[gdb/ax] small "setv" fix and documentation's adjustment.
[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
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4*** Changes since GDB 7.9
5
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6* The "info source" command now displays the producer string if it was
7 present in the debug info. This typically includes the compiler version
8 and may include things like its command line arguments.
9
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10* Python Scripting
11
12 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "username",
13 which is the name of the objfile as specified by the user,
14 without, for example, resolving symlinks.
15
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16* New commands
17
18maint print symbol-cache
19 Print the contents of the symbol cache.
20
21maint print symbol-cache-statistics
22 Print statistics of symbol cache usage.
23
24maint flush-symbol-cache
25 Flush the contents of the symbol cache.
26
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27record btrace bts
28record bts
29 Start branch trace recording using Branch Trace Store (BTS) format.
30
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31* New options
32
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33set max-completions
34show max-completions
35 Set the maximum number of candidates to be considered during
36 completion. The default value is 200. This limit allows GDB
37 to avoid generating large completion lists, the computation of
38 which can cause the debugger to become temporarily unresponsive.
39
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40maint set symbol-cache-size
41maint show symbol-cache-size
42 Control the size of the symbol cache.
43
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44set|show record btrace bts buffer-size
45 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
46 BTS format.
47 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
48 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
49
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50* The command 'thread apply all' can now support new option '-ascending'
51 to call its specified command for all threads in ascending order.
52
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53* Python/Guile scripting
54
55 ** GDB now supports auto-loading of Python/Guile scripts contained in the
56 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts'.
57
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58* New remote packets
59
60qXfer:btrace-conf:read
61 Return the branch trace configuration for the current thread.
62
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63Qbtrace-conf:bts:size
64 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in BTS format.
65
66* The info record command now shows the recording format and the
67 branch tracing configuration for the current thread when using
68 the btrace record target.
69 For the BTS format, it shows the ring buffer size.
70
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71* GDB now has support for DTrace USDT (Userland Static Defined
72 Tracing) probes. The supported targets are x86_64-*-linux-gnu.
73
3b2f13ff 74*** Changes in GDB 7.9
919b9a93 75
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76* GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on x86 GNU Hurd.
77
5f3b99cf 78* Python Scripting
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79
80 ** You can now access frame registers from Python scripts.
81 ** New attribute 'producer' for gdb.Symtab objects.
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82 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "progspace",
83 which is the gdb.Progspace object of the containing program space.
a0be3e44 84 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "owner".
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85 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "build_id",
86 which is the build ID generated when the file was built.
86e4ed39 87 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new method "add_separate_debug_file".
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88 ** A new event "gdb.clear_objfiles" has been added, triggered when
89 selecting a new file to debug.
02be9a71 90 ** You can now add attributes to gdb.Objfile and gdb.Progspace objects.
6dddd6a5 91 ** New function gdb.lookup_objfile.
5f3b99cf 92
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93 New events which are triggered when GDB modifies the state of the
94 inferior.
95
96 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_pre: Function call is about to be made.
97 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_post: Function call has just been made.
98 ** gdb.events.memory_changed: A memory location has been altered.
99 ** gdb.events.register_changed: A register has been altered.
100
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101* New Python-based convenience functions:
102
103 ** $_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
104 ** $_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
105 ** $_any_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
106 ** $_any_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
107
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108* GDB now supports the compilation and injection of source code into
109 the inferior. GDB will use GCC 5.0 or higher built with libcc1.so
110 to compile the source code to object code, and if successful, inject
111 and execute that code within the current context of the inferior.
112 Currently the C language is supported. The commands used to
113 interface with this new feature are:
114
115 compile code [-raw|-r] [--] [source code]
116 compile file [-raw|-r] filename
117
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118* New commands
119
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120demangle [-l language] [--] name
121 Demangle "name" in the specified language, or the current language
122 if elided. This command is renamed from the "maint demangle" command.
123 The latter is kept as a no-op to avoid "maint demangle" being interpreted
124 as "maint demangler-warning".
125
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126queue-signal signal-name-or-number
127 Queue a signal to be delivered to the thread when it is resumed.
128
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129add-auto-load-scripts-directory directory
130 Add entries to the list of directories from which to load auto-loaded
131 scripts.
132
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133maint print user-registers
134 List all currently available "user" registers.
135
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136compile code [-r|-raw] [--] [source code]
137 Compile, inject, and execute in the inferior the executable object
138 code produced by compiling the provided source code.
139
140compile file [-r|-raw] filename
141 Compile and inject into the inferior the executable object code
142 produced by compiling the source code stored in the filename
143 provided.
144
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145* On resume, GDB now always passes the signal the program had stopped
146 for to the thread the signal was sent to, even if the user changed
147 threads before resuming. Previously GDB would often (but not
148 always) deliver the signal to the thread that happens to be current
149 at resume time.
150
151* Conversely, the "signal" command now consistently delivers the
152 requested signal to the current thread. GDB now asks for
153 confirmation if the program had stopped for a signal and the user
154 switched threads meanwhile.
155
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156* "breakpoint always-inserted" modes "off" and "auto" merged.
157
158 Now, when 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' is set to "off", GDB
159 won't remove breakpoints from the target until all threads stop,
160 even in non-stop mode. The "auto" mode has been removed, and "off"
161 is now the default mode.
162
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163* New options
164
165set debug symbol-lookup
166show debug symbol-lookup
167 Control display of debugging info regarding symbol lookup.
168
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169* MI changes
170
171 ** The -list-thread-groups command outputs an exit-code field for
172 inferiors that have exited.
173
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174* New targets
175
176MIPS SDE mips*-sde*-elf*
177
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178* Removed targets
179
180Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
181
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182Alpha running OSF/1 (or Tru64) alpha*-*-osf*
183SGI Irix-5.x mips-*-irix5*
184SGI Irix-6.x mips-*-irix6*
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185VAX running (4.2 - 4.3 Reno) BSD vax-*-bsd*
186VAX running Ultrix vax-*-ultrix*
3831839c 187
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188* The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
189 and "assf"), have been removed. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
190 its alias "share", instead.
191
919b9a93 192*** Changes in GDB 7.8
e9475ead 193
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194* New command line options
195
196-D data-directory
197 This is an alias for the --data-directory option.
198
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199* GDB supports printing and modifying of variable length automatic arrays
200 as specified in ISO C99.
201
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202* The ARM simulator now supports instruction level tracing
203 with or without disassembly.
b7bba001 204
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205* Guile scripting
206
207 GDB now has support for scripting using Guile. Whether this is
208 available is determined at configure time.
209 Guile version 2.0 or greater is required.
210 Guile version 2.0.9 is well tested, earlier 2.0 versions are not.
211
212* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
213
214guile [code]
215gu [code]
216 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Guile interpreter.
217
218guile-repl
219gr
220 Start a Guile interactive prompt (or "repl" for "read-eval-print loop").
221
222info auto-load guile-scripts [regexp]
223 Print the list of automatically loaded Guile scripts.
224
225* The source command is now capable of sourcing Guile scripts.
226 This feature is dependent on the debugger being built with Guile support.
227
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228* New options
229
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230set print symbol-loading (off|brief|full)
231show print symbol-loading
232 Control whether to print informational messages when loading symbol
233 information for a file. The default is "full", but when debugging
234 programs with large numbers of shared libraries the amount of output
235 becomes less useful.
236
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237set guile print-stack (none|message|full)
238show guile print-stack
239 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Guile script.
240
241set auto-load guile-scripts (on|off)
242show auto-load guile-scripts
243 Control auto-loading of Guile script files.
244
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245maint ada set ignore-descriptive-types (on|off)
246maint ada show ignore-descriptive-types
247 Control whether the debugger should ignore descriptive types in Ada
248 programs. The default is not to ignore the descriptive types. See
249 the user manual for more details on descriptive types and the intended
250 usage of this option.
251
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252set auto-connect-native-target
253
254 Control whether GDB is allowed to automatically connect to the
255 native target for the run, attach, etc. commands when not connected
256 to any target yet. See also "target native" below.
257
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258set record btrace replay-memory-access (read-only|read-write)
259show record btrace replay-memory-access
260 Control what memory accesses are allowed during replay.
261
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262maint set target-async (on|off)
263maint show target-async
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264 This controls whether GDB targets operate in synchronous or
265 asynchronous mode. Normally the default is asynchronous, if it is
329ea579 266 available; but this can be changed to more easily debug problems
5784b3ca 267 occurring only in synchronous mode.
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268
269set mi-async (on|off)
270show mi-async
271 Control whether MI asynchronous mode is preferred. This supersedes
272 "set target-async" of previous GDB versions.
273
274* "set target-async" is deprecated as a CLI option and is now an alias
275 for "set mi-async" (only puts MI into async mode).
276
277* Background execution commands (e.g., "c&", "s&", etc.) are now
278 possible ``out of the box'' if the target supports them. Previously
279 the user would need to explicitly enable the possibility with the
280 "set target-async on" command.
281
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282* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
283
284 ** New option --debug-format=option1[,option2,...] allows one to add
285 additional text to each output. At present only timestamps
286 are supported: --debug-format=timestamps.
287 Timestamps can also be turned on with the
288 "monitor set debug-format timestamps" command from GDB.
289
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290* The 'record instruction-history' command now starts counting instructions
291 at one. This also affects the instruction ranges reported by the
292 'record function-call-history' command when given the /i modifier.
293
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294* The command 'record function-call-history' supports a new modifier '/c' to
295 indent the function names based on their call stack depth.
296 The fields for the '/i' and '/l' modifier have been reordered.
297 The source line range is now prefixed with 'at'.
298 The instruction range is now prefixed with 'inst'.
299 Both ranges are now printed as '<from>, <to>' to allow copy&paste to the
300 "record instruction-history" and "list" commands.
301
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302* The ranges given as arguments to the 'record function-call-history' and
303 'record instruction-history' commands are now inclusive.
304
066ce621 305* The btrace record target now supports the 'record goto' command.
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306 For locations inside the execution trace, the back trace is computed
307 based on the information stored in the execution trace.
066ce621 308
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309* The btrace record target supports limited reverse execution and replay.
310 The target does not record data and therefore does not allow reading
311 memory or registers.
312
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313* The "catch syscall" command now works on s390*-linux* targets.
314
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315* The "compare-sections" command is no longer specific to target
316 remote. It now works with all targets.
317
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318* All native targets are now consistently called "native".
319 Consequently, the "target child", "target GNU", "target djgpp",
320 "target procfs" (Solaris/Irix/OSF/AIX) and "target darwin-child"
321 commands have been replaced with "target native". The QNX/NTO port
322 leaves the "procfs" target in place and adds a "native" target for
323 consistency with other ports. The impact on users should be minimal
324 as these commands previously either throwed an error, or were
325 no-ops. The target's name is visible in the output of the following
326 commands: "help target", "info target", "info files", "maint print
327 target-stack".
328
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329* The "target native" command now connects to the native target. This
330 can be used to launch native programs even when "set
331 auto-connect-native-target" is set to off.
332
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333* GDB now supports access to Intel(R) MPX registers on GNU/Linux.
334
335* Support for Intel(R) AVX-512 registers on GNU/Linux.
336 Support displaying and modifying Intel(R) AVX-512 registers
337 $zmm0 - $zmm31 and $k0 - $k7 on GNU/Linux.
338
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339* New remote packets
340
341qXfer:btrace:read's annex
342 The qXfer:btrace:read packet supports a new annex 'delta' to read
343 branch trace incrementally.
344
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345* Python Scripting
346
347 ** Valid Python operations on gdb.Value objects representing
348 structs/classes invoke the corresponding overloaded operators if
349 available.
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350 ** New `Xmethods' feature in the Python API. Xmethods are
351 additional methods or replacements for existing methods of a C++
352 class. This feature is useful for those cases where a method
353 defined in C++ source code could be inlined or optimized out by
354 the compiler, making it unavailable to GDB.
f7bd0f78 355
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356* New targets
357PowerPC64 GNU/Linux little-endian powerpc64le-*-linux*
358
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359* The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
360 and "assf"), have been deprecated. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
361 its alias "share", instead.
362
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363* The commands "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" are no longer
364 supported. Use "set serial baud" and "show serial baud" (respectively)
365 instead.
366
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367* MI changes
368
369 ** A new option "-gdb-set mi-async" replaces "-gdb-set
370 target-async". The latter is left as a deprecated alias of the
371 former for backward compatibility. If the target supports it,
372 CLI background execution commands are now always possible by
373 default, independently of whether the frontend stated a
374 preference for asynchronous execution with "-gdb-set mi-async".
375 Previously "-gdb-set target-async off" affected both MI execution
376 commands and CLI execution commands.
377
b7bba001 378*** Changes in GDB 7.7
2d450646 379
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380* Improved support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on
381 arm*-linux* targets. Support for thumb32 and syscall instruction
382 recording has been added.
383
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384* GDB now supports SystemTap SDT probes on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
385
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386* GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
387 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
388
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389* New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
390 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
391 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
392 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
393 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
394 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
395 "void".
396
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397* The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
398
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399* The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
400
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401* GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
402 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
403 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
404 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
405
406 (gdb) p $rax
407 $1 = <not saved>
408
409 (gdb) info registers rax
410 rax <not saved>
411
412 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
413 "*value not available*".
414
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415* New script contrib/gdb-add-index.sh for adding .gdb_index sections
416 to binaries.
417
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418* Python scripting
419
420 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
f76c27b5 421 ** Temporary breakpoints are now supported.
bc79de95 422 ** Line tables representation has been added.
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423 ** New attribute 'parent_type' for gdb.Field objects.
424 ** gdb.Field objects can be used as subscripts on gdb.Value objects.
c0d48811 425 ** New attribute 'name' for gdb.Type objects.
1e611234 426
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427* New targets
428
429Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
430Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
42059f0e 431Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
a1217d97 432
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433* Removed native configurations
434
435Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
436been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
437
438arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
439i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
440i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
441i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
442m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
443sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
444vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
445
bd712aed 446* New commands:
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447catch rethrow
448 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
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449maint check-psymtabs
450 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
451maint check-symtabs
452 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
453maint expand-symtabs
454 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
b340913d 455
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456show configuration
457 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
458
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459maint set|show per-command
460maint set|show per-command space
461maint set|show per-command time
462maint set|show per-command symtab
463 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
464
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465remove-symbol-file FILENAME
466remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
467 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
468 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
469 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
470
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471info exceptions
472info exceptions REGEXP
473 Display the list of Ada exceptions defined in the program being
474 debugged. If provided, only the exceptions whose names match REGEXP
475 are listed.
476
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477* New options
478
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479set debug symfile off|on
480show debug symfile
481 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
482 symbol tables within those files
483
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484set print raw frame-arguments
485show print raw frame-arguments
486 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
487 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
488
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489set remote trace-status-packet
490show remote trace-status-packet
491 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
492
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493set debug nios2
494show debug nios2
495 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
496
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497set range-stepping
498show range-stepping
499 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
500
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501set startup-with-shell
502show startup-with-shell
503 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
504 directly.
505
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506set code-cache
507show code-cache
508 Use the target memory cache for accesses to the code segment. This
509 improves performance of remote debugging (particularly disassembly).
510
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511* You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
512 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
513 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
514 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
515 "set height 0".
516
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517* The "set debug symtab-create" debugging option of GDB has been changed to
518 accept a verbosity level. 0 means "off", 1 provides basic debugging
519 output, and values of 2 or greater provides more verbose output.
520
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521* New command-line options
522--configuration
523 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
524
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525* The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
526 buffer in Common Trace Format.
527
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528* Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
529 GDB command gcore.
530
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531* GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
532
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533* The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
534 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
535
536* The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
537 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
538
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539* The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
540 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
541 due to an uncaught signal.
542
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543* MI changes
544
403cb6b1 545 ** All MI commands now accept an optional "--language" option.
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546 Support for this feature can be verified by using the "-list-features"
547 command, which should contain "language-option".
403cb6b1 548
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549 ** The new command -info-gdb-mi-command allows the user to determine
550 whether a GDB/MI command is supported or not.
551
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552 ** The "^error" result record returned when trying to execute an undefined
553 GDB/MI command now provides a variable named "code" whose content is the
554 "undefined-command" error code. Support for this feature can be verified
555 by using the "-list-features" command, which should contain
556 "undefined-command-error-code".
557
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558 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
559 Trace Format now.
560
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561 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
562
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563 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
564 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
565 are displayed.
566
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567 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
568 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
569
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570 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
571 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
572 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
573
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574 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
575 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
576 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
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577 main subprogram. Support for this feature can be verified using
578 the "-list-features" command, which should contain
579 "exec-run-start-option".
5713b9b5 580
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581 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
582 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
583
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584 ** The new command -info-ada-exceptions provides the equivalent of
585 the new "info exceptions" command.
586
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587* New system-wide configuration scripts
588 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
589 configuration scripts for the following systems:
590 ** ElinOS
591 ** Wind River Linux
592
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593* GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
594 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
595 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
596 below.
597
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598* GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
599 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
600
4ac33720
UW
601* On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
602 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
603 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
604
c1e36e3e
PA
605* New remote packets
606
607vCont;r
608
609 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
610 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
611 involvemement at each single-step.
612
7f91dbec
GB
613qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
614 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
615 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
616 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
617 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
618 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
619 speedup.
620
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PA
621* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
622
623 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
624 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
625
28a93511
YQ
626 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
627 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
628 trace state variables.
629
7a60ad40
YQ
630 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
631 target.
632
6fbe845e
AB
633* New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
634 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
635
9058cc3a
TG
636* GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
637
0d12017b
JB
638* The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
639 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
640 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
641 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
642
2d450646 643*** Changes in GDB 7.6
80c8d323 644
59ea5688
MM
645* Target record has been renamed to record-full.
646 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
647 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
648 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
649
650set|show record full insn-number-max
651set|show record full stop-at-limit
652set|show record full memory-query
653
654* A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
655 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
656 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
657 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
658 This new recording method can be enabled using:
659
660record btrace
661
662 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
663 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
664
665* Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
666 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
667 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
668
669record instruction-history prints the execution history at
670 instruction granularity
671
672record function-call-history prints the execution history at
673 function granularity
674
543bf33d
AT
675* New native configurations
676
51d66578 677ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
543bf33d 678FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
4f4352f7 679x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
ea5f3910 680Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
543bf33d 681
249729c4
JB
682* New targets
683
51d66578
MS
684ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
685ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
249729c4 686Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
3c095f49 687x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
ea5f3910 688Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
249729c4 689
e64e0392
DE
690* If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
691 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
692 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
693 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
694 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
695 --data-directory command-line option.
696
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DE
697* New command line options:
698
699-nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
700 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
701
e93a8774
TT
702* Removed command line options
703
704-epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
705 Emacs.
706
53342f27
TT
707* The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
708 type formatting.
709
451b7c33
TT
710* 'info proc' now works on some core files.
711
a72c3253
DE
712* Python scripting
713
714 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
715
d7de8e3c
TT
716 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
717
18a9fc12
TT
718 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
719
9a27f2c6
PK
720 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
721
bea883fd
SCR
722 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
723 of architecture in the Python API.
724
725 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
726 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
727
a72c3253
DE
728* New Python-based convenience functions:
729
730 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
731 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
732 ** $_strlen(str)
733 ** $_regex(str, regex)
734
f3c8a52a
JK
735* The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
736 given an argument.
737
1605ef26
TT
738* The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
739 default for GCC since November 2000.
740
504b36fd
YQ
741* The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
742
f2a8bc8a
YQ
743* The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
744 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
745
23a80689
JB
746* New configure options
747
748--enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
749 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
750 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
751 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
752 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
753 options allow the user to override that default.
393fd4c3
YQ
754--with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
755 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
756 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
23a80689 757
d6b28940
TT
758* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
759
ab04a2af
TT
760catch signal
761 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
762 conditions to be attached.
763
d6b28940
TT
764maint info bfds
765 List the BFDs known to GDB.
766
8315665e
YPK
767python-interactive [command]
768pi [command]
769 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
770 and print the result of expressions.
771
772py [command]
773 "py" is a new alias for "python".
774
18a9fc12
TT
775enable type-printer [name]...
776disable type-printer [name]...
777 Enable or disable type printers.
778
aa9259cc
TS
779* Removed commands
780
781 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
782 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
783 instead.
784
53342f27
TT
785* New options
786
787set print type methods (on|off)
788show print type methods
789 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
790 The default is to show them.
791
792set print type typedefs (on|off)
793show print type typedefs
794 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
795 The default is to show them.
796
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JK
797set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
798show filename-display
799 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
800 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
801
e9f1758d
PA
802set trace-buffer-size
803show trace-buffer-size
804 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
805
a46c1e42
PA
806set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
807show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
808 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
809
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PA
810set debug aarch64
811show debug aarch64
812 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
813 The default is off.
814
815set debug coff-pe-read
816show debug coff-pe-read
817 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
818 exported symbols.
819
820set debug mach-o
821show debug mach-o
822 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
823 processing.
824
825set debug notification
826show debug notification
827 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
828
5b9afe8a
YQ
829* MI changes
830
831 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
832 "=cmd-param-changed".
201b4506
YQ
833 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
834 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
134a2066
YQ
835 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
836 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
837 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
82a90ccf
YQ
838 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
839 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
8de0566d
YQ
840 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
841 "=memory-changed".
ed8a1c2d 842 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
ec83d211 843 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
62747a60
TT
844 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
845 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
3fa7bf06
MG
846 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
847 library load/unload events.
f2a8bc8a
YQ
848 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
849 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
850 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
f5911ea1
HAQ
851 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
852 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
853 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
ec83d211
JK
854 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
855 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
5b9afe8a 856
608e2dbb
TT
857* GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
858 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
859 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
860 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
861
f6f899bf
HAQ
862* New remote packets
863
864QTBuffer:size
865 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
866 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
867
10782d74
MM
868Qbtrace:bts
869 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
870 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
871 qSupported query.
872
873Qbtrace:off
874 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
875 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
876
877qXfer:btrace:read
878 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
879 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
880
80c8d323 881*** Changes in GDB 7.5
d6e00af6 882
1b3371b1
L
883* GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
884 for more x32 ABI info.
885
d0e64392
MR
886* GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
887
4cc0665f
MR
888* GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
889
85d4a676
SS
890* The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
891 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
892 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
893 "info os files" lists file descriptors
894 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
895 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
896 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
897 "info os msg" lists message queues
898 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
899
55aa24fb
SDJ
900* GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
901 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
902 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
903 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
904 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
905 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
906
72508ac0
PO
907* GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
908 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
909 record/replay support.
910
16899756
DE
911* The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
912
4795f398
DE
913* Python scripting
914
7d74f244
DE
915 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
916 "gdb.COMMAND_USER".
917
4795f398
DE
918 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
919
50897289
TT
920 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
921 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
922
64e7d9dd
TT
923 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
924
925 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
926 the source at which the symbol was defined.
927
f0823d2c
TT
928 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
929 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
930 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
931 symbol's value.
932
7b282c5a
SCR
933 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
934 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
935
a20ee7a4
SCR
936 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
937 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
938 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
939
7efc75aa
SCR
940 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
941 object associated with a PC value.
942
ee0bf529
SCR
943 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
944 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
945
a766d390
DE
946* Go language support.
947 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
948 language.
949
e0f9f062
DE
950* GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
951 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
952
217bff3e
JK
953* The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
954 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
955
cafec441
TT
956* GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
957 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
958 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
959 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
960 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
961 $1 = (ONE | TWO)
962
4aac40c8
TT
963* The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
964 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
965 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
966 build/libcpp/expr.c.
967
d99bd577
UW
968* The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
969 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
970
53fe1783
GB
971* The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
972 since December 2007.
973
e41eec66
JB
974* The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
975 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
976 command does. For instance:
977
978 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
979
980 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
981 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
982 created, using the "condition" command.
983
5808517f
YQ
984* The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
985 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
986
481860b3
GB
987* GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
988
989* The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
990 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
991 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
e615022a
DE
992 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
993 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
994 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
995 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
996 files with older .gdb_index sections.
481860b3 997
156942c7
DE
998 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
999 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
1000 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
1001 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
1002 the .gdb_index section.
1003
927fbba6
JB
1004* Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
1005
20388dd6
YQ
1006* GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
1007 target.
1008
f3e0e960
SS
1009* MI changes
1010
1011 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
1012
37ce89eb
SS
1013 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
1014
edcc5120
TT
1015* New commands
1016
e615022a
DE
1017 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
1018 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
1019 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
1020
edcc5120
TT
1021 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
1022 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
1023
816338b5
SS
1024 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
1025 several hits.
1026
57651221 1027 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
c4aeac85
TT
1028 C++ and Java objects.
1029
06fc020f 1030 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
6ea71545 1031 can be used to recursively explore values and types of
06fc020f
SCR
1032 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
1033 configured with '--with-python'.
1034
bf88dd68
JK
1035 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
1036 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
1037 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
1038 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
1039 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
1040 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
1041 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
1042
1043 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
1044 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
1045 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
1046 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
1047
e7e0cddf
SS
1048 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
1049 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
1050 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
1051 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
1052
9cb709b6
TT
1053 ** "set print symbol"
1054 "show print symbol"
1055 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
1056 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
1057 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
1058
2d4c29c5
TS
1059* Deprecated commands
1060
1061 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
1062 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
1063
a58b110a
KB
1064* New targets
1065
1066Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
60c9a3c0 1067HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
a58b110a 1068
72895ff6
LM
1069* GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
1070 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
1071 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
1072 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
1073 evaluates to true.
1074
1075* New options
1076
4cc0665f
MR
1077set mips compression
1078show mips compression
1079 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
1080 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
1081 mips16
1082 micromips
1083 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
1084
72895ff6
LM
1085set breakpoint condition-evaluation
1086show breakpoint condition-evaluation
cf65ecd3 1087 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
5b43fab2
JK
1088 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
1089 available mode.
72895ff6
LM
1090 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
1091 target.
1092
bf88dd68
JK
1093set auto-load off
1094 Disable auto-loading globally.
1095
1096show auto-load
1097 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
1098
1099set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
1100show auto-load gdb-scripts
1101 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
1102
1103set auto-load python-scripts on|off
1104show auto-load python-scripts
1105 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
1106
1107set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
1108show auto-load local-gdbinit
1109 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
1110
1111set auto-load libthread-db on|off
1112show auto-load libthread-db
1113 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
1114
7349ff92 1115set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
9cc815f5 1116show auto-load scripts-directory
7349ff92
JK
1117 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
1118 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
1119 of the directories listed by this option.
1120 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
1121
bccbefd2
JK
1122set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
1123show auto-load safe-path
1124 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
1125 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
1126
4dc84fd1
JK
1127set debug auto-load on|off
1128show debug auto-load
1129 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
1130
d3ce09f5 1131set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
e7e0cddf 1132show dprintf-style
d3ce09f5
SS
1133 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
1134 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
1135 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
1136 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
e7e0cddf
SS
1137
1138set dprintf-function <expr>
1139show dprintf-function
1140set dprintf-channel <expr>
1141show dprintf-channel
1142 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
1143 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
1144
d3ce09f5
SS
1145set disconnected-dprintf on|off
1146show disconnected-dprintf
1147 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
1148 after GDB disconnects.
1149
6dea1fbd
JK
1150* New configure options
1151
7349ff92
JK
1152--with-auto-load-dir
1153 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
1564a261
JK
1154 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
1155 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
1156 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
1157 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
7349ff92 1158
6dea1fbd
JK
1159--with-auto-load-safe-path
1160 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
7349ff92 1161 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
6dea1fbd
JK
1162
1163--without-auto-load-safe-path
1164 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
1165 security feature.
1166
72895ff6
LM
1167* New remote packets
1168
74c48cbb
PA
1169z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
1170
72895ff6
LM
1171 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
1172 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
1173 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
1174 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
1175
9b224c5e
PA
1176QProgramSignals:
1177
1178 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
1179 program without GDB involvement.
1180
8320cc4f
JK
1181* New command line options
1182
1183--init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
1184 before loading inferior.
1185--init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
1186 execute it before loading inferior.
1187
8837a20f
JB
1188*** Changes in GDB 7.4
1189
f8eba3c6
TT
1190* GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
1191 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
1192 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
1193 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
1194 inferior changes.
1195
1bfeeb0f
JL
1196* GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
1197 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
1198
480a3f21
PW
1199* GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
1200 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
1201 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
1202 target hardware watchpoint.
1203
1204 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
1205 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
1206 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
1207 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
1208
3a7bf607
PM
1209* Python scripting
1210
32d1c362 1211 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
7d0aff21 1212 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
32d1c362
DE
1213 existing one.
1214
3a7bf607 1215 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
4795f398
DE
1216 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
1217 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
1218 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
1219 now "message", which just prints the error message without
1220 the stack trace.
3a7bf607 1221
baacfb07 1222 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
3a7bf607 1223 Python API.
713389e0 1224
fa3a4f15
PM
1225 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
1226 modules library. This module provides functionality for
baacfb07 1227 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
fa3a4f15
PM
1228 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
1229 corresponding value.
1230
5e239b84
PM
1231 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
1232 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
1233 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
1234 on GDB start-up.
1235
9df2fbc4
PM
1236 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
1237 static_block will return the global and static blocks
1238 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
1239 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
1240
457e09f0
DE
1241 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
1242
6839b47f
KP
1243 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
1244 "gdb.breakpoints".
1245
cc72b2a2
KP
1246 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
1247 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
1248 available in the CLI.
1249
84ad80e6
PK
1250 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
1251 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
1252 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
1253 "some_type.items()".
1254
20c168b5
KP
1255 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
1256 new object file.
1257
03c3051a
PK
1258 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
1259 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
1260 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
1261 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
1262 any anonymous fields.
1263
7376e450
TT
1264* MI changes
1265
1266 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
1267 "solib-event".
1268
1269 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
1270 "=breakpoint-modified".
1271
1272 ** New command -ada-task-info.
1273
98a5dd13
DE
1274* libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
1275 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
1276 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
1277 lives.
1278
1279 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
1280 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
1281 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
1282 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
1283 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
1284
1285 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
1286 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
1287
478aac75
DE
1288* New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
1289 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
1290 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
1291 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
1292 use this option to specify where to find it.
1293
9c06b0b4
TJB
1294* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
1295 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
1296 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
1297 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
1298 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
1299 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
1300 section in the user manual for more details.
1301
03f2bd59
JK
1302* The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
1303 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
1304 become available after that.
1305
71eba9c2 1306* New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
edc84990 1307
2bda9cc5
JK
1308* New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
1309 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
1310 gcc version 4.7.
1311
ed59ded5
DE
1312* New commands
1313
1314!SHELL COMMAND
1315 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
1316 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
1317
9c06b0b4
TJB
1318* Changed commands
1319
1320watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
1321 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
1322 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
1323
dbaefcf7
DE
1324info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
1325 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
1326 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
1327
71eba9c2 1328info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
1329 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
1330 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
1331 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
1332 name starts with a hyphen.
1333
3065dfb6
SS
1334collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
1335 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
1336 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
1337 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
1338 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
1339 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
1340 number of bytes that will be collected.
1341
f196051f
SS
1342tstart [NOTES]
1343 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
1344 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
1345 setting the variable trace-notes.
1346
1347tstop [NOTES]
1348 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
1349 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
1350 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
1351 trace-stop-notes.
1352
d248b706
KY
1353* Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
1354 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
1355 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
1356 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
1357 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
1358 is running.
1359
405f8e94
SS
1360* Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
1361 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
1362 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
1363
2bda9cc5
JK
1364* New options
1365
45cfd468
DE
1366set debug dwarf2-read
1367show debug dwarf2-read
1368 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
1369 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
1370
1371set debug symtab-create
1372show debug symtab-create
1373 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
1374 creation. The default is off.
1375
baacfb07
PM
1376set extended-prompt
1377show extended-prompt
1378 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
1379 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
1380 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
1381 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
1382 prompt is displayed.
1383
2bda9cc5
JK
1384set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
1385show print entry-values
1386 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
1387 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
1388 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
1389
1390set debug entry-values
1391show debug entry-values
1392 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
1393 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
1394
c011a4f4
DE
1395set basenames-may-differ
1396show basenames-may-differ
1397 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
1398 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
1399 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
1400 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
1401 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
1402 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
1403 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
1404 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
1405
f196051f
SS
1406set trace-user
1407show trace-user
1408set trace-notes
1409show trace-notes
1410 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
1411 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
1412 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
1413 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
1414
1415set trace-stop-notes
1416show trace-stop-notes
1417 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
1418 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
1419 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
1420 started by someone else.
1421
d248b706
KY
1422* New remote packets
1423
1424QTEnable
1425
1426 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1427
1428QTDisable
1429
1430 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1431
f196051f
SS
1432QTNotes
1433
1434 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
1435
1436qTP
1437
1438 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
1439
405f8e94
SS
1440qTMinFTPILen
1441
1442 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
1443 be placed.
1444
1a532630
PP
1445* Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
1446 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
1447
11315641
YQ
1448* New targets
1449
1450Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
1451
87326c78
DD
1452* New Simulators
1453
1454Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
1455
e8d56f18
JB
1456*** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
1457
1458* The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
1459
d6e00af6 1460*** Changes in GDB 7.3
797054e6 1461
60f98dde
MS
1462* GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
1463 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
1464 matches the given regular expression.
1465
eee5b35e
DD
1466* The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
1467
b716877b
AB
1468* The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
1469 dumping the instruction opcodes.
1470
aae1c79a
DE
1471* New command line options
1472
1473-data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
1474 This is mostly for testing purposes.
1475
a86caf66
DE
1476* The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
1477 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
1478
99e7ae30
DE
1479* GDB has a new command: "set directories".
1480 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
1481 source path list instead of augmenting it.
1482
4694da01
TT
1483* GDB now understands thread names.
1484
1485 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
1486 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
1487
1488 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
1489 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
1490
f4b8a18d
KW
1491* OpenCL C
1492 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
1493 has been integrated into GDB.
1494
585d1eb8
PM
1495* Python scripting
1496
da5d4055
PM
1497 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
1498 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
1499 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
1500
9a6f1302
PM
1501 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1502 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
1503 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
1504 and allows for more dynamic content.
1505
29703da4
PM
1506 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
1507 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
1508 have an is_valid method.
1509
350c6c65
PM
1510 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1511 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
1512 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
1513
6e6fbe60
DE
1514 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
1515
585d1eb8
PM
1516 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
1517 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
1518 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
1519 that function like so:
1520
1521 result = some_value (10,20)
1522
0e3509db
DE
1523 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
1524 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
1525 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
1526
7b51bc51
DE
1527 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
1528 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
1529 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
1530 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
1531 New function: register_pretty_printer.
1532
1533 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
1534 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
1535
99e7ae30
DE
1536 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
1537
d8e22779
TT
1538 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
1539 selected thread.
1540
4694da01
TT
1541 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
1542 holds the thread's name.
1543
505500db
SW
1544 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
1545 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
824446ad 1546 occurring in the process being debugged.
c17a9e46
HZ
1547 The following events are currently supported:
1548 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
1549 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
1550 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
1551
def98928
TT
1552* C++ Improvements:
1553
1554 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
1555 instantiation. For example, if you have:
1556
1557 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
1558
1559 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
1560 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
1561 was added to GCC 4.5.
1562
66cb8159
TT
1563 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
1564 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
1565 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
1566 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
1567 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
1568 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
1569
4aac0db7
UW
1570* GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
1571 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
1572 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
1573 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
1574 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
1575
283e6a52
TT
1576* GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
1577 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
1578 execution to a label.
1579
1580* GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
1581 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
1582 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
1583 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
1584
b56df873 1585* The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
14c0d4e1 1586 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
b56df873
TT
1587 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
1588 of scope.
1589
ae53ffa4
PA
1590* GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
1591
1592 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
1593 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
1594 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
1595 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
1596 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
1597 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
1598
1599 (gdb) info threads
1600 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
1601
1602 While now you see this:
1603
1604 (gdb) info threads
1605 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
1606
1607 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
1608 dumps.
1609
1610 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
1611 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
1612 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
1613 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
1614
f1310107
TJB
1615* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
1616 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
1617 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
1618 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
1619 section in the user manual for more details.
1620
248c9dbc
JB
1621* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1622
1aee7009
JB
1623 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
1624 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
248c9dbc 1625
eb826dc6
MF
1626 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
1627
44603653
JB
1628* New native configurations
1629
1630ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
1631
91021223
MF
1632* New targets:
1633
1634Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
1635
6e1bb179
JB
1636* Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
1637 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
1638 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
1639 in the GDB user manual.
1640
50c97f38
TT
1641* Guile support was removed.
1642
448a92bf
MF
1643* New features in the GNU simulator
1644
1645 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
1646
66ee2731
MF
1647 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
1648
76b8507d 1649*** Changes in GDB 7.2
bfbf3774 1650
ba25b921
PA
1651* Shared library support for remote targets by default
1652
1653 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
1654 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
1655 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
1656 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
1657 was always disabled for such configurations.
1658
4656f5c6
SW
1659* C++ Improvements:
1660
1661 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
1662
1663 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
1664 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
1665 For example:
1666 namespace A
1667 {
1668 class B { };
1669 void foo (B) { }
1670 }
1671 ...
1672 A::B b
1673 foo(b)
1674 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
1675 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
1676 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
1677
1678 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
1679
1680 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
1681 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
1682 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
1683 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
1684 entry.
1685 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
1686 mentioned flavors of operators.
1687
254e6b9e
DE
1688 ** static const class members
1689
1690 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
1691 class definition has been fixed.
1692
711e434b
PM
1693* Windows Thread Information Block access.
1694
1695 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
1696 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
1697 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
1698 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
1699 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
1700 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
1701
0fb4aa4b
PA
1702* Static tracepoints
1703
1704 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
1705 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
1706 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
1707 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
1708 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
1709 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
1710 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
1711 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
1712 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
1713 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
1714 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
1715 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
1716 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
1717 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
1718 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
1719 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
1720 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
1721 the "New remote packets" section below.
1722
ca11e899
SS
1723* Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
1724
1725 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
1726 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
1727 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
1728 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
1729
1730* Observer mode
1731
1732 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
1733 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
1734 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
1735 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
1736 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
1737 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
1738 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
1739
1740* The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
1741 current thread.
1742
711e434b
PM
1743* New remote packets
1744
1745qGetTIBAddr
1746
1747 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
1748
dde08ee1
PA
1749qRelocInsn
1750
1751 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
1752 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
1753 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
1754 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
1755 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
1756 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
1757
0fb4aa4b
PA
1758qTfSTM, qTsSTM
1759
1760 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
1761
1762qTSTMat
1763
1764 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
1765 program.
1766
1767qXfer:statictrace:read
1768
1769 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
1770 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
1771 to gdb's qSupported query.
1772
ca11e899
SS
1773QAllow
1774
1775 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
1776
1777QTDPsrc
1778
1779 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
1780 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
1781
3f7b2faa
DE
1782* The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
1783 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
1784 a directory.
1785
d337e9f0
PA
1786* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1787
0fb4aa4b
PA
1788 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
1789 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
1790 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
1791 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
1792
1793 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
1794 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
1795 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
1796 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
1797 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
1798 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
1799 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
1800
1801 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
1802 for static tracepoints support.
d337e9f0 1803
c24d0242
PM
1804 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
1805
c8d5aac9
L
1806* GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
1807 it understands register description.
1808
7c953934
TT
1809* The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
1810
8685c86f
L
1811* X86 general purpose registers
1812
1813 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
1814 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
1815 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
1816 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
1817 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
1818
95a42b64 1819* The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
86b17b60
PA
1820 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
1821 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
1822 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
1823 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
1824 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
95a42b64 1825
8bd10a10
CM
1826* The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
1827 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
1828 in the specified file.
1829
ab38a727
PA
1830* Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
1831 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
1832 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
1833 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
1834 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
1835 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
1836 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
1837 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
1838 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
1839 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
1840
6149aea9
PA
1841* New commands
1842
f1421989
HZ
1843eval template, expressions...
1844 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
1845 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
1846
ab38a727
PA
1847set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
1848show target-file-system-kind
1849 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
1850 names.
1851
6149aea9
PA
1852save breakpoints <filename>
1853 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
1854 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
1855 definitions, use the `source' command.
1856
1857`save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
1858is now deprecated.
1859
0fb4aa4b
PA
1860info static-tracepoint-markers
1861 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
1862
1863strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
1864 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
1865 function, line, address, or marker ID.
1866
ca11e899
SS
1867set observer on|off
1868show observer
1869 Enable and disable observer mode.
1870
1871set may-write-registers on|off
1872set may-write-memory on|off
1873set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
1874set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
1875set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
1876set may-interrupt on|off
1877 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
1878 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
1879 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
1880 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
1881 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
1882 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
1883 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
1884
1885set record memory-query on|off
1886show record memory-query
1887 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
1888 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
1889
53a71c06
CR
1890* Changed commands
1891
1892disassemble
1893 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
1894
f3e9a817
PM
1895* Python scripting
1896
9279c692
JB
1897** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
1898 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
1899 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
1900 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
1901 GDB using Python' in the manual.
1902
adc36818 1903** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
595939de
PM
1904 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
1905 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
1906 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
f870a310 1907
fa33c3cd 1908** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
07ca107c
DE
1909 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
1910
1911** New exception gdb.GdbError.
fa33c3cd
DE
1912
1913** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
f3e9a817 1914
967cf477
DE
1915** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
1916
8a1ea21f
DE
1917** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
1918 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
1919 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
1920
a7bdde9e
VP
1921* Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
1922there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
1923tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
1924regular breakpoints.
1925
05071a4d
PA
1926* New targets
1927
1928ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
1929
6aecb9c2
JB
1930* D language support.
1931 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
1932 language.
1933
431e49aa
TJB
1934* GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
1935 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
1936 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
1937 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
1938 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
1939
1940* GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
1941 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
1942 conditions of the form:
1943
1944 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
1945
1946 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
1947 interface mentioned above.
1948
bfbf3774 1949*** Changes in GDB 7.1
abc7453d 1950
4eef138c
TT
1951* C++ Improvements
1952
1953 ** Namespace Support
71dee663
SW
1954
1955 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
1956 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
1957 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
1958 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
1959 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
1960
4eef138c
TT
1961 ** Bug Fixes
1962
1963 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
1964 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
1965 qualified name.
1966
1967 ** Cast Operators
1968
1969 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
1970 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
1971
2d1c1221
ME
1972* New targets
1973
1974Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
34207b9e 1975Renesas RX rx-*-elf
2d1c1221
ME
1976
1977* New Simulators
1978
1979Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
34207b9e 1980Renesas RX rx
2d1c1221 1981
6c95b8df
PA
1982* Multi-program debugging.
1983
1984 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
1985 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
1986 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
1987 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
1988 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
1989 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
1990 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
1991 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
1992
d5551862
SS
1993* New tracing features
1994
1995 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
1996
1997 ** Trace state variables
f61e138d
SS
1998
1999 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
2000 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
2001 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
2002 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
2003 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
2004 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
2005 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
2006 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
2007 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
2008 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
7a697b8d 2009
d5551862 2010 ** Fast tracepoints
7a697b8d
SS
2011
2012 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
2013 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
2014 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
2015 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
2016 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
2017 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
2018 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
2019 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
2020 the regular trace command.
2021
d5551862
SS
2022 ** Disconnected tracing
2023
2024 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
2025 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
2026 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
2027 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
2028 connection is lost unexpectedly.
2029
00bf0b85
SS
2030 ** Trace files
2031
2032 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
2033 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
2034 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
2035 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
2036 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
2037 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
2038 <name>".
4daf5ac0
SS
2039
2040 ** Circular trace buffer
2041
2042 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
2043 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
2044 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
2045 not be available for all target agents.
2046
21a0512e
PP
2047* Changed commands
2048
2049disassemble
2050 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
2051 the arguments to be comma-separated.
2052
0fe7935b
DJ
2053info variables
2054 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
2055 which only declare a variable are not shown.
2056
fb2e7cb4
JB
2057source
2058 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
2059 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
2060 support.
2061
2062 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
2063 "set script-extension" (see below).
2064
6c95b8df
PA
2065* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2066
399cd161
MS
2067record save [<FILENAME>]
2068 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
2069 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
2070
2071record restore <FILENAME>
2072 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
2073 earlier time, for replay debugging.
2074
6c95b8df
PA
2075add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
2076 Add a new inferior.
2077
2078clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
2079 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
2080 inferior has loaded.
2081
2082remove-inferior ID
2083 Remove an inferior.
2084
2085maint info program-spaces
2086 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
2087
9a7071a8
JB
2088set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
2089show remote interrupt-sequence
2090 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
2091 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
2092 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
2093 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
2094 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
2095
2096set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
2097show remote interrupt-on-connect
2098 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
2099 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
2100 Linux kernel.
2101
2102set remotebreak [on | off]
2103show remotebreak
2104Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
2105
f61e138d
SS
2106tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
2107 Create or modify a trace state variable.
2108
2109info tvariables
2110 List trace state variables and their values.
2111
2112delete tvariable $NAME ...
2113 Delete one or more trace state variables.
2114
6da95a67
SS
2115teval EXPR, ...
2116 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
2117 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
2118
7a697b8d
SS
2119ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
2120 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
2121
b0f02ee9
JK
2122* New expression syntax
2123
2124 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
2125 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
2126
6c95b8df
PA
2127* New options
2128
2129set follow-exec-mode new|same
2130show follow-exec-mode
2131 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
2132 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
2133 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
2134
236f1d4d
SS
2135set default-collect EXPR, ...
2136show default-collect
2137 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
2138 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
2139 such as registers or a critical global variable.
2140
d5551862
SS
2141set disconnected-tracing
2142show disconnected-tracing
2143 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
2144 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
2145 upon disconnection.
2146
4daf5ac0
SS
2147set circular-trace-buffer
2148show circular-trace-buffer
2149 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
2150 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
2151 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
2152 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
2153
fb2e7cb4
JB
2154set script-extension off|soft|strict
2155show script-extension
2156 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
2157 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
2158 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
2159 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
2160 evaluation failed.
2161 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
2162
2b71fc8e
JB
2163set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
2164show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
2165 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
2166 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
2167 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
2168 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
2169 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
2170 is on.
2171
de2e5182
TT
2172* Python API Improvements
2173
2174 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
2175 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
2176 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
2177
2178 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
2179 `is_base_class' attribute.
2180
2181 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
2182
2183 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
2184 evaluate an expression.
2185
f61e138d
SS
2186* New remote packets
2187
2188QTDV
2189 Define a trace state variable.
2190
2191qTV
2192 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
2193
d5551862
SS
2194QTDisconnected
2195 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
2196
4daf5ac0
SS
2197QTBuffer:circular
2198 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
2199
d5551862
SS
2200qTfP, qTsP
2201 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
2202
2d483d34
MS
2203* Bug fixes
2204
2205Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
2206
6e0e5977
JB
2207Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
2208much more reliable. In particular:
2209 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
2210 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
2211 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
2212 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
2213 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
2214 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
2215 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
2216 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
2217 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
2218 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
2219 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
2220 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
2221 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
2222 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
2223 non-threaded programs.
2224
93c26624
JK
2225PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
2226This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
2227libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
2228executable program.
2229
abc7453d 2230*** Changes in GDB 7.0
75feb17d 2231
4efc6507
DE
2232* GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
2233dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
2234them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
2235for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
2236"JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
2237
782b2b07
SS
2238* Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
2239breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
2240or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
2241the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
2242for tracepoint actions.
2243
53a71c06
CR
2244* The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
2245raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
2246modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
e6158f16 2247
e7a8dbfb
HZ
2248* Process record and replay
2249
2250 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
2251 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
2252 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
2253 execute commands.
2254
64644d9b
MS
2255* Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
2256step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
2257set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
2258reverse execution.
2259
b9412953
DD
2260* GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
2261feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
22622.6.28 or later.
2263
6c7a06a3
TT
2264* GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
2265target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
2266char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
2267literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
2268U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
2269`printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
2270system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
2271the installation instructions for more information.
2272
f1838a98
UW
2273* GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
2274remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
2275with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
2276the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
2277
55333a84
DE
2278* "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
2279and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
2280
7f6a6314
PM
2281* Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
2282now complete on file names.
2283
65d12d83
TT
2284* When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
2285completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
2286For instance, consider:
2287
2288 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
2289 # struct example variable;
2290 (gdb) p variable.
2291
2292If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
2293completions will be "f1" and "f2".
2294
edb3359d
DJ
2295* Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
2296the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
2297
2fae03e8
TT
2298* GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
2299operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
2300macros.
2301
47a3467a 2302* GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
58d6951d
DJ
2303the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
2304implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
2305
2306* GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
2307registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
2308can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
2309and simulator targets may also provide them.
47a3467a 2310
08388c79
DE
2311* New remote packets
2312
2313qSearch:memory:
2314 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
2315
a6f3e723
SL
2316QStartNoAckMode
2317 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
2318 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
2319 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
2320
d7713ae0
EZ
2321vKill
2322 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
2323 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
2324
07e059b5
VP
2325qXfer:osdata:read
2326 Obtains additional operating system information
2327
47a3467a
PA
2328qXfer:siginfo:read
2329qXfer:siginfo:write
2330 Read or write additional signal information.
2331
060871df
PA
2332* Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
2333
2334 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
2335 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
2336 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
2337
c055b101 2338* GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
a0ef4274 2339DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
c055b101
CV
2340
2341* The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
a0ef4274
DJ
2342and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
2343`set/show sh calling-convention'.
c055b101 2344
31fffb02
CS
2345* GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
2346with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
2347
88d8a8e0
JB
2348* 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
2349
7f99b190
JB
2350* Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
2351
ccd213ac
DJ
2352* Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
2353which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
2354
1fddbabb 2355* The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
31fffb02 2356list of section offsets.
1fddbabb 2357
a0ef4274
DJ
2358* On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
2359conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
2360have also been fixed.
2361
bfb8797a 2362* GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
158c7665
PH
2363From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
2364are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
bfb8797a 2365
71c25dea
TT
2366* GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
2367example, given:
2368
2369 template<typename T> class C { };
2370 C<char const *> c;
2371
2372GDB will now correctly handle all of:
2373
2374 ptype C<char const *>
2375 ptype C<char const*>
2376 ptype C<const char *>
2377 ptype C<const char*>
2378
ccd213ac
DJ
2379* New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
2380
2381 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
2382 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
2383
7ae0e2a2
UW
2384 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
2385 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
2386 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
2387
a6f3e723
SL
2388 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
2389 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
2390
da8bd9a3
DJ
2391 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
2392 gdbserver.
2393
d70e31dd
DE
2394 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
2395 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
2396
2397 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
2398 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
2399 as appropriate.
2400
d57a3c85
TJB
2401* Python scripting
2402
2403 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
2404 available is determined at configure time.
2405
d8906c6f
TJB
2406 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
2407
aadc346a
JB
2408* Ada tasking support
2409
2410 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
2411 been introduced:
2412
2413 info tasks
2414 Print the list of Ada tasks.
2415 info task N
2416 Print detailed information about task number N.
2417 task
2418 Print the task number of the current task.
2419 task N
2420 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
2421
adb483fe
DJ
2422* Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
2423add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
2424
2277426b
PA
2425* Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
2426
2427 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
2428 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
2429 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
2430 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
2431 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
2432 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
2433 below.
2434
08d16641
PA
2435* Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
2436"Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
2437information.
2438
e35359c5
UW
2439* Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
2440to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
2441architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
2442See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
2443more information.
2444
85e747d2
UW
2445* Multi-architecture debugging.
2446
2447 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
2448 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
2449 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
2450 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
2451 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
2452
2453* GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
2454use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
2455Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
2456powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
2457--enable-targets configure option.
2458
11ade57a
PA
2459* Non-stop mode debugging.
2460
2461 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
2462 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
2463 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
2464 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
2465 section in the user manual for more information.
2466
2467 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
2468 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
2469 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
2470 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
2471 extensions on linux targets.
2472
d7713ae0 2473* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
75feb17d 2474
a96d9b2e
SDJ
2475catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
2476 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
2477 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
2478 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
2479 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
2480 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
2481 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
2482 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
2483 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
2484
08388c79
DE
2485find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
2486 val1 [, val2, ...]
2487 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
2488
d57a3c85
TJB
2489maint set python print-stack
2490maint show python print-stack
2491 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
2492
2493python [CODE]
2494 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
2495
d7713ae0
EZ
2496macro define
2497macro list
2498macro undef
2499 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
2500 interactively.
2501
2502info os processes
2503 Show operating system information about processes.
2504
2277426b
PA
2505info inferiors
2506 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
2507
2508inferior NUM
2509 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
2510
2511detach inferior NUM
2512 Detach from inferior number NUM.
2513
2514kill inferior NUM
2515 Kill inferior number NUM.
2516
d7713ae0
EZ
2517* New options
2518
3285f3fe
UW
2519set spu stop-on-load
2520show spu stop-on-load
2521 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2522
ff1a52c6
UW
2523set spu auto-flush-cache
2524show spu auto-flush-cache
2525 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
2526 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2527
d7713ae0
EZ
2528set sh calling-convention
2529show sh calling-convention
2530 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
2531
e0a3ce09 2532set debug timestamp
75feb17d 2533show debug timestamp
d7713ae0
EZ
2534 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
2535
2536set disassemble-next-line
2537show disassemble-next-line
2538 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
2539 the debuggee stops.
2540
2541set remote noack-packet
2542show remote noack-packet
2543 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
2544 under "New remote packets."
2545
2546set remote query-attached-packet
2547show remote query-attached-packet
2548 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
2549
2550set remote read-siginfo-object
2551show remote read-siginfo-object
2552 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
2553 packet.
2554
2555set remote write-siginfo-object
2556show remote write-siginfo-object
2557 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
2558 packet.
2559
40ab02ce
MS
2560set remote reverse-continue
2561show remote reverse-continue
2562 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
2563
2564set remote reverse-step
2565show remote reverse-step
2566 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
2567
d7713ae0
EZ
2568set displaced-stepping
2569show displaced-stepping
2570 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
2571 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
2572 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
2573
2574set debug displaced
2575show debug displaced
2576 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
2577
2578maint set internal-error
2579maint show internal-error
2580 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
2581
2582maint set internal-warning
2583maint show internal-warning
2584 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
75feb17d 2585
ccd213ac
DJ
2586set exec-wrapper
2587show exec-wrapper
2588unset exec-wrapper
2589 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
fa4727a6 2590
aad4b048
JB
2591set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
2592show multiple-symbols
2593 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
2594 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
2595 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
2596
74960c60
VP
2597set breakpoint always-inserted
2598show breakpoint always-inserted
2599 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
2600 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
2601 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
2602
0428b8f5
DJ
2603set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2604show arm fallback-mode
2605set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2606show arm force-mode
2607 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
2608 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
2609 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
2610 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
2611
10568435
JK
2612set disable-randomization
2613show disable-randomization
2614 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
2615 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
2616 multiple debugging sessions.
2617
d7713ae0
EZ
2618set non-stop
2619show non-stop
2620 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
2621 a breakpoint.
2622
b3eb342c 2623set target-async
d7713ae0 2624show target-async
b3eb342c
VP
2625 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
2626 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
2627 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
2628 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
2629
6c7a06a3
TT
2630set target-wide-charset
2631show target-wide-charset
2632 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
2633 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
2634
84603566
SL
2635set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
2636show tcp auto-retry
2637set tcp connect-timeout
2638show tcp connect-timeout
2639 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
2640 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
2641 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
2642
17a37d48
PP
2643set libthread-db-search-path
2644show libthread-db-search-path
2645 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
2646 libthread_db.
2647
d4db2f36
PA
2648set schedule-multiple (on|off)
2649show schedule-multiple
2650 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
2651 the current process.
2652
4e5d721f
DE
2653set stack-cache
2654show stack-cache
2655 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
2656 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
2657 affecting correctness.
2658
910c5da8
JB
2659set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
2660show interactive-mode
2661 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
2662 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
2663 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
2664 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
2665 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
2666
2277426b
PA
2667* Removed commands
2668
2669info forks
2670 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
2671 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
2672 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
2673 command.
2674
2675fork NUM
2676 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
2677 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
2678 alias for the `fork' command.
2679
2680process PID
2681 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
2682 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
2683 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
2684
2685delete fork NUM
2686 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
2687 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
2688 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
2689 fork' command.
2690
2691detach fork NUM
2692 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
2693 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
2694 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
2695 fork' command.
2696
a80b95ba
TG
2697* New native configurations
2698
2699x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
2700
b8bfd3ed
JB
2701x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
2702
75a2d5e7
TT
2703* New targets
2704
c28c63d8 2705Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
75a2d5e7 2706x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
4c1d2973 2707x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
5f814c3b 2708S+core 3 score-*-*
75a2d5e7 2709
6de3146c
PA
2710* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
2711 (mingw32ce) debugging.
2712
d5cbbe6e
JB
2713* Removed commands
2714
2715catch load
2716catch unload
2717 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
2718
75feb17d 2719*** Changes in GDB 6.8
f9ed52be 2720
af5ca30d
NH
2721* New native configurations
2722
2723NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
94a0e877 2724Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d
NH
2725
2726* New targets
2727
2728NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
94a0e877 2729Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d 2730
7a404eba
PA
2731* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2732
2733 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
2734 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
2735 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
2736 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
2737
430ebac9
PA
2738* GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
2739(mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
2740
fe6fbf8b 2741* Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
8d5f9c6f 2742is resolved.
fe6fbf8b
VP
2743
2744* GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
8d5f9c6f
DJ
2745including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
2746and in inlined functions.
fe6fbf8b 2747
10665d76
JB
2748* GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
2749accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
2750more than one contiguous range of addresses.
2751
7cc46491
DJ
2752* Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
2753
d71340b8
DJ
2754* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
2755registers on PowerPC targets.
2756
523c4513
DJ
2757* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
2758targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
2759
a6b151f1
DJ
2760* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
2761commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
2762
2d717e4f
DJ
2763* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
2764extended-remote mode.
2765
24a836bd 2766* hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
d001be7a
DJ
2767The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
2768error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
2769The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
24a836bd 2770
d0c678e6
UW
2771* GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
2772building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
2773target architectures.
2774
d64a946d
TJB
2775* GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
2776Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
2777now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
2778stored in two consecutive float registers.
2779
ee163bf5
VP
2780* The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
2781breakpoints now.
2782
b93b6ca7 2783* Improved support for debugging Ada
d001be7a
DJ
2784Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
2785include:
b93b6ca7
JB
2786 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
2787 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
2788 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
2789 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
2790 of an assignment
2791 - Improved command completion in Ada
2792 - Several bug fixes
2793
d001be7a
DJ
2794* GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
2795process.
2796
a6b151f1
DJ
2797* New commands
2798
6d53d0af
JB
2799set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
2800show print frame-arguments
2801 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
2802 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
2803
a6b151f1
DJ
2804remote put
2805remote get
2806remote delete
2807 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2808
2809* New MI commands
2810
2811-target-file-put
2812-target-file-get
2813-target-file-delete
2814 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2815
2816* New remote packets
2817
2818vFile:open:
2819vFile:close:
2820vFile:pread:
2821vFile:pwrite:
2822vFile:unlink:
2823 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
d0c678e6 2824
2d717e4f
DJ
2825vAttach
2826 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
2827 mode.
2828
2829vRun
2830 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
2831
8d5f9c6f 2832*** Changes in GDB 6.7
6dd09645 2833
19d378fc
MS
2834* Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
2835bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
2836Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
2837
3a40aaa0
UW
2838* When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
2839symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
2840-Bsymbolic linker option.
2841
a6ec25f2
BW
2842* When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
2843recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
2844is not supported.
2845
6dd09645
JB
2846* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
2847frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
2848
c9bb8148
DJ
2849* GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
285032-bit or 64-bit register values.
2851
0d5de010
DJ
2852* Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
2853
23181151
DJ
2854* GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
2855target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
2856a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
2857
ea37ba09
DJ
2858* Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
2859automatically displayed as character or string data.
2860
2861* The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
2862arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
2863as strings.
e1f48ead 2864
123dc839
DJ
2865* Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
2866for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
8d5f9c6f 2867only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
123dc839 2868
05a4558a
DJ
2869* GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
2870iWMMXt coprocessor.
fb1e4ffc 2871
7c963485
PA
2872* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
2873ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
2874has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
2875
b18be20d
DJ
2876* GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
2877
0ca420ce
UW
2878* GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
2879
31d99776
DJ
2880* The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
2881layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
2882segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
2883
a4642986
MR
2884* The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
2885immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
2886
cfa9d6d9
DJ
2887* The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
2888"library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
2889packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
2890where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
2891Windows and SymbianOS).
255e7678
DJ
2892
2893* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
2894(DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
f5db8714
JK
2895
2896* GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
2897according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
cfa9d6d9 2898
c9bb8148
DJ
2899* New commands
2900
23776285
MR
2901set remoteflow
2902show remoteflow
2903 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
2904 when debugging using remote targets.
2905
c9bb8148
DJ
2906set mem inaccessible-by-default
2907show mem inaccessible-by-default
2908 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2909 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2910 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
2911 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
2912 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
2913
2914set breakpoint auto-hw
2915show breakpoint auto-hw
2916 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2917 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2918 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
2919 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
2920 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
2921 including "next" and "finish".
2922
0e420bd8
JB
2923catch exception
2924catch exception unhandled
2925 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
2926
2927catch assert
2928 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
2929
f822c95b
DJ
2930set sysroot
2931show sysroot
2932 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
2933 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
2934 an alias to "set sysroot".
2935
83cc5c53
UW
2936info spu
2937 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
2938 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
2939 architecture.
2940
bd372731
MK
2941* New native configurations
2942
2943OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
2944
23181151
DJ
2945set tdesc filename
2946unset tdesc filename
2947show tdesc filename
2948 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
2949 not query the target for its built-in description.
2950
c9bb8148
DJ
2951* New targets
2952
54fe9172 2953OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
c9bb8148 2954MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
c077150c 2955Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
c9bb8148 2956
6dd09645
JB
2957* New remote packets
2958
2959QPassSignals:
2960 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
2961 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
2962
23181151
DJ
2963qXfer:features:read:
2964 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
2965 features.
6dd09645 2966
83cc5c53
UW
2967qXfer:spu:read:
2968qXfer:spu:write:
2969 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
2970 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
2971
cfa9d6d9
DJ
2972qXfer:libraries:read:
2973 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
2974 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
2975 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
2976 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
2977
483367ee
DJ
2978* Removed targets
2979
2980Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
2981
d08950c4
UW
2982alpha*-*-osf1*
2983alpha*-*-osf2*
7ce59000 2984d10v-*-*
483367ee
DJ
2985hppa*-*-hiux*
2986i[34567]86-ncr-*
2987i[34567]86-*-dgux*
2988i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
2989i[34567]86-*-netware*
2990i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
2991i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
2992i[34567]86-*-sco*
2993i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
2994i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
2995i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
2996i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
2997i[34567]86-*-unixware*
2998i[34567]86-*-sysv*
2999i[34567]86-*-isc*
3000m68*-cisco*-*
3001m68*-tandem-*
ad527d2e 3002mips*-*-pe
483367ee 3003rs6000-*-lynxos*
ad527d2e 3004sh*-*-pe
483367ee 3005
7ce59000
DJ
3006* Other removed features
3007
3008target abug
3009target cpu32bug
3010target est
3011target rom68k
3012
3013 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
3014
ea35711c
DJ
3015target hms
3016target e7000
3017target sh3
3018target sh3e
3019
3020 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
3021 H8/300.
3022
3023target ocd
3024
3025 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
3026 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
3027 interfaces.
3028
7ce59000
DJ
3029DWARF 1 support
3030
3031 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
3032 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
3033
54d61198
DJ
3034Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
3035
3036 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
3037 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
3038 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
3039 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
3040
ea35711c
DJ
3041MIPS ".pdr" sections
3042
3043 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
3044 in debugging information.
3045
3046Scheme support
3047
3048 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
3049 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
3050
1a69e1e4
DJ
3051set mips stack-arg-size
3052set mips saved-gpreg-size
3053
3054 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
3055
6dd09645 3056*** Changes in GDB 6.6
e374b601 3057
ca3bf3bd
DJ
3058* New targets
3059
3060Xtensa xtensa-elf
9c309e77 3061Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
ca3bf3bd 3062
6aec2e11
DJ
3063* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
3064(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
3065running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
3066
3067* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
3068Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
3069supported.
3070
17218d91
DJ
3071* The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
3072broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
3073
9ebce043
DJ
3074* The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
3075stub provides the required support.
3076
7d3d3ece
DJ
3077* Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
3078longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
3079
4f8253f3
JB
3080* New commands
3081
3082set substitute-path
3083unset substitute-path
3084show substitute-path
3085 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
3086 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
3087 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
3088 between compilation and debugging.
3089
9fa66fd7
AS
3090set trace-commands
3091show trace-commands
3092 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
3093 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
3094 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
3095
1f5befc1
DJ
3096* REMOVED features
3097
3098The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
3099
2ec3381a
DJ
3100Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
3101an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
3102
3d00d119
DJ
3103The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
3104
be2a5f71
DJ
3105* New remote packets
3106
3107qSupported:
3108 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
3109 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
3110 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
3111 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
3112 target.
3113
0876f84a
DJ
3114qXfer:auxv:read:
3115 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
3116 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
3117
9ebce043
DJ
3118qXfer:memory-map:read:
3119 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
3120 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
3121
3122vFlashErase:
3123vFlashWrite:
3124vFlashDone:
3125 Erase and program a flash memory device.
3126
0876f84a
DJ
3127* Removed remote packets
3128
3129qPart:auxv:read:
3130 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
3131 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
3132
e374b601 3133*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 3134
96309189
MS
3135* New targets
3136
3137Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
3138
3139Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
3140
53e5f3cf
AS
3141* New commands
3142
3143init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
3144 only if it doesn't already have a value.
3145
ac264b3b
MS
3146The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
3147
3148checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
3149
3150restart <n> Return the program state to a
3151 previously saved state.
3152
3153info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
3154
3155delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
3156
3157set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
3158 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
3159
3160info forks List forks of the user program that
3161 are available to be debugged.
3162
3163fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
3164 forks of the user program that are
3165 available to be debugged.
3166
3167delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
3168 that are available to be debugged (and
3169 kill the forked process).
3170
3171detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
3172 that are available to be debugged (and
3173 allow the process to continue).
3174
3950dc3f
NS
3175* New architecture
3176
3177Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
3178
0ea3f30e
DJ
3179* Improved Windows host support
3180
3181GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
3182native console support, and remote communications using either
3183network sockets or serial ports.
3184
f79daebb
GM
3185* Improved Modula-2 language support
3186
3187GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
3188basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
3189pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
3190printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
3191written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
3192GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
3193
acab6ab2
MM
3194* REMOVED features
3195
3196The ARM rdi-share module.
3197
f4267320
DJ
3198The Netware NLM debug server.
3199
53e5f3cf 3200*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 3201
e0ecbda1
MK
3202* New native configurations
3203
02a677ac 3204OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
e0ecbda1
MK
3205OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
3206
d64a6579
KB
3207* New targets
3208
3209Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
3210
b33a6190
AS
3211* New command line options
3212
3213--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
3214--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
3215 the child (debugged) program exited with.
3216--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
3217 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
3218 specified multiple times and in conjunction
3219 with the --command (-x) option.
3220
11dced61
AC
3221* Deprecated commands removed
3222
3223The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
3224removed:
3225
3226 Command Replacement
3227 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
3228 othernames set arm disassembler
3229 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
3230 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
3231 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
3232 regs info registers
3233
6fe85783
MK
3234* New BSD user-level threads support
3235
3236It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
3237library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
3238configurations are:
3239
3240FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3241FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
3242OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
3243
3244Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
3245are not yet supported.
3246
5260ca71
MS
3247* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
3248(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
3249
e84ecc99
AC
3250* REMOVED configurations and files
3251
3252VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 3253Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 3254National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 3255
31e35378
JB
3256* New "set print array-indexes" command
3257
3258After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
3259when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
3260behavior.
3261
e85e5c83
MK
3262* VAX floating point support
3263
3264GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
3265
d91e9901
AS
3266* User-defined command support
3267
3268In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
3269to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
3270section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
3271
f2cb65ca
MC
3272*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
3273
f47b1503
AS
3274* New command line option
3275
3276GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
3277debugging.
3278
f2cb65ca
MC
3279* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
3280
3281GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
3282information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
3283by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
3284proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
3285to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 3286
d08c0230
AC
3287* Internationalization
3288
3289When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
3290internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
3291continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
3292
117ea3cf
PH
3293* Ada
3294
3295Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
3296implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
3297into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
3298
d08c0230
AC
3299* New native configurations
3300
3301GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
3302
3303* Remote 'p' packet
3304
3305GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
3306packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
3307
3308* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
3309
3310GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
3311The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
3312features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
3313i386 application).
3314
3315GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
3316compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
3317continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
3318configurations:
3319
3320hppa-*-hpux
3321ia64-*-aix
3322mips-*-irix*
3323*-*-lynx
3324mips-*-linux-gnu
3325sds protocol
3326xdr protocol
3327powerpc bdm protocol
3328
3329Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
3330made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
3331
3332* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3333
3334Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3335been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3336configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3337permanently REMOVED.
3338
3339h8300-*-*
3340mcore-*-*
3341mn10300-*-*
3342ns32k-*-*
3343sh64-*-*
3344v850-*-*
3345
ebb7c577
AC
3346*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
3347
3348* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
3349
3350When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
3351heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
3352been fixed.
3353
3354* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
3355
3356When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
3357fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
3358IRIX long double values).
3359
3360* VAX and "next"
3361
3362A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
3363command. This problem has been fixed.
3364
860660cb 3365*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 3366
0dea2468
AC
3367* Fix for ``many threads''
3368
3369On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
3370rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
3371error message:
3372
3373 ptrace: No such process.
3374 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
3375
3376This problem has been fixed.
3377
2c07db7a
AC
3378* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
3379
3380Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
3381GDB to dump core).
3382
c23968a2
JB
3383* New ``start'' command.
3384
3385This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
3386
71009278
MK
3387* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
3388
3389Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
3390live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
3391platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
3392
3393FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3394FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
3395NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
3396NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
3397NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
3398OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
3399OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
3400OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
3401OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
3402
3c0b7db2
AC
3403* Signal trampoline code overhauled
3404
3405Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
3406These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
3407of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
3408call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
3409signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
3410
73cc75f3
AC
3411Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
3412features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
3413include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 3414
7243600a
BF
3415* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
3416
6f606e1c
MK
3417* New native configurations
3418
97dc871c 3419GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 3420OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
bf2ca189
MK
3421OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
3422OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 3423OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 3424NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 3425OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 3426
a1b461bf
AC
3427* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
3428
3429GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
3430The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
3431including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
3432migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
3433compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
3434work, was also included.
3435
3436GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
3437module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
3438
3439h8300-*-*
3440mcore-*-*
3441mn10300-*-*
3442ns32k-*-*
3443sh64-*-*
3444v850-*-*
3445xstormy16-*-*
3446
3447Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
3448made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
3449
3c7012f5
AC
3450* REMOVED configurations and files
3451
3452Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3453Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3454Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3455Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3456Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3457AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3458Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
3459decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3460riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3461sonymips mips-sony-*
3462sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
3463
e5fe55f7
AC
3464*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
3465
3466* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
3467
3468The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
3469GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
3470command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
3471program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
3472with GDB".
3473
3474* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
3475
3476Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
3477libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
3478cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
3479GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
3480shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
3481the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
3482are created.
3483
3484Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
3485
3486* Fixed ISO-C build problems
3487
3488The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
3489non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
3490compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
3491
3492* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
3493
3494Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
3495wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
3496
3497* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
3498
3499The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
3500permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
3501systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
3502
3503* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
3504
3505Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
3506has been updated to use constant array sizes.
3507
3508* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
3509
3510GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
3511its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
3512panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
3513
3514* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
3515
3516When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
3517by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
3518not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
3519
faae5abe 3520*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 3521
9175c9a3
MC
3522* Removed --with-mmalloc
3523
3524Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
3525conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
3526
3cc87ec0
MK
3527* Changes in AMD64 configurations
3528
3529The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
3530the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
3531and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
3532you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
3533
f0424ef6
MK
3534* Revised SPARC target
3535
3536The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
3537FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
03cebad2
MK
3538support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
3539from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
3540(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 3541
59659be2
ILT
3542* New C++ demangler
3543
3544GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
3545names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
3546with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
3547programs.
3548
9e08b29b
DJ
3549* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3550
3551GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
3552arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
3553encountered these.
3554
8dfe8985
DC
3555* C++ nested types and namespaces
3556
3557GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
3558improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
3559is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
3560Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
3561namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
3562"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
3563frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
3564if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
3565GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
3566
cced5e27
MK
3567* New native configurations
3568
3569NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 3570OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 3571OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
f2cab569
MK
3572OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
3573OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 3574
b4b4b794
KI
3575* New debugging protocols
3576
3577M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
3578
7989c619
AC
3579* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
3580
3581The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
3582and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
3583tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
3584
5994185b
AC
3585* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3586
3587Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3588been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3589configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3590permanently REMOVED.
3591
3592Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3593Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3594Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3595Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3596Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3597AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3598Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
0748d941
AC
3599decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3600riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3601sonymips mips-sony-*
3602sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 3603
0ddabb4c
AC
3604* REMOVED configurations and files
3605
3606SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
3607SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4a8269c0
AC
3608Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3609Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3610H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3611HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3612HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3613HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
3614PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 3615386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4a8269c0
AC
3616Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3617 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3618 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f0424ef6
MK
3619SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
3620SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4a8269c0
AC
3621Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3622Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 3623
c7f1390e
DJ
3624*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
3625
1fe43d45
AC
3626* Objective-C
3627
3628Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
3629integrated into GDB.
3630
e6beb428
AC
3631* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
3632
3633DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
3634information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
3635By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
3636backtraces.
3637
3638The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
3639have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
3640DWARF 2 CFI support.
3641
3642* Hosted file I/O.
3643
3644GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
3645file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
3646remote protocol documentation for details.
3647
3648* All targets using the new architecture framework.
3649
3650All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
3651architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
3652to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
3653ppc32 on ppc64).
3654
3655* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
3656
3657GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
3658per-thread variables.
3659
3660* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
3661
3662GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
3663GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
3664
3665* Separate debug info.
3666
3667GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
3668automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
3669of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
3670system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
3671and optional debug files.
3672
3673* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3674
3675DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
3676describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
3677debugger.
3678
3679GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
3680for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
3681
3682* Java
3683
3684A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
3685Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
3686considered "useable".
3687
85f8f974
DJ
3688* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
3689
3690The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
3691commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
3692kernel.
3693
0fac0b41
DJ
3694* GDB supports logging output to a file
3695
3696There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
3697used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 3698
6ad8ae5c
DJ
3699* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
3700
3701The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
3702disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
3703command.
3704
e286caf2 3705* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5f601589
AC
3706
3707The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
3708registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
3709
d28f9cdf
DJ
3710* Profiling support
3711
3712A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
3713be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
3714session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
3715"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
3716data, for more informative profiling results.
3717
da0f9dcd
AC
3718* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
3719
3720The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
3721option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 3722"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
da0f9dcd
AC
3723
3724Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
3725removed.
3726
fb9b6b35
JJ
3727Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
3728Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
3729Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
3730 in a subsequent -var-update.
3731
954a4db8
MK
3732* New native configurations.
3733
3734FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3735
6760f9e6
JB
3736* Multi-arched targets.
3737
b4263afa 3738HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 3739Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 3740
1b831c93
AC
3741* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3742
3743Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3744been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3745configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3746permanently REMOVED.
3747
8b0e5691 3748Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 3749Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 3750H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
56056df7
AC
3751HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3752HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3753HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 3754PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
AC
3755Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3756 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3757 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
AC
3758Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3759Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 3760
5835abe7
NC
3761* REMOVED configurations and files
3762
3763V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
3764Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3765IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
3766i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3767i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3768i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
3769HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3770 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
3771 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
3772Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3773Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3774Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3775OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3776I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 3777
a094c6fb
AC
3778* MIPS $fp behavior changed
3779
3780The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
3781the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
3782context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
3783address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
3784The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
3785
299ffc64 3786*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 3787
46248966
AC
3788* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
3789
3790When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
3791`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
3792in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
3793library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
3794shared libs like mad''.
3795
b9d14705 3796* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 3797
b9d14705
DJ
3798Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
3799the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
3800arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
3801powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 3802
e0e9281e
JB
3803* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
3804
3805GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
3806and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
3807they expand.
3808
dd73b9bb
AC
3809The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
3810invocations in expression, and shows the result.
3811
3812The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
3813macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
3814
e0e9281e
JB
3815Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
3816information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
3817your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
3818information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
3819
2250ee0c
CV
3820* Multi-arched targets.
3821
6e3ba3b8
JT
3822DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
3823DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 3824NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 3825National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
3826Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
3827Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 3828
cd9bfe15 3829* New targets.
e33ce519 3830
456f8b9d
DB
3831Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
3832
e33ce519 3833
da8ca43d
JT
3834* New native configurations
3835
3836Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 3837SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 3838MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 3839UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 3840
cd9bfe15
AC
3841* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3842
3843Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3844been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3845configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3846permanently REMOVED.
3847
92eb23c5 3848Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 3849OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 3850IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 3851Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 3852Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 3853Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
3854i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3855i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3856i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
3857HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3858 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
3859 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 3860I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 3861
db034ac5
AC
3862* OBSOLETE languages
3863
3864CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
3865
cd9bfe15
AC
3866* REMOVED configurations and files
3867
3868AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3869A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3870AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3871AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3872AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3873
3874testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
3875
20f01a46
DH
3876* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
3877
3878This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
3879commands. The default is 1024.
3880
a5941fbf
MK
3881* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
3882
3883Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
3884
89743e04
MS
3885* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
3886
3887These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
3888to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
3889from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 3890
9fb14e79
JB
3891* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
3892
3893The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
3894including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
3895of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
3896
2037aebb
AC
3897*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
3898
3899* New targets.
3900
3901Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
3902
3903* Bug fixes
3904
3905gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
3906mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
3907Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
3908
3909gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
3910dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
3911Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
3912
3913Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
3914Surprisingly enough, it works now.
3915By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
3916
3917i386 hardware watchpoint support:
3918avoid misses on second run for some targets.
3919By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
3920
37057839 3921*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 3922
1a703748
MS
3923* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
3924
3925This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
3926really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
3927In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
3928target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
3929This can be a significant performance improvement on some
3930(notably embedded) targets.
3931
cefd4ef5
MS
3932* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
3933
55241689
AC
3934This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
3935process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
3936GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
3937hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 3938
352ed7b4
MS
3939* New command line option
3940
3941GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
3942
3943* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
3944
3945There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
3946command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
3947a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
3948be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
3949open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
3950issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
3951a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
3952it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
3953GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
3954is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
3955
fe419ffc
RE
3956* Changes in ARM configurations.
3957
3958Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
3959configuration is fully multi-arch.
3960
eb7cedd9
MK
3961* New native configurations
3962
fe419ffc 3963ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 3964x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 3965AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 3966Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 3967
c9f63e6b
CV
3968* New targets
3969
3970Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
3971
9b4ff276
AC
3972* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3973
3974Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3975been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3976configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3977permanently REMOVED.
3978
3979AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3980A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3981AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3982AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3983AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3984
b4ceaee6 3985testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 3986
e2caac18
AC
3987* REMOVED configurations and files
3988
3989TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 3990WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
3991PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3992PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3993PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 3994Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
3995Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
3996 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 3997SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 3998Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
3999Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4000ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 4001Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 4002
c2a727fa
TT
4003* Changes to command line processing
4004
4005The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
4006for the inferior from gdb's command line.
4007
467d8519
TT
4008* Changes to key bindings
4009
4010There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
4011
7072a954
AC
4012*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
4013
4014Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
4015
4016Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
4017corrupted.
4018
4019Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
4020
4021Numerous documentation fixes.
4022
4023Numerous testsuite fixes.
4024
34f47bc4 4025*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
4026
4027* New native configurations
4028
4029Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
4030x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 4031MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
4032MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4033ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 4034s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 4035
bf64bfd6
AC
4036* New targets
4037
def90278 4038Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 4039CRIS cris-axis
55241689 4040UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 4041
17e78a56 4042* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
4043
4044x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 4045Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
4046Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
4047 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
4048TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4049WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 4050Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
4051PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4052PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4053PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 4054SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
4055Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4056ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 4057Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 4058
17e78a56
AC
4059stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
4060kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
4061
7fcca85b
AC
4062Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4063been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4064configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4065permanently REMOVED.
4066
a196c81c 4067* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
4068
4069Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
4070Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
4071Pyramid pyramid-*-*
4072ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
4073Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 4074ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 4075
6d6b80e5 4076* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 4077
6d6b80e5 4078GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
4079sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
4080present.
4081
bf64bfd6
AC
4082* Other news:
4083
e23194cb
EZ
4084* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
4085
4086* The MI enabled by default.
4087
4088The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
4089revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
4090engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
4091using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
4092which is now deprecated.
4093
4094* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
4095
4096GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
4097main features are supported:
4098
4099 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
4100
4101 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
4102 extension;
4103
4104 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
4105
4106 - a Pascal expression parser.
4107
4108However, some important features are not yet supported.
4109
4110 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
4111
4112 - there are some problems with boolean types;
4113
4114 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
4115 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
4116
4117 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
4118
4119 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
4120
4121* Changes in completion.
4122
4123Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
4124to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
4125users expect at the shell prompt.
4126
4127Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
4128`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
4129program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
4130files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
4131be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
4132considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
4133name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
4134
4135`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
4136
4137* New platform-independent commands:
4138
4139It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
4140hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
4141documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
4142
4143* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
4144
d7275149
MK
4145Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
4146revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
4147many threads as your system allows you to have.
4148
e23194cb
EZ
4149Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
4150
d7275149
MK
4151Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
4152multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
4153
4154* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
4155
4156Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
4157
e23194cb
EZ
4158GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
4159debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
4160supported.)
4161
4162* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
4163
4164Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
4165breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
4166implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
4167put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
4168and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
4169registers.
4170
4171The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
4172debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
4173watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
4174
4175* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
4176
4177New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
4178the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
4179
4180New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
4181display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
4182IDT.
4183
4184New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
4185from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
4186New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
4187a given linear address.
4188
4189GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
4190program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
4191which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
4192
4193DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
4194
6c56c069
EZ
4195It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
4196
e23194cb
EZ
4197* Changes in documentation.
4198
4199All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
4200Documentation License.
4201
4202Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
4203manual.
4204
4205TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
4206
4207Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
4208manual.
4209
4210The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
4211documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
4212hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
4213
5d6640b1
AC
4214* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
4215
4216The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
4217``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
4218contents of this file.
4219
1a1d8446
AC
4220* gdba.el deleted
4221
4222GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 4223
9debab2f 4224*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 4225
c63ce875
EZ
4226* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
4227
4228Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
4229programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
4230displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
4231greater level of detail.
4232
4233* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
4234
4235It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
4236bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
4237on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
4238written.
4239
4240* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
4241
4242The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
4243necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
4244machines ``out of the box''.
4245
4246The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
4247possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
4248signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
4249would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
4250interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
4251
4252It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
4253standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
4254even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
4255and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
4256terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
4257
4258The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
4259enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
4260also works.
4261
4262DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
4263GDB.
4264
4265It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
4266directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
4267times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
4268breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
4269
ed9a39eb
JM
4270* New native configurations
4271
4272ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 4273PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 4274
7a292a7a
SS
4275* New targets
4276
96baa820 4277Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
4278x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
4279PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
4280TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4281
085dd6e6
JM
4282* OBSOLETE configurations
4283
4284Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
4285Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 4286Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 4287ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 4288Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 4289
9debab2f
AC
4290Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
4291but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
4292these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
4293be permanently REMOVED.
4294
5330533d
SS
4295* Gould support removed
4296
4297Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
4298
bc9e5bbf
AC
4299* New features for SVR4
4300
4301On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
4302without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
4303load symbols from the running process's executable file.
4304
4305* Many C++ enhancements
4306
4307C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
4308in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
4309
adf40b2e
JM
4310* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
4311
4312A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
4313sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
4314with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
4315``|<program> <args>'' vis:
4316
4317 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
4318 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
4319
43e526b9
JM
4320* MIPS 64 remote protocol
4321
4322A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
4323expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
4324instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
4325
4326The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
4327added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
4328
96baa820
JM
4329* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
4330
4331The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
4332``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
4333include ``set remote P-packet''.
4334
11cf8741
JM
4335* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
4336
4337The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
4338accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
4339``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
4340
7876dd43
DB
4341* ``apropos'' command added.
4342
4343The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
4344documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
4345try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
4346
bc9e5bbf
AC
4347* New MI interface
4348
4349A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
4350interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
4351process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
4352"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
4353enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
4354
4355 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
4356
c906108c
SS
4357*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
4358
4359* New native configurations
4360
4361HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
4362HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 4363M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
4364
4365* New targets
4366
4367Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4368Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
4369Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4370
4371* OBSOLETE configurations
4372
4373Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
4374
4375Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
4376but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
4377these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
4378be permanently REMOVED.
4379
4380* ANSI/ISO C
4381
4382As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
4383buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
4384containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
4385use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
4386available. If this is not true, please report the affected
4387configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
4388information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
4389already.
4390
4391* Readline 2.2
4392
4393GDB now uses readline 2.2.
4394
4395* set extension-language
4396
4397You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
4398languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
4399you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
4400 set extension-language .c c++
4401The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
4402and their associated languages.
4403
4404* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
4405
4406When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
4407you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
4408PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
4409
4410 set processor NAME
4411
4412sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
4413following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
4414
4415 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
4416 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
4417 403 IBM PowerPC 403
4418 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
4419 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
4420 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
4421 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
4422 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
4423 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
4424 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
4425 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
4426
4427At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
4428special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
4429registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
4430only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
4431
4432* HP-UX support
4433
4434Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
4435more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
4436library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
4437support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
4438for xdb and dbx commands.
4439
4440* Catchpoints
4441
4442HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
4443generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
4444to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
4445
4446This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
4447argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
4448output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
4449
4450* Debugging across forks
4451
4452On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
4453in the inferior.
4454
4455* TUI
4456
4457HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
4458it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
4459configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
4460
4461* GDB remote protocol additions
4462
4463A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
4464Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
4465fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
4466allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
4467
4468For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
4469full 64-bit address. The command
4470
4471 set remoteaddresssize 32
4472
4473can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
4474the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
4475will be discarded.
4476
4477In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
4478command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
4479
4480 maint packet heythere
4481
4482sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
4483disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
4484time.
4485
4486The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
4487target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
4488downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
4489
4490* Tracing can collect general expressions
4491
4492You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
4493further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
4494doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
4495
4496* mask-address variable for Mips
4497
4498For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
4499a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
4500of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
4501
4502* Higher serial baud rates
4503
4504GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
4505230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
4506to achieve all of these rates.)
4507
4508* i960 simulator
4509
4510The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
4511builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
4512
4513
4514*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
4515
4516* New native configurations
4517
4518Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
4519Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
4520Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4521PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
4522PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4523Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
4524Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
4525
4526* New targets
4527
4528Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4529Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
4530Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4531Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
4532MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
4533MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
4534MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
4535Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
4536Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
4537Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4538NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
4539
4540* New debugging protocols
4541
4542ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
4543M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
4544DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
4545PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4546PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4547Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4548
4549* DWARF 2
4550
4551All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
4552format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
4553information.
4554
4555* Java frontend
4556
4557GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
4558only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
4559
4560* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
4561
4562For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
4563loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
4564locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
4565
4566* Live range splitting
4567
4568GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
4569range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
4570more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
4571
4572* Hurd support
4573
4574GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
4575updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
4576
4577* ARM Thumb support
4578
4579GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
4580instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
4581instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
4582accordingly.
4583
4584* MIPS16 support
4585
4586GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
4587instruction set.
4588
4589* Overlay support
4590
4591GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
4592linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
4593will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
4594control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
4595additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
4596in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
4597
4598* info symbol
4599
4600The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
4601the symbol at the specified address.
4602
4603* Trace support
4604
4605The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
4606asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
4607extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
4608includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
4609file tracepoint.c for more details.
4610
4611* MIPS simulator
4612
4613Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
4614by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
4615of most MIPS variants.
4616
4617* Sparc simulator
4618
4619Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
4620by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
4621Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
4622
4623* set architecture
4624
4625For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
4626basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
4627architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
4628the possible architectures.
4629
4630*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
4631
4632* New native configurations
4633
4634Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
4635M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
4636PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
4637PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
4638PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4639RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
4640
4641* New targets
4642
4643ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
4644I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4645MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
4646MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
4647PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
4648Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
4649Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4650
4651* PowerPC simulator
4652
4653The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
4654contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
4655PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
4656basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
4657performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
4658
4659* Solaris 2.5
4660
4661GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
4662
4663* Windows 95/NT native
4664
4665GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
4666To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
4667which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
4668Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
4669ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
4670
4671* dont-repeat command
4672
4673If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
4674command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
4675useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
4676extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
4677
4678* Send break instead of ^C
4679
4680The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
4681rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
4682GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
4683
4684* Remote protocol timeout
4685
4686The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
4687that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
4688to read from the target. The default value is 2.
4689
4690* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
4691
4692By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
4693loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
4694stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
4695when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
4696in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
4697
4698Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
4699/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
4700automatically on hpux10.
4701
4702* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
4703
4704Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
4705
4706* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
4707
4708When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
4709may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
4710the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
4711every character. The default value is 1050.
4712
4713* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
4714
4715If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
4716a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
4717replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
4718details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
4719remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
4720to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
4721
4722* Speedups for remote debugging
4723
4724GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
4725the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
4726and more efficient S-record downloading.
4727
4728* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
4729
4730GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
4731Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
4732
4733*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
4734
4735* Psymtabs for XCOFF
4736
4737The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
4738can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
4739
4740* Remote targets use caching
4741
4742Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
4743remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
4744it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
4745debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
4746off' turns the the data cache off.
4747
4748* Remote targets may have threads
4749
4750The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
4751in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
4752gdb/remote.c for details.
4753
4754* NetROM support
4755
4756If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
4757support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
4758acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
4759write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
4760support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
4761another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
4762sequence is something like
4763
4764 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
4765 load <prog>
4766 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
4767
4768* Macintosh host
4769
4770GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
4771may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
4772it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
4773available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
4774device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
4775directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
4776scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
4777mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
4778
4779* Autoconf
4780
4781GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
4782but does simplify configuration and building.
4783
4784* hpux10
4785
4786GDB now supports hpux10.
4787
4788*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
4789
4790* New native configurations
4791
4792x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
4793x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
4794NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
4795Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
4796
4797* New targets
4798
4799A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4800HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
4801CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
4802PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
4803WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4804
4805* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
4806
4807GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
4808possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
4809filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
4810the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
4811if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
4812
4813* Arguments to user-defined commands
4814
4815User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
4816Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
4817trivial example:
4818define adder
4819 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
4820
4821To execute the command use:
4822adder 1 2 3
4823
4824Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
4825Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
4826use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
4827
4828* New `if' and `while' commands
4829
4830This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
4831commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
4832expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
4833execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
4834terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
4835`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
4836if the expression is zero.
4837
4838* Fortran source language mode
4839
4840GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
4841Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
4842variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
4843with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
4844Fortran compilers.
4845
4846* Better HPUX support
4847
4848Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
4849running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
4850processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
4851for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
4852that behavior do the following before running the program:
4853
4854 adb -w a.out
4855 __dld_flags?W 0x5
4856 control-d
4857
4858This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
4859To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
4860
4861 adb -w a.out
4862 __dld_flags?W 0x4
4863 control-d
4864
4865You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
4866the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
4867external linkage.
4868
4869GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
4870HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
4871
4872* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
4873
4874You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
4875commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
4876current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
4877"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
4878associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
4879configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
4880
4881* New DOS host serial code
4882
4883This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
4884no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
4885a PC's serial port.
4886
4887*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
4888
4889* New "complete" command
4890
4891This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
4892were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
4893
4894* Trailing space optional in prompt
4895
4896"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
4897allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
4898
4899* Breakpoint hit counts
4900
4901"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
4902has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
4903can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
4904to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
4905less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
4906that breakpoint.
4907
4908* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
4909
4910"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
4911an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
4912arrays actually contain only short strings.
4913
4914* Shared library breakpoints
4915
4916In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
4917breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
4918
4919* Hardware watchpoints
4920
4921There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
4922targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
4923
55241689 4924Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
4925
4926* Annotations
4927
4928Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
4929and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
4930
4931* Improved Irix 5 support
4932
4933GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
4934
4935* Improved HPPA support
4936
4937GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
4938
4939* New native configurations
4940
4941Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
4942HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4943Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
4944RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
4945
4946* New targets
4947
4948OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4949MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
4950Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
4951
4952* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
4953
4954There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
4955This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
4956
4957* Fixes
4958
4959As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
4960and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
4961
4962*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
4963
4964* Irix 5 is now supported
4965
4966* HPPA support
4967
4968GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
4969to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
4970GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
4971of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
4972can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
4973
4974
4975*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
4976
4977* User visible changes:
4978
4979* Remote Debugging
4980
4981The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
4982target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
4983debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
4984integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
4985debugging info for the mips target).
4986
4987* DEC Alpha native support
4988
4989GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
4990debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
4991work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
4992Alpha-specific notes.
4993
4994* Preliminary thread implementation
4995
4996GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
4997
4998* LynxOS native and target support for 386
4999
5000This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
5001to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
5002for details).
5003
5004* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
5005
5006This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
5007mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
5008call methods, ...etc.
5009
5010*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
5011
5012 * User visible changes:
5013
5014Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
5015supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
5016other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
5017somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
5018
5019Filename completion now works.
5020
5021When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
5022arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
5023addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
5024
5025All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
5026vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
5027should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
5028your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
5029to be on the far side of a thin network line.
5030
5031 * DEC alpha support
5032
5033This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
5034cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
5035
5036
5037*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
5038
5039 * Testsuite
5040
5041This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
5042The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
5043via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
5044
5045 * C++ demangling
5046
5047'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
5048emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
5049Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
5050disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
5051use gdb with AT&T cfront.
5052
5053 * Simulators
5054
5055GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
5056So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
5057Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
5058
5059 * New targets supported
5060
5061H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5062H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
5063SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
5064Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
5065IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
5066
5067Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
5068version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
5069GO32 memory extender.
5070
5071 * New remote protocols
5072
5073MIPS remote debugging protocol.
5074
5075 * New source languages supported
5076
5077This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
5078used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
5079into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
5080
5081
5082*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
5083
5084 * HP Precision Architecture supported
5085
5086GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
5087version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
5088University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
5089compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
5090format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
5091(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
5092
5093Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
5094
5095 * Faster and better demangling
5096
5097We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
5098demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
5099character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
5100only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
5101This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
5102increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
5103symbol lookups.
5104
5105`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
5106from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
5107compiler does not actually implement.
5108
5109 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
5110
5111In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
5112inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
5113recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
5114very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
5115The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
5116circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
5117fix.
5118
5119The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
5120release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
5121
5122 * Improved configure script
5123
5124The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
5125you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
5126host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
5127done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
5128
5129We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
5130version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
5131`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
5132The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
5133only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
5134We hope to make this the default in a future release.
5135
5136 * Documentation improvements
5137
5138There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
5139produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
5140before submitting changes.
5141
5142The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
5143M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
5144`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
5145you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
5146a future texinfo-X.Y release.
5147
5148*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
5149We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
5150been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
5151or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
5152`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
5153around this problem.
5154
5155 * New features
5156
5157GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
5158the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
5159`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
5160the target program.
5161
5162The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
5163how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
5164
5165 * New native hosts supported
5166
5167HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
5168386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
5169
5170 * New targets supported
5171
5172AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
5173
5174 * New file formats supported
5175
5176BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
5177HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
5178
5179 * Major bug fixes
5180
5181Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
5182
5183We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
5184printf_filtered("%s") problems.
5185
5186We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
5187for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
5188release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
5189
5190You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
5191will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
5192
5193We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
5194for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
5195especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
5196libraries.
5197
5198The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
5199information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
5200command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
5201any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
5202when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
5203
5204 * Internal improvements
5205
5206GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
5207debugging of multiple languages in the future.
5208
5209GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
5210Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
5211symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
5212contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
5213shared code that handles any of them.
5214
5215 * New command line options
5216
5217We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
5218
5219 * Mmalloc licensing
5220
5221The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
5222General Public License.
5223
5224*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
5225
5226 * Host/native/target split
5227
5228GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
5229hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
5230target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
5231local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
5232ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
5233
5234The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
5235GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
5236is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
5237code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
5238any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
5239built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
5240handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
5241
5242GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
5243It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
5244plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
5245
5246 * New hosts supported
5247
5248HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
5249386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
5250386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
5251
5252 * New targets supported
5253
5254Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
525568030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
5256
5257 * New native hosts supported
5258
5259386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
5260 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
5261386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
5262
5263 * New file formats supported
5264
5265BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
5266supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
5267format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
5268
5269 * New commands
5270
5271`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
5272`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
5273These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
5274
5275`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
5276
5277You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
5278scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
5279prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
5280executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
5281
5282 * C++ improvements
5283
5284We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
5285info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
5286symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
5287
5288Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
5289
5290 * Major bug fixes
5291
5292The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
5293fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
5294by the compiler.
5295
5296We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
5297support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
5298
5299John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
5300slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
5301that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
5302purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
5303the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
5304mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
5305
5306Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
5307about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
5308completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
5309we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
5310
5311 * AMD 29k support
5312
5313A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
5314specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
5315calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
5316usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
5317in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
5318
5319We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
5320Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
5321of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
5322resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
5323
5324 * Remote interfaces
5325
5326We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
5327with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
5328message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
5329This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
5330needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
5331breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
5332each instruction being stepped through.
5333
5334The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
5335registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
5336
5337There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
5338find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
5339Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
5340processor with a serial port.
5341
5342 * Configuration
5343
5344Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
5345`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
5346supported, and what files each one uses.
5347
5348 * Library changes
5349
5350There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
5351disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
5352Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
5353disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
5354
5355The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
5356Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
5357can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
5358grants all the rights from the General Public License.
5359
5360 * Documentation
5361
5362The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
5363reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
5364as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
5365encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
5366system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
5367bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
5368
5369And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
5370
5371
5372*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
5373
5374 * Better support for C++ function names
5375
5376GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
5377names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
5378(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
5379single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
5380Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
5381
5382GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
5383the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
5384You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
5385lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
5386for the list of formats.
5387
5388 * G++ symbol mangling problem
5389
5390Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
5391C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
5392directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
5393can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
5394usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
5395about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
5396this problem.)
5397
5398 * New 'maintenance' command
5399
5400All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
5401the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
5402can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
5403
5404 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
5405 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
5406 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
5407 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
5408 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
5409 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
5410
5411The following commands are new:
5412
5413 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
5414 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
5415 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
5416
5417 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
5418
5419We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
5420(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
5421be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
5422read after argv processing.
5423
5424 * New hosts supported
5425
5426Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
5427
55241689 5428GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
5429
5430We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
5431is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
5432for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
5433masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
5434fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
5435It costs extra.
5436
5437 * New targets supported
5438
5439Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5440
5441 * More smarts about finding #include files
5442
5443GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
5444all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
5445greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
5446especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
5447the one that contains your sources.
5448
5449We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
5450breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
5451try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
5452
5453 * Interesting infernals change
5454
5455GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
5456section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
5457target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
5458stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
5459
5460 * Bug fixes (of course!)
5461
5462There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
5463 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
5464 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
5465
5466See the ChangeLog for details.
5467
5468*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
5469
5470 * New machines supported (host and target)
5471
5472IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
5473
5474SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
5475
5476 * New malloc package
5477
5478GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
5479Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
5480capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
5481This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
5482pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
5483more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
5484
5485 * info proc
5486
5487The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
5488'help info proc' for details.
5489
5490 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
5491
5492The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
5493Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
5494possible.
5495
5496 * File name changes for MS-DOS
5497
5498Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
5499support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
5500conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
5501environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
5502that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
5503in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
5504
5505 * Cross byte order fixes
5506
5507Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
5508targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
5509
5510 * New -mapped and -readnow options
5511
5512If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
5513system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
5514`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
5515program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
5516called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
5517Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
5518and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
5519the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
5520option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
5521starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
5522
5523You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
5524the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
5525information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
5526slower, but makes future operations faster.
5527
5528The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
5529build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
5530A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
5531use is:
5532
5533 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
5534
5535The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
5536It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
5537shared across multiple host platforms.
5538
5539 * longjmp() handling
5540
5541GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
5542siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
5543all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
5544platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
5545
5546 * Solaris 2.0
5547
5548Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
5549this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
5550reading symbols.
5551
5552 * Bug fixes
5553
5554As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
5555People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
5556crashes and trashed symbol tables.
5557
5558*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
5559
5560 * New machines supported (host and target)
5561
5562SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5563 (except core files)
5564BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
5565Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
5566
5567 * New machines supported (target)
5568
5569AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5570
5571 * C++ support
5572
5573GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
5574The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
5575per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
5576
5577GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
5578`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
5579extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
5580good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
5581will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
5582released.
5583
5584 * New features for SVR4
5585
5586GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
5587shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
5588only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
5589
5590The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
5591on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
5592it prints the address mappings of the process.
5593
5594If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
5595bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
5596
5597 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
5598
5599Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
5600now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
5601skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
5602make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
5603same code linked statically.
5604
5605 * New Getopt
5606
5607GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
5608version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
5609continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
5610Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
5611added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
5612future by other options that begin with the same letter.
5613
5614 * Bugs fixed
5615
5616The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5617Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5618See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5619
5620
5621*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
5622
5623 * New machines supported (host and target)
5624
5625Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
5626NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
5627Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5628
5629 * Almost SCO Unix support
5630
5631We had hoped to support:
5632SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5633(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
5634that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
5635about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
5636
5637 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
5638
5639GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
5640debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
5641is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
5642send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
5643reqired (if any).
5644
5645 * New Readline
5646
5647GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
5648is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
5649required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
5650
5651 * Bugs fixed
5652
5653The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5654Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5655See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5656
5657 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
5658
5659GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
5660supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
5661symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
5662
5663Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
5664mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
5665debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
5666mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
5667version 2.
5668
5669Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
5670really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
5671line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
5672variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
5673situation somewhat.
5674
5675When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
5676However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
5677methods.
5678
5679We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
5680DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
5681encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
5682
5683
5684*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
5685
5686 * Improved configuration
5687
5688Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
5689Porting BFD is simpler.
5690
5691 * Stepping improved
5692
5693The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
5694of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
5695in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
5696function that has debugging information is called within the line.
5697
5698 * Bug fixing
5699
5700Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
5701
5702 * New host supported (not target)
5703
5704Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
5705
5706
5707*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
5708
5709 * Multiple source language support
5710
5711GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
5712It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
5713and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
5714language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
5715You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
5716`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
5717
5718 * GDB and Modula-2
5719
5720GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
5721currently under development at the State University of New York at
5722Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
5723continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
5724
5725Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
5726debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
5727symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
5728
5729There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
5730in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
5731
5732 * set write on/off
5733
5734GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
5735a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
5736the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
5737by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
5738effect immediately.
5739
5740 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
5741
5742When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
5743shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
5744The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
5745examining core files.
5746
5747 * set listsize
5748
5749You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
5750The default is 10.
5751
5752 * New machines supported (host and target)
5753
5754SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
5755Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
5756Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
5757
5758 * New hosts supported (not targets)
5759
5760IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
5761
5762 * New targets supported (not hosts)
5763
5764AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5765AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5766Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
5767
5768 * New remote interfaces
5769
5770AMD 29000 Adapt
5771AMD 29000 Minimon
5772
5773
5774*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
5775
5776 * New Facilities
5777
5778Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
5779
5780Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
5781target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
5782is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
5783remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
5784remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
5785also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
5786using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
5787stub on the target system.
5788
5789New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
5790
5791GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
5792library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
5793object file types such as a.out and coff.
5794
5795There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
5796refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
5797
5798
5799 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
5800
5801All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
5802by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
5803
5804For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
5805``Show prompt'' produces the response:
5806Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
5807
5808What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
5809print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
5810will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
5811all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
5812
5813confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
5814 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
5815 it is already running. Default is ON.
5816
5817editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
5818 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
5819 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
5820 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
5821 Default is ON.
5822
5823history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
5824 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
5825 or the value of the environment variable
5826 GDBHISTFILE.
5827
5828history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
5829 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
5830 HISTSIZE.
5831
5832history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
5833 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
5834 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
5835
5836history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
5837 history expansion will be performed on
5838 command line input. The default is OFF.
5839
5840radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
5841 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
5842 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
5843
5844height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
5845 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
5846 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5847 variable TERM.
5848
5849width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
5850 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
5851 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5852 variable TERM.
5853
5854Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
5855``set width'' instead.
5856
5857print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
5858 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
5859 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
5860 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
5861
5862print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
5863 is OFF.
5864
5865print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
5866 "raw" form if off.
5867
5868print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
5869 like instructions.
5870
5871print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
5872
5873
5874 * Support for Epoch Environment.
5875
5876The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
5877new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
5878are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
5879window.
5880
5881
5882 * Support for Shared Libraries
5883
5884GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
5885Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
5886before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
5887happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
5888At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
5889from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
5890shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
5891It can be abbreviated ``share''.
5892
5893sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
5894 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
5895 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
5896
5897info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
5898
5899
5900 * Watchpoints
5901
5902A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
5903expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
5904tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
5905quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
5906problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
5907more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
5908
5909watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
5910
5911info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
5912
5913delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5914disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5915enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5916
5917
5918 * C++ multiple inheritance
5919
5920When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
5921for C++ programs.
5922
5923 * C++ exception handling
5924
5925Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
5926ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
5927the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
5928handler's context).
5929
5930catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
5931 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
5932 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
5933
5934info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
5935 current stack frame.
5936
5937
5938 * Minor command changes
5939
5940The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
5941command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
5942is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
5943
5944The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
5945at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
5946frames without printing.
5947
5948 * New directory command
5949
5950'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
5951The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
5952about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
5953with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
5954find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
5955
5956 * Configuring GDB for compilation
5957
5958For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
5959for more details.
5960
5961GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
5962two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
5963Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
5964where the program that you are debugging will run.
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