguments
301 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
302 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
303
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304remote put
305remote get
306remote delete
307 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
308
309* New MI commands
310
311-target-file-put
312-target-file-get
313-target-file-delete
314 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
315
316* New remote packets
317
318vFile:open:
319vFile:close:
320vFile:pread:
321vFile:pwrite:
322vFile:unlink:
323 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
d0c678e6 324
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325vAttach
326 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
327 mode.
328
329vRun
330 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
331
8d5f9c6f 332*** Changes in GDB 6.7
6dd09645 333
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334* Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
335bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
336Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
337
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338* When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
339symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
340-Bsymbolic linker option.
341
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342* When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
343recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
344is not supported.
345
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346* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
347frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
348
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349* GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
35032-bit or 64-bit register values.
351
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352* Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
353
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354* GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
355target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
356a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
357
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358* Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
359automatically displayed as character or string data.
360
361* The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
362arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
363as strings.
e1f48ead 364
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365* Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
366for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
8d5f9c6f 367only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
123dc839 368
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369* GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
370iWMMXt coprocessor.
fb1e4ffc 371
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372* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
373ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
374has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
375
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376* GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
377
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378* GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
379
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380* The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
381layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
382segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
383
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384* The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
385immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
386
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387* The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
388"library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
389packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
390where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
391Windows and SymbianOS).
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392
393* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
394(DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
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395
396* GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
397according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
cfa9d6d9 398
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399* New commands
400
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401set remoteflow
402show remoteflow
403 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
404 when debugging using remote targets.
405
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406set mem inaccessible-by-default
407show mem inaccessible-by-default
408 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
409 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
410 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
411 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
412 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
413
414set breakpoint auto-hw
415show breakpoint auto-hw
416 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
417 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
418 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
419 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
420 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
421 including "next" and "finish".
422
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423catch exception
424catch exception unhandled
425 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
426
427catch assert
428 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
429
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430set sysroot
431show sysroot
432 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
433 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
434 an alias to "set sysroot".
435
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436info spu
437 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
438 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
439 architecture.
440
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441* New native configurations
442
443OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
444
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445set tdesc filename
446unset tdesc filename
447show tdesc filename
448 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
449 not query the target for its built-in description.
450
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451* New targets
452
54fe9172 453OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
c9bb8148 454MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
c077150c 455Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
c9bb8148 456
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457* New remote packets
458
459QPassSignals:
460 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
461 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
462
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463qXfer:features:read:
464 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
465 features.
6dd09645 466
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467qXfer:spu:read:
468qXfer:spu:write:
469 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
470 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
471
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472qXfer:libraries:read:
473 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
474 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
475 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
476 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
477
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478* Removed targets
479
480Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
481
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482alpha*-*-osf1*
483alpha*-*-osf2*
7ce59000 484d10v-*-*
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485hppa*-*-hiux*
486i[34567]86-ncr-*
487i[34567]86-*-dgux*
488i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
489i[34567]86-*-netware*
490i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
491i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
492i[34567]86-*-sco*
493i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
494i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
495i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
496i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
497i[34567]86-*-unixware*
498i[34567]86-*-sysv*
499i[34567]86-*-isc*
500m68*-cisco*-*
501m68*-tandem-*
ad527d2e 502mips*-*-pe
483367ee 503rs6000-*-lynxos*
ad527d2e 504sh*-*-pe
483367ee 505
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506* Other removed features
507
508target abug
509target cpu32bug
510target est
511target rom68k
512
513 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
514
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515target hms
516target e7000
517target sh3
518target sh3e
519
520 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
521 H8/300.
522
523target ocd
524
525 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
526 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
527 interfaces.
528
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529DWARF 1 support
530
531 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
532 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
533
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534Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
535
536 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
537 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
538 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
539 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
540
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541MIPS ".pdr" sections
542
543 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
544 in debugging information.
545
546Scheme support
547
548 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
549 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
550
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551set mips stack-arg-size
552set mips saved-gpreg-size
553
554 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
555
6dd09645 556*** Changes in GDB 6.6
e374b601 557
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558* New targets
559
560Xtensa xtensa-elf
9c309e77 561Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
ca3bf3bd 562
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563* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
564(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
565running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
566
567* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
568Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
569supported.
570
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571* The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
572broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
573
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574* The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
575stub provides the required support.
576
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577* Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
578longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
579
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580* New commands
581
582set substitute-path
583unset substitute-path
584show substitute-path
585 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
586 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
587 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
588 between compilation and debugging.
589
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590set trace-commands
591show trace-commands
592 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
593 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
594 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
595
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596* REMOVED features
597
598The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
599
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600Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
601an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
602
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603The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
604
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605* New remote packets
606
607qSupported:
608 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
609 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
610 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
611 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
612 target.
613
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614qXfer:auxv:read:
615 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
616 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
617
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618qXfer:memory-map:read:
619 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
620 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
621
622vFlashErase:
623vFlashWrite:
624vFlashDone:
625 Erase and program a flash memory device.
626
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627* Removed remote packets
628
629qPart:auxv:read:
630 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
631 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
632
e374b601 633*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 634
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635* New targets
636
637Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
638
639Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
640
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641* New commands
642
643init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
644 only if it doesn't already have a value.
645
ac264b3b
MS
646The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
647
648checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
649
650restart <n> Return the program state to a
651 previously saved state.
652
653info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
654
655delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
656
657set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
658 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
659
660info forks List forks of the user program that
661 are available to be debugged.
662
663fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
664 forks of the user program that are
665 available to be debugged.
666
667delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
668 that are available to be debugged (and
669 kill the forked process).
670
671detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
672 that are available to be debugged (and
673 allow the process to continue).
674
3950dc3f
NS
675* New architecture
676
677Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
678
0ea3f30e
DJ
679* Improved Windows host support
680
681GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
682native console support, and remote communications using either
683network sockets or serial ports.
684
f79daebb
GM
685* Improved Modula-2 language support
686
687GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
688basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
689pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
690printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
691written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
692GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
693
acab6ab2
MM
694* REMOVED features
695
696The ARM rdi-share module.
697
f4267320
DJ
698The Netware NLM debug server.
699
53e5f3cf 700*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 701
e0ecbda1
MK
702* New native configurations
703
02a677ac 704OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
e0ecbda1
MK
705OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
706
d64a6579
KB
707* New targets
708
709Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
710
b33a6190
AS
711* New command line options
712
713--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
714--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
715 the child (debugged) program exited with.
716--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
717 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
718 specified multiple times and in conjunction
719 with the --command (-x) option.
720
11dced61
AC
721* Deprecated commands removed
722
723The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
724removed:
725
726 Command Replacement
727 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
728 othernames set arm disassembler
729 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
730 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
731 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
732 regs info registers
733
6fe85783
MK
734* New BSD user-level threads support
735
736It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
737library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
738configurations are:
739
740FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
741FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
742OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
743
744Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
745are not yet supported.
746
5260ca71
MS
747* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
748(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
749
e84ecc99
AC
750* REMOVED configurations and files
751
752VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 753Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 754National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 755
31e35378
JB
756* New "set print array-indexes" command
757
758After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
759when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
760behavior.
761
e85e5c83
MK
762* VAX floating point support
763
764GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
765
d91e9901
AS
766* User-defined command support
767
768In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
769to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
770section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
771
f2cb65ca
MC
772*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
773
f47b1503
AS
774* New command line option
775
776GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
777debugging.
778
f2cb65ca
MC
779* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
780
781GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
782information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
783by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
784proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
785to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 786
d08c0230
AC
787* Internationalization
788
789When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
790internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
791continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
792
117ea3cf
PH
793* Ada
794
795Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
796implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
797into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
798
d08c0230
AC
799* New native configurations
800
801GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
802
803* Remote 'p' packet
804
805GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
806packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
807
808* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
809
810GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
811The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
812features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
813i386 application).
814
815GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
816compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
817continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
818configurations:
819
820hppa-*-hpux
821ia64-*-aix
822mips-*-irix*
823*-*-lynx
824mips-*-linux-gnu
825sds protocol
826xdr protocol
827powerpc bdm protocol
828
829Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
830made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
831
832* OBSOLETE configurations and files
833
834Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
835been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
836configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
837permanently REMOVED.
838
839h8300-*-*
840mcore-*-*
841mn10300-*-*
842ns32k-*-*
843sh64-*-*
844v850-*-*
845
ebb7c577
AC
846*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
847
848* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
849
850When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
851heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
852been fixed.
853
854* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
855
856When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
857fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
858IRIX long double values).
859
860* VAX and "next"
861
862A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
863command. This problem has been fixed.
864
860660cb 865*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 866
0dea2468
AC
867* Fix for ``many threads''
868
869On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
870rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
871error message:
872
873 ptrace: No such process.
874 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
875
876This problem has been fixed.
877
2c07db7a
AC
878* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
879
880Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
881GDB to dump core).
882
c23968a2
JB
883* New ``start'' command.
884
885This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
886
71009278
MK
887* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
888
889Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
890live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
891platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
892
893FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
894FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
895NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
896NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
897NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
898OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
899OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
900OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
901OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
902
3c0b7db2
AC
903* Signal trampoline code overhauled
904
905Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
906These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
907of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
908call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
909signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
910
73cc75f3
AC
911Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
912features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
913include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 914
7243600a
BF
915* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
916
6f606e1c
MK
917* New native configurations
918
97dc871c 919GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 920OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
bf2ca189
MK
921OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
922OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 923OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 924NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 925OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 926
a1b461bf
AC
927* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
928
929GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
930The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
931including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
932migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
933compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
934work, was also included.
935
936GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
937module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
938
939h8300-*-*
940mcore-*-*
941mn10300-*-*
942ns32k-*-*
943sh64-*-*
944v850-*-*
945xstormy16-*-*
946
947Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
948made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
949
3c7012f5
AC
950* REMOVED configurations and files
951
952Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
953Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
954Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
955Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
956Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
957AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
958Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
959decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
960riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
961sonymips mips-sony-*
962sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
963
e5fe55f7
AC
964*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
965
966* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
967
968The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
969GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
970command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
971program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
972with GDB".
973
974* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
975
976Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
977libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
978cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
979GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
980shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
981the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
982are created.
983
984Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
985
986* Fixed ISO-C build problems
987
988The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
989non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
990compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
991
992* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
993
994Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
995wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
996
997* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
998
999The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
1000permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
1001systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
1002
1003* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
1004
1005Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
1006has been updated to use constant array sizes.
1007
1008* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
1009
1010GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
1011its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
1012panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
1013
1014* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
1015
1016When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
1017by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
1018not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
1019
faae5abe 1020*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 1021
9175c9a3
MC
1022* Removed --with-mmalloc
1023
1024Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
1025conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
1026
3cc87ec0
MK
1027* Changes in AMD64 configurations
1028
1029The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
1030the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
1031and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
1032you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
1033
f0424ef6
MK
1034* Revised SPARC target
1035
1036The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
1037FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
03cebad2
MK
1038support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
1039from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
1040(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 1041
59659be2
ILT
1042* New C++ demangler
1043
1044GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
1045names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
1046with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
1047programs.
1048
9e08b29b
DJ
1049* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
1050
1051GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
1052arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
1053encountered these.
1054
8dfe8985
DC
1055* C++ nested types and namespaces
1056
1057GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
1058improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
1059is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
1060Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
1061namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
1062"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
1063frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
1064if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
1065GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
1066
cced5e27
MK
1067* New native configurations
1068
1069NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 1070OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 1071OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
f2cab569
MK
1072OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
1073OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 1074
b4b4b794
KI
1075* New debugging protocols
1076
1077M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
1078
7989c619
AC
1079* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
1080
1081The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
1082and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
1083tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
1084
5994185b
AC
1085* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1086
1087Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1088been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1089configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1090permanently REMOVED.
1091
1092Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
1093Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
1094Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
1095Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
1096Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
1097AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
1098Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
0748d941
AC
1099decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
1100riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
1101sonymips mips-sony-*
1102sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 1103
0ddabb4c
AC
1104* REMOVED configurations and files
1105
1106SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1107SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4a8269c0
AC
1108Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1109Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1110H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1111HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
1112HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1113HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
1114PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 1115386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4a8269c0
AC
1116Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
1117 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
1118 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f0424ef6
MK
1119SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
1120SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4a8269c0
AC
1121Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1122Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 1123
c7f1390e
DJ
1124*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
1125
1fe43d45
AC
1126* Objective-C
1127
1128Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
1129integrated into GDB.
1130
e6beb428
AC
1131* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
1132
1133DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
1134information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
1135By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
1136backtraces.
1137
1138The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
1139have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
1140DWARF 2 CFI support.
1141
1142* Hosted file I/O.
1143
1144GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
1145file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
1146remote protocol documentation for details.
1147
1148* All targets using the new architecture framework.
1149
1150All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
1151architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
1152to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
1153ppc32 on ppc64).
1154
1155* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
1156
1157GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
1158per-thread variables.
1159
1160* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
1161
1162GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
1163GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
1164
1165* Separate debug info.
1166
1167GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
1168automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
1169of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
1170system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
1171and optional debug files.
1172
1173* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
1174
1175DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
1176describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
1177debugger.
1178
1179GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
1180for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
1181
1182* Java
1183
1184A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
1185Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
1186considered "useable".
1187
85f8f974
DJ
1188* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
1189
1190The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
1191commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
1192kernel.
1193
0fac0b41
DJ
1194* GDB supports logging output to a file
1195
1196There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
1197used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 1198
6ad8ae5c
DJ
1199* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
1200
1201The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
1202disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
1203command.
1204
e286caf2 1205* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5f601589
AC
1206
1207The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
1208registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
1209
d28f9cdf
DJ
1210* Profiling support
1211
1212A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
1213be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
1214session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
1215"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
1216data, for more informative profiling results.
1217
da0f9dcd
AC
1218* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
1219
1220The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
1221option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 1222"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
da0f9dcd
AC
1223
1224Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
1225removed.
1226
fb9b6b35
JJ
1227Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
1228Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
1229Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
1230 in a subsequent -var-update.
1231
954a4db8
MK
1232* New native configurations.
1233
1234FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1235
6760f9e6
JB
1236* Multi-arched targets.
1237
b4263afa 1238HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 1239Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 1240
1b831c93
AC
1241* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1242
1243Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1244been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1245configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1246permanently REMOVED.
1247
8b0e5691 1248Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 1249Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 1250H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
56056df7
AC
1251HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
1252HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1253HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 1254PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
AC
1255Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
1256 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
1257 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
AC
1258Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1259Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 1260
5835abe7
NC
1261* REMOVED configurations and files
1262
1263V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
1264Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1265IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
1266i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1267i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1268i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
1269HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1270 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
1271 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
1272Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1273Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1274Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1275OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1276I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 1277
a094c6fb
AC
1278* MIPS $fp behavior changed
1279
1280The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
1281the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
1282context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
1283address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
1284The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
1285
299ffc64 1286*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 1287
46248966
AC
1288* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
1289
1290When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
1291`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
1292in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
1293library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
1294shared libs like mad''.
1295
b9d14705 1296* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 1297
b9d14705
DJ
1298Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
1299the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
1300arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
1301powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 1302
e0e9281e
JB
1303* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
1304
1305GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
1306and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
1307they expand.
1308
dd73b9bb
AC
1309The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
1310invocations in expression, and shows the result.
1311
1312The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
1313macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
1314
e0e9281e
JB
1315Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
1316information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
1317your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
1318information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
1319
2250ee0c
CV
1320* Multi-arched targets.
1321
6e3ba3b8
JT
1322DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
1323DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 1324NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 1325National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
1326Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
1327Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 1328
cd9bfe15 1329* New targets.
e33ce519 1330
456f8b9d
DB
1331Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
1332
e33ce519 1333
da8ca43d
JT
1334* New native configurations
1335
1336Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 1337SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 1338MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 1339UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 1340
cd9bfe15
AC
1341* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1342
1343Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1344been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1345configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1346permanently REMOVED.
1347
92eb23c5 1348Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 1349OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 1350IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 1351Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 1352Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 1353Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
1354i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1355i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1356i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
1357HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1358 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
1359 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 1360I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 1361
db034ac5
AC
1362* OBSOLETE languages
1363
1364CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
1365
cd9bfe15
AC
1366* REMOVED configurations and files
1367
1368AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1369A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1370AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1371AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1372AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1373
1374testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
1375
20f01a46
DH
1376* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
1377
1378This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
1379commands. The default is 1024.
1380
a5941fbf
MK
1381* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
1382
1383Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
1384
89743e04
MS
1385* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
1386
1387These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
1388to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
1389from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 1390
9fb14e79
JB
1391* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
1392
1393The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
1394including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
1395of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
1396
2037aebb
AC
1397*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
1398
1399* New targets.
1400
1401Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
1402
1403* Bug fixes
1404
1405gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
1406mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
1407Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
1408
1409gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
1410dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
1411Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
1412
1413Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
1414Surprisingly enough, it works now.
1415By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
1416
1417i386 hardware watchpoint support:
1418avoid misses on second run for some targets.
1419By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
1420
37057839 1421*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 1422
1a703748
MS
1423* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
1424
1425This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
1426really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
1427In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
1428target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
1429This can be a significant performance improvement on some
1430(notably embedded) targets.
1431
cefd4ef5
MS
1432* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
1433
55241689
AC
1434This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
1435process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
1436GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
1437hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 1438
352ed7b4
MS
1439* New command line option
1440
1441GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
1442
1443* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
1444
1445There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
1446command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
1447a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
1448be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
1449open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
1450issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
1451a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
1452it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
1453GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
1454is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
1455
fe419ffc
RE
1456* Changes in ARM configurations.
1457
1458Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
1459configuration is fully multi-arch.
1460
eb7cedd9
MK
1461* New native configurations
1462
fe419ffc 1463ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 1464x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 1465AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 1466Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 1467
c9f63e6b
CV
1468* New targets
1469
1470Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
1471
9b4ff276
AC
1472* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1473
1474Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1475been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1476configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1477permanently REMOVED.
1478
1479AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1480A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1481AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1482AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1483AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1484
b4ceaee6 1485testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 1486
e2caac18
AC
1487* REMOVED configurations and files
1488
1489TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 1490WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
1491PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1492PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1493PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 1494Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
1495Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1496 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 1497SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 1498Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
1499Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1500ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 1501Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 1502
c2a727fa
TT
1503* Changes to command line processing
1504
1505The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
1506for the inferior from gdb's command line.
1507
467d8519
TT
1508* Changes to key bindings
1509
1510There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
1511
7072a954
AC
1512*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
1513
1514Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
1515
1516Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
1517corrupted.
1518
1519Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
1520
1521Numerous documentation fixes.
1522
1523Numerous testsuite fixes.
1524
34f47bc4 1525*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
1526
1527* New native configurations
1528
1529Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
1530x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 1531MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
1532MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1533ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 1534s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 1535
bf64bfd6
AC
1536* New targets
1537
def90278 1538Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 1539CRIS cris-axis
55241689 1540UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 1541
17e78a56 1542* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
1543
1544x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 1545Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
1546Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1547 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
1548TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1549WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 1550Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
1551PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1552PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1553PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 1554SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
1555Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1556ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 1557Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 1558
17e78a56
AC
1559stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
1560kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
1561
7fcca85b
AC
1562Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1563been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1564configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1565permanently REMOVED.
1566
a196c81c 1567* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
1568
1569Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1570Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
1571Pyramid pyramid-*-*
1572ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
1573Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 1574ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 1575
6d6b80e5 1576* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 1577
6d6b80e5 1578GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
1579sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
1580present.
1581
bf64bfd6
AC
1582* Other news:
1583
e23194cb
EZ
1584* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
1585
1586* The MI enabled by default.
1587
1588The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
1589revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
1590engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
1591using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
1592which is now deprecated.
1593
1594* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
1595
1596GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
1597main features are supported:
1598
1599 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
1600
1601 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
1602 extension;
1603
1604 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
1605
1606 - a Pascal expression parser.
1607
1608However, some important features are not yet supported.
1609
1610 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
1611
1612 - there are some problems with boolean types;
1613
1614 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
1615 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
1616
1617 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
1618
1619 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
1620
1621* Changes in completion.
1622
1623Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
1624to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
1625users expect at the shell prompt.
1626
1627Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
1628`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
1629program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
1630files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
1631be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
1632considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
1633name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
1634
1635`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
1636
1637* New platform-independent commands:
1638
1639It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
1640hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
1641documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
1642
1643* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
1644
d7275149
MK
1645Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
1646revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
1647many threads as your system allows you to have.
1648
e23194cb
EZ
1649Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
1650
d7275149
MK
1651Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
1652multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
1653
1654* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
1655
1656Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
1657
e23194cb
EZ
1658GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
1659debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
1660supported.)
1661
1662* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
1663
1664Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
1665breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
1666implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
1667put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
1668and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
1669registers.
1670
1671The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
1672debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
1673watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
1674
1675* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
1676
1677New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
1678the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
1679
1680New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
1681display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
1682IDT.
1683
1684New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
1685from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
1686New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
1687a given linear address.
1688
1689GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
1690program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
1691which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
1692
1693DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
1694
6c56c069
EZ
1695It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
1696
e23194cb
EZ
1697* Changes in documentation.
1698
1699All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
1700Documentation License.
1701
1702Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1703manual.
1704
1705TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
1706
1707Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1708manual.
1709
1710The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
1711documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
1712hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
1713
5d6640b1
AC
1714* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
1715
1716The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
1717``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
1718contents of this file.
1719
1a1d8446
AC
1720* gdba.el deleted
1721
1722GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 1723
9debab2f 1724*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 1725
c63ce875
EZ
1726* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
1727
1728Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
1729programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
1730displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
1731greater level of detail.
1732
1733* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
1734
1735It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
1736bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
1737on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
1738written.
1739
1740* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
1741
1742The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
1743necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
1744machines ``out of the box''.
1745
1746The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
1747possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
1748signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
1749would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
1750interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
1751
1752It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
1753standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
1754even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
1755and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
1756terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
1757
1758The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
1759enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
1760also works.
1761
1762DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
1763GDB.
1764
1765It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
1766directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
1767times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
1768breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
1769
ed9a39eb
JM
1770* New native configurations
1771
1772ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 1773PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 1774
7a292a7a
SS
1775* New targets
1776
96baa820 1777Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
1778x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
1779PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
1780TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1781
085dd6e6
JM
1782* OBSOLETE configurations
1783
1784Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1785Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 1786Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 1787ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 1788Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 1789
9debab2f
AC
1790Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1791but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1792these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1793be permanently REMOVED.
1794
5330533d
SS
1795* Gould support removed
1796
1797Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
1798
bc9e5bbf
AC
1799* New features for SVR4
1800
1801On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
1802without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
1803load symbols from the running process's executable file.
1804
1805* Many C++ enhancements
1806
1807C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
1808in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
1809
adf40b2e
JM
1810* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
1811
1812A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
1813sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
1814with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
1815``|<program> <args>'' vis:
1816
1817 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
1818 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
1819
43e526b9
JM
1820* MIPS 64 remote protocol
1821
1822A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
1823expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
1824instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
1825
1826The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
1827added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1828
96baa820
JM
1829* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
1830
1831The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
1832``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
1833include ``set remote P-packet''.
1834
11cf8741
JM
1835* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
1836
1837The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
1838accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
1839``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
1840
7876dd43
DB
1841* ``apropos'' command added.
1842
1843The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
1844documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
1845try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
1846
bc9e5bbf
AC
1847* New MI interface
1848
1849A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
1850interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
1851process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
1852"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
1853enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
1854
1855 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
1856
c906108c
SS
1857*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
1858
1859* New native configurations
1860
1861HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
1862HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 1863M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
1864
1865* New targets
1866
1867Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1868Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
1869Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1870
1871* OBSOLETE configurations
1872
1873Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
1874
1875Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1876but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1877these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1878be permanently REMOVED.
1879
1880* ANSI/ISO C
1881
1882As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
1883buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
1884containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
1885use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
1886available. If this is not true, please report the affected
1887configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
1888information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
1889already.
1890
1891* Readline 2.2
1892
1893GDB now uses readline 2.2.
1894
1895* set extension-language
1896
1897You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
1898languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
1899you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
1900 set extension-language .c c++
1901The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
1902and their associated languages.
1903
1904* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
1905
1906When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
1907you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
1908PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
1909
1910 set processor NAME
1911
1912sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
1913following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
1914
1915 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
1916 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
1917 403 IBM PowerPC 403
1918 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
1919 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
1920 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
1921 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
1922 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
1923 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
1924 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
1925 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
1926
1927At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
1928special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
1929registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
1930only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
1931
1932* HP-UX support
1933
1934Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
1935more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
1936library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
1937support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
1938for xdb and dbx commands.
1939
1940* Catchpoints
1941
1942HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
1943generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
1944to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
1945
1946This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
1947argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
1948output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
1949
1950* Debugging across forks
1951
1952On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
1953in the inferior.
1954
1955* TUI
1956
1957HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
1958it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
1959configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
1960
1961* GDB remote protocol additions
1962
1963A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
1964Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
1965fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
1966allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
1967
1968For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
1969full 64-bit address. The command
1970
1971 set remoteaddresssize 32
1972
1973can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
1974the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
1975will be discarded.
1976
1977In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
1978command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
1979
1980 maint packet heythere
1981
1982sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
1983disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
1984time.
1985
1986The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
1987target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
1988downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
1989
1990* Tracing can collect general expressions
1991
1992You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
1993further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
1994doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
1995
1996* mask-address variable for Mips
1997
1998For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
1999a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
2000of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
2001
2002* Higher serial baud rates
2003
2004GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
2005230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
2006to achieve all of these rates.)
2007
2008* i960 simulator
2009
2010The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
2011builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
2012
2013
2014*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
2015
2016* New native configurations
2017
2018Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
2019Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
2020Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
2021PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
2022PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2023Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
2024Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
2025
2026* New targets
2027
2028Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2029Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
2030Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2031Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
2032MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
2033MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
2034MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
2035Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
2036Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
2037Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2038NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
2039
2040* New debugging protocols
2041
2042ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
2043M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
2044DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
2045PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2046PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2047Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2048
2049* DWARF 2
2050
2051All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
2052format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
2053information.
2054
2055* Java frontend
2056
2057GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
2058only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
2059
2060* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
2061
2062For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
2063loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
2064locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
2065
2066* Live range splitting
2067
2068GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
2069range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
2070more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
2071
2072* Hurd support
2073
2074GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
2075updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
2076
2077* ARM Thumb support
2078
2079GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
2080instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
2081instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
2082accordingly.
2083
2084* MIPS16 support
2085
2086GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
2087instruction set.
2088
2089* Overlay support
2090
2091GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
2092linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
2093will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
2094control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
2095additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
2096in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
2097
2098* info symbol
2099
2100The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
2101the symbol at the specified address.
2102
2103* Trace support
2104
2105The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
2106asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
2107extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
2108includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
2109file tracepoint.c for more details.
2110
2111* MIPS simulator
2112
2113Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
2114by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
2115of most MIPS variants.
2116
2117* Sparc simulator
2118
2119Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
2120by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
2121Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
2122
2123* set architecture
2124
2125For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
2126basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
2127architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
2128the possible architectures.
2129
2130*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
2131
2132* New native configurations
2133
2134Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
2135M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
2136PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
2137PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
2138PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2139RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
2140
2141* New targets
2142
2143ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
2144I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
2145MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
2146MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
2147PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
2148Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
2149Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2150
2151* PowerPC simulator
2152
2153The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
2154contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
2155PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
2156basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
2157performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
2158
2159* Solaris 2.5
2160
2161GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
2162
2163* Windows 95/NT native
2164
2165GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
2166To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
2167which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
2168Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
2169ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
2170
2171* dont-repeat command
2172
2173If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
2174command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
2175useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
2176extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
2177
2178* Send break instead of ^C
2179
2180The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
2181rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
2182GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
2183
2184* Remote protocol timeout
2185
2186The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
2187that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
2188to read from the target. The default value is 2.
2189
2190* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
2191
2192By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
2193loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
2194stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
2195when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
2196in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
2197
2198Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
2199/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
2200automatically on hpux10.
2201
2202* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
2203
2204Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
2205
2206* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
2207
2208When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
2209may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
2210the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
2211every character. The default value is 1050.
2212
2213* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
2214
2215If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
2216a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
2217replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
2218details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
2219remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
2220to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
2221
2222* Speedups for remote debugging
2223
2224GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
2225the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
2226and more efficient S-record downloading.
2227
2228* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
2229
2230GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
2231Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
2232
2233*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
2234
2235* Psymtabs for XCOFF
2236
2237The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
2238can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
2239
2240* Remote targets use caching
2241
2242Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
2243remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
2244it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
2245debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
2246off' turns the the data cache off.
2247
2248* Remote targets may have threads
2249
2250The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
2251in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
2252gdb/remote.c for details.
2253
2254* NetROM support
2255
2256If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
2257support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
2258acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
2259write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
2260support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
2261another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
2262sequence is something like
2263
2264 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
2265 load <prog>
2266 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
2267
2268* Macintosh host
2269
2270GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
2271may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
2272it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
2273available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
2274device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
2275directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
2276scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
2277mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
2278
2279* Autoconf
2280
2281GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
2282but does simplify configuration and building.
2283
2284* hpux10
2285
2286GDB now supports hpux10.
2287
2288*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
2289
2290* New native configurations
2291
2292x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
2293x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
2294NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
2295Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
2296
2297* New targets
2298
2299A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2300HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
2301CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
2302PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
2303WDC 65816 w65-*-*
2304
2305* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
2306
2307GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
2308possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
2309filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
2310the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
2311if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
2312
2313* Arguments to user-defined commands
2314
2315User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
2316Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
2317trivial example:
2318define adder
2319 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
2320
2321To execute the command use:
2322adder 1 2 3
2323
2324Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
2325Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
2326use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
2327
2328* New `if' and `while' commands
2329
2330This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
2331commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
2332expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
2333execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
2334terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
2335`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
2336if the expression is zero.
2337
2338* Fortran source language mode
2339
2340GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
2341Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
2342variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
2343with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
2344Fortran compilers.
2345
2346* Better HPUX support
2347
2348Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
2349running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
2350processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
2351for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
2352that behavior do the following before running the program:
2353
2354 adb -w a.out
2355 __dld_flags?W 0x5
2356 control-d
2357
2358This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
2359To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
2360
2361 adb -w a.out
2362 __dld_flags?W 0x4
2363 control-d
2364
2365You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
2366the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
2367external linkage.
2368
2369GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
2370HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
2371
2372* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
2373
2374You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
2375commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
2376current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
2377"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
2378associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
2379configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
2380
2381* New DOS host serial code
2382
2383This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
2384no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
2385a PC's serial port.
2386
2387*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
2388
2389* New "complete" command
2390
2391This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
2392were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
2393
2394* Trailing space optional in prompt
2395
2396"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
2397allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
2398
2399* Breakpoint hit counts
2400
2401"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
2402has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
2403can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
2404to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
2405less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
2406that breakpoint.
2407
2408* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
2409
2410"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
2411an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
2412arrays actually contain only short strings.
2413
2414* Shared library breakpoints
2415
2416In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
2417breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
2418
2419* Hardware watchpoints
2420
2421There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
2422targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
2423
55241689 2424Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
2425
2426* Annotations
2427
2428Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
2429and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
2430
2431* Improved Irix 5 support
2432
2433GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
2434
2435* Improved HPPA support
2436
2437GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
2438
2439* New native configurations
2440
2441Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
2442HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2443Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
2444RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
2445
2446* New targets
2447
2448OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2449MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
2450Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
2451
2452* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
2453
2454There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
2455This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
2456
2457* Fixes
2458
2459As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
2460and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
2461
2462*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
2463
2464* Irix 5 is now supported
2465
2466* HPPA support
2467
2468GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
2469to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
2470GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
2471of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
2472can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
2473
2474
2475*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
2476
2477* User visible changes:
2478
2479* Remote Debugging
2480
2481The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
2482target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
2483debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
2484integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
2485debugging info for the mips target).
2486
2487* DEC Alpha native support
2488
2489GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
2490debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
2491work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
2492Alpha-specific notes.
2493
2494* Preliminary thread implementation
2495
2496GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
2497
2498* LynxOS native and target support for 386
2499
2500This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
2501to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
2502for details).
2503
2504* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
2505
2506This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
2507mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
2508call methods, ...etc.
2509
2510*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
2511
2512 * User visible changes:
2513
2514Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
2515supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
2516other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
2517somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
2518
2519Filename completion now works.
2520
2521When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
2522arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
2523addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
2524
2525All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
2526vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
2527should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
2528your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
2529to be on the far side of a thin network line.
2530
2531 * DEC alpha support
2532
2533This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
2534cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
2535
2536
2537*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
2538
2539 * Testsuite
2540
2541This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
2542The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
2543via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
2544
2545 * C++ demangling
2546
2547'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
2548emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
2549Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
2550disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
2551use gdb with AT&T cfront.
2552
2553 * Simulators
2554
2555GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
2556So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
2557Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
2558
2559 * New targets supported
2560
2561H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2562H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2563SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
2564Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2565IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
2566
2567Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
2568version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
2569GO32 memory extender.
2570
2571 * New remote protocols
2572
2573MIPS remote debugging protocol.
2574
2575 * New source languages supported
2576
2577This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
2578used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
2579into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
2580
2581
2582*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
2583
2584 * HP Precision Architecture supported
2585
2586GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
2587version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
2588University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
2589compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
2590format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
2591(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
2592
2593Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
2594
2595 * Faster and better demangling
2596
2597We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
2598demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
2599character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
2600only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
2601This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
2602increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
2603symbol lookups.
2604
2605`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
2606from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
2607compiler does not actually implement.
2608
2609 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
2610
2611In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
2612inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
2613recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
2614very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
2615The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
2616circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
2617fix.
2618
2619The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
2620release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
2621
2622 * Improved configure script
2623
2624The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
2625you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
2626host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
2627done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
2628
2629We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
2630version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
2631`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
2632The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
2633only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
2634We hope to make this the default in a future release.
2635
2636 * Documentation improvements
2637
2638There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
2639produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
2640before submitting changes.
2641
2642The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
2643M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
2644`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
2645you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
2646a future texinfo-X.Y release.
2647
2648*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
2649We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
2650been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
2651or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
2652`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
2653around this problem.
2654
2655 * New features
2656
2657GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
2658the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
2659`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
2660the target program.
2661
2662The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
2663how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
2664
2665 * New native hosts supported
2666
2667HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
2668386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
2669
2670 * New targets supported
2671
2672AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
2673
2674 * New file formats supported
2675
2676BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
2677HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
2678
2679 * Major bug fixes
2680
2681Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
2682
2683We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
2684printf_filtered("%s") problems.
2685
2686We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
2687for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
2688release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
2689
2690You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
2691will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
2692
2693We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
2694for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
2695especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
2696libraries.
2697
2698The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
2699information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
2700command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
2701any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
2702when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
2703
2704 * Internal improvements
2705
2706GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
2707debugging of multiple languages in the future.
2708
2709GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
2710Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
2711symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
2712contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
2713shared code that handles any of them.
2714
2715 * New command line options
2716
2717We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
2718
2719 * Mmalloc licensing
2720
2721The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
2722General Public License.
2723
2724*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
2725
2726 * Host/native/target split
2727
2728GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
2729hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
2730target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
2731local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
2732ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
2733
2734The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
2735GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
2736is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
2737code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
2738any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
2739built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
2740handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
2741
2742GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
2743It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
2744plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
2745
2746 * New hosts supported
2747
2748HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
2749386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2750386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
2751
2752 * New targets supported
2753
2754Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
275568030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
2756
2757 * New native hosts supported
2758
2759386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2760 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
2761386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
2762
2763 * New file formats supported
2764
2765BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
2766supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
2767format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
2768
2769 * New commands
2770
2771`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
2772`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
2773These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
2774
2775`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
2776
2777You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
2778scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
2779prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
2780executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
2781
2782 * C++ improvements
2783
2784We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
2785info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
2786symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
2787
2788Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
2789
2790 * Major bug fixes
2791
2792The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
2793fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
2794by the compiler.
2795
2796We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
2797support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
2798
2799John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
2800slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
2801that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
2802purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
2803the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
2804mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
2805
2806Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
2807about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
2808completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
2809we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
2810
2811 * AMD 29k support
2812
2813A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
2814specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
2815calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
2816usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
2817in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
2818
2819We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
2820Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
2821of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
2822resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
2823
2824 * Remote interfaces
2825
2826We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
2827with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
2828message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
2829This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
2830needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
2831breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
2832each instruction being stepped through.
2833
2834The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
2835registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
2836
2837There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
2838find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
2839Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
2840processor with a serial port.
2841
2842 * Configuration
2843
2844Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
2845`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
2846supported, and what files each one uses.
2847
2848 * Library changes
2849
2850There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
2851disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
2852Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
2853disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
2854
2855The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
2856Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
2857can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
2858grants all the rights from the General Public License.
2859
2860 * Documentation
2861
2862The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
2863reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
2864as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
2865encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
2866system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
2867bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
2868
2869And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
2870
2871
2872*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
2873
2874 * Better support for C++ function names
2875
2876GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
2877names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
2878(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
2879single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
2880Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
2881
2882GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
2883the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
2884You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
2885lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
2886for the list of formats.
2887
2888 * G++ symbol mangling problem
2889
2890Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
2891C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
2892directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
2893can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
2894usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
2895about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
2896this problem.)
2897
2898 * New 'maintenance' command
2899
2900All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
2901the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
2902can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
2903
2904 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
2905 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
2906 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
2907 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
2908 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
2909 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
2910
2911The following commands are new:
2912
2913 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
2914 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
2915 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
2916
2917 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
2918
2919We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
2920(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
2921be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
2922read after argv processing.
2923
2924 * New hosts supported
2925
2926Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
2927
55241689 2928GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
2929
2930We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
2931is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
2932for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
2933masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
2934fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
2935It costs extra.
2936
2937 * New targets supported
2938
2939Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2940
2941 * More smarts about finding #include files
2942
2943GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
2944all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
2945greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
2946especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
2947the one that contains your sources.
2948
2949We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
2950breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
2951try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
2952
2953 * Interesting infernals change
2954
2955GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
2956section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
2957target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
2958stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
2959
2960 * Bug fixes (of course!)
2961
2962There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
2963 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
2964 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
2965
2966See the ChangeLog for details.
2967
2968*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
2969
2970 * New machines supported (host and target)
2971
2972IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
2973
2974SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2975
2976 * New malloc package
2977
2978GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
2979Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
2980capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
2981This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
2982pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
2983more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
2984
2985 * info proc
2986
2987The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
2988'help info proc' for details.
2989
2990 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
2991
2992The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
2993Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
2994possible.
2995
2996 * File name changes for MS-DOS
2997
2998Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
2999support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
3000conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
3001environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
3002that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
3003in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
3004
3005 * Cross byte order fixes
3006
3007Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
3008targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
3009
3010 * New -mapped and -readnow options
3011
3012If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
3013system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
3014`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
3015program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
3016called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
3017Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
3018and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
3019the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
3020option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
3021starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
3022
3023You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
3024the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
3025information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
3026slower, but makes future operations faster.
3027
3028The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
3029build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
3030A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
3031use is:
3032
3033 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
3034
3035The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
3036It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
3037shared across multiple host platforms.
3038
3039 * longjmp() handling
3040
3041GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
3042siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
3043all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
3044platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
3045
3046 * Solaris 2.0
3047
3048Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
3049this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
3050reading symbols.
3051
3052 * Bug fixes
3053
3054As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
3055People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
3056crashes and trashed symbol tables.
3057
3058*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
3059
3060 * New machines supported (host and target)
3061
3062SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
3063 (except core files)
3064BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
3065Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
3066
3067 * New machines supported (target)
3068
3069AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3070
3071 * C++ support
3072
3073GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
3074The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
3075per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
3076
3077GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
3078`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
3079extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
3080good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
3081will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
3082released.
3083
3084 * New features for SVR4
3085
3086GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
3087shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
3088only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
3089
3090The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
3091on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
3092it prints the address mappings of the process.
3093
3094If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
3095bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
3096
3097 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
3098
3099Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
3100now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
3101skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
3102make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
3103same code linked statically.
3104
3105 * New Getopt
3106
3107GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
3108version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
3109continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
3110Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
3111added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
3112future by other options that begin with the same letter.
3113
3114 * Bugs fixed
3115
3116The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
3117Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
3118See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
3119
3120
3121*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
3122
3123 * New machines supported (host and target)
3124
3125Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
3126NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
3127Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3128
3129 * Almost SCO Unix support
3130
3131We had hoped to support:
3132SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
3133(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
3134that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
3135about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
3136
3137 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
3138
3139GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
3140debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
3141is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
3142send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
3143reqired (if any).
3144
3145 * New Readline
3146
3147GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
3148is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
3149required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
3150
3151 * Bugs fixed
3152
3153The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
3154Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
3155See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
3156
3157 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
3158
3159GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
3160supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
3161symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
3162
3163Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
3164mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
3165debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
3166mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
3167version 2.
3168
3169Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
3170really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
3171line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
3172variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
3173situation somewhat.
3174
3175When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
3176However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
3177methods.
3178
3179We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
3180DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
3181encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
3182
3183
3184*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
3185
3186 * Improved configuration
3187
3188Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
3189Porting BFD is simpler.
3190
3191 * Stepping improved
3192
3193The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
3194of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
3195in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
3196function that has debugging information is called within the line.
3197
3198 * Bug fixing
3199
3200Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
3201
3202 * New host supported (not target)
3203
3204Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
3205
3206
3207*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
3208
3209 * Multiple source language support
3210
3211GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
3212It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
3213and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
3214language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
3215You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
3216`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
3217
3218 * GDB and Modula-2
3219
3220GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
3221currently under development at the State University of New York at
3222Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
3223continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
3224
3225Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
3226debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
3227symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
3228
3229There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
3230in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
3231
3232 * set write on/off
3233
3234GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
3235a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
3236the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
3237by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
3238effect immediately.
3239
3240 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
3241
3242When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
3243shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
3244The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
3245examining core files.
3246
3247 * set listsize
3248
3249You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
3250The default is 10.
3251
3252 * New machines supported (host and target)
3253
3254SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
3255Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
3256Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
3257
3258 * New hosts supported (not targets)
3259
3260IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
3261
3262 * New targets supported (not hosts)
3263
3264AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3265AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3266Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
3267
3268 * New remote interfaces
3269
3270AMD 29000 Adapt
3271AMD 29000 Minimon
3272
3273
3274*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
3275
3276 * New Facilities
3277
3278Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
3279
3280Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
3281target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
3282is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
3283remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
3284remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
3285also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
3286using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
3287stub on the target system.
3288
3289New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
3290
3291GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
3292library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
3293object file types such as a.out and coff.
3294
3295There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
3296refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
3297
3298
3299 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
3300
3301All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
3302by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
3303
3304For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
3305``Show prompt'' produces the response:
3306Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
3307
3308What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
3309print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
3310will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
3311all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
3312
3313confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
3314 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
3315 it is already running. Default is ON.
3316
3317editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
3318 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
3319 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
3320 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
3321 Default is ON.
3322
3323history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
3324 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
3325 or the value of the environment variable
3326 GDBHISTFILE.
3327
3328history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
3329 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
3330 HISTSIZE.
3331
3332history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
3333 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
3334 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
3335
3336history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
3337 history expansion will be performed on
3338 command line input. The default is OFF.
3339
3340radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
3341 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
3342 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
3343
3344height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
3345 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
3346 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3347 variable TERM.
3348
3349width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
3350 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
3351 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3352 variable TERM.
3353
3354Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
3355``set width'' instead.
3356
3357print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
3358 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
3359 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
3360 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
3361
3362print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
3363 is OFF.
3364
3365print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
3366 "raw" form if off.
3367
3368print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
3369 like instructions.
3370
3371print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
3372
3373
3374 * Support for Epoch Environment.
3375
3376The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
3377new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
3378are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
3379window.
3380
3381
3382 * Support for Shared Libraries
3383
3384GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
3385Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
3386before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
3387happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
3388At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
3389from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
3390shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
3391It can be abbreviated ``share''.
3392
3393sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
3394 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
3395 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
3396
3397info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
3398
3399
3400 * Watchpoints
3401
3402A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
3403expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
3404tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
3405quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
3406problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
3407more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
3408
3409watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
3410
3411info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
3412
3413delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3414disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3415enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3416
3417
3418 * C++ multiple inheritance
3419
3420When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
3421for C++ programs.
3422
3423 * C++ exception handling
3424
3425Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
3426ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
3427the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
3428handler's context).
3429
3430catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
3431 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
3432 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
3433
3434info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
3435 current stack frame.
3436
3437
3438 * Minor command changes
3439
3440The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
3441command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
3442is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
3443
3444The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
3445at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
3446frames without printing.
3447
3448 * New directory command
3449
3450'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
3451The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
3452about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
3453with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
3454find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
3455
3456 * Configuring GDB for compilation
3457
3458For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
3459for more details.
3460
3461GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
3462two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
3463Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
3464where the program that you are debugging will run.
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