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[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
8d5b6c2b 4*** Changes since GDB 7.4
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6* Python scripting
7
8 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
9
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10* GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
11 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
12
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13* The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
14 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
15
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16* GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
17 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
18 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
19 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
20 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
21 $1 = (ONE | TWO)
22
23* Python scripting
24
25 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
26 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
27
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28* The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
29 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
30 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
31 build/libcpp/expr.c.
32
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33*** Changes in GDB 7.4
34
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35* GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
36 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
37 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
38 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
39 inferior changes.
40
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41* GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
42 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
43
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44* GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
45 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
46 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
47 target hardware watchpoint.
48
49 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
50 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
51 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
52 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
53
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54* Python scripting
55
32d1c362 56 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
7d0aff21 57 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
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58 existing one.
59
3a7bf607 60 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
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61 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
62 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
63 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
64 now "message", which just prints the error message without
65 the stack trace.
3a7bf607 66
baacfb07 67 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
3a7bf607 68 Python API.
713389e0 69
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70 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
71 modules library. This module provides functionality for
baacfb07 72 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
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73 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
74 corresponding value.
75
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76 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
77 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
78 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
79 on GDB start-up.
80
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81 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
82 static_block will return the global and static blocks
83 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
84 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
85
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86 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
87
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88 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
89 "gdb.breakpoints".
90
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91 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
92 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
93 available in the CLI.
94
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95 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
96 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
97 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
98 "some_type.items()".
99
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100 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
101 new object file.
102
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103 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
104 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
105 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
106 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
107 any anonymous fields.
108
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109* MI changes
110
111 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
112 "solib-event".
113
114 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
115 "=breakpoint-modified".
116
117 ** New command -ada-task-info.
118
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119* libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
120 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
121 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
122 lives.
123
124 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
125 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
126 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
127 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
128 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
129
130 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
131 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
132
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133* New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
134 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
135 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
136 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
137 use this option to specify where to find it.
138
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139* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
140 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
141 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
142 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
143 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
144 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
145 section in the user manual for more details.
146
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147* The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
148 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
149 become available after that.
150
71eba9c2 151* New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
edc84990 152
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153* New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
154 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
155 gcc version 4.7.
156
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157* New commands
158
159!SHELL COMMAND
160 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
161 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
162
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163* Changed commands
164
165watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
166 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
167 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
168
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169info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
170 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
171 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
172
71eba9c2 173info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
174 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
175 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
176 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
177 name starts with a hyphen.
178
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179collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
180 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
181 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
182 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
183 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
184 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
185 number of bytes that will be collected.
186
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187tstart [NOTES]
188 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
189 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
190 setting the variable trace-notes.
191
192tstop [NOTES]
193 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
194 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
195 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
196 trace-stop-notes.
197
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198* Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
199 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
200 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
201 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
202 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
203 is running.
204
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205* Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
206 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
207 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
208
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209* New options
210
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211set extended-prompt
212show extended-prompt
213 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
214 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
215 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
216 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
217 prompt is displayed.
218
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219set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
220show print entry-values
221 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
222 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
223 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
224
225set debug entry-values
226show debug entry-values
227 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
228 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
229
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230set basenames-may-differ
231show basenames-may-differ
232 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
233 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
234 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
235 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
236 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
237 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
238 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
239 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
240
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241set trace-user
242show trace-user
243set trace-notes
244show trace-notes
245 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
246 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
247 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
248 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
249
250set trace-stop-notes
251show trace-stop-notes
252 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
253 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
254 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
255 started by someone else.
256
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257* New remote packets
258
259QTEnable
260
261 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
262
263QTDisable
264
265 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
266
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267QTNotes
268
269 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
270
271qTP
272
273 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
274
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275qTMinFTPILen
276
277 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
278 be placed.
279
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280* Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
281 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
282
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283* New targets
284
285Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
286
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287* New Simulators
288
289Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
290
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291*** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
292
293* The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
294
d6e00af6 295*** Changes in GDB 7.3
797054e6 296
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297* GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
298 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
299 matches the given regular expression.
300
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301* The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
302
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303* The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
304 dumping the instruction opcodes.
305
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306* New command line options
307
308-data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
309 This is mostly for testing purposes.
310
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311* The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
312 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
313
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314* GDB has a new command: "set directories".
315 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
316 source path list instead of augmenting it.
317
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318* GDB now understands thread names.
319
320 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
321 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
322
323 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
324 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
325
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326* OpenCL C
327 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
328 has been integrated into GDB.
329
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330* Python scripting
331
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332 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
333 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
334 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
335
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336 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
337 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
338 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
339 and allows for more dynamic content.
340
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341 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
342 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
343 have an is_valid method.
344
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345 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
346 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
347 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
348
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349 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
350
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351 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
352 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
353 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
354 that function like so:
355
356 result = some_value (10,20)
357
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358 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
359 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
360 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
361
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362 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
363 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
364 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
365 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
366 New function: register_pretty_printer.
367
368 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
369 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
370
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371 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
372
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373 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
374 selected thread.
375
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376 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
377 holds the thread's name.
378
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379 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
380 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
824446ad 381 occurring in the process being debugged.
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382 The following events are currently supported:
383 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
384 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
385 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
386
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387* C++ Improvements:
388
389 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
390 instantiation. For example, if you have:
391
392 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
393
394 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
395 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
396 was added to GCC 4.5.
397
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398 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
399 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
400 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
401 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
402 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
403 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
404
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405* GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
406 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
407 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
408 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
409 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
410
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411* GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
412 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
413 execution to a label.
414
415* GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
416 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
417 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
418 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
419
b56df873 420* The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
14c0d4e1 421 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
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422 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
423 of scope.
424
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425* GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
426
427 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
428 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
429 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
430 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
431 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
432 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
433
434 (gdb) info threads
435 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
436
437 While now you see this:
438
439 (gdb) info threads
440 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
441
442 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
443 dumps.
444
445 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
446 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
447 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
448 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
449
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450* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
451 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
452 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
453 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
454 section in the user manual for more details.
455
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456* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
457
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458 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
459 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
248c9dbc 460
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461 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
462
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463* New native configurations
464
465ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
466
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467* New targets:
468
469Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
470
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471* Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
472 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
473 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
474 in the GDB user manual.
475
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476* Guile support was removed.
477
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478* New features in the GNU simulator
479
480 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
481
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482 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
483
76b8507d 484*** Changes in GDB 7.2
bfbf3774 485
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486* Shared library support for remote targets by default
487
488 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
489 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
490 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
491 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
492 was always disabled for such configurations.
493
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494* C++ Improvements:
495
496 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
497
498 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
499 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
500 For example:
501 namespace A
502 {
503 class B { };
504 void foo (B) { }
505 }
506 ...
507 A::B b
508 foo(b)
509 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
510 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
511 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
512
513 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
514
515 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
516 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
517 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
518 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
519 entry.
520 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
521 mentioned flavors of operators.
522
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523 ** static const class members
524
525 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
526 class definition has been fixed.
527
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528* Windows Thread Information Block access.
529
530 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
531 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
532 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
533 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
534 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
535 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
536
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537* Static tracepoints
538
539 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
540 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
541 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
542 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
543 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
544 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
545 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
546 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
547 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
548 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
549 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
550 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
551 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
552 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
553 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
554 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
555 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
556 the "New remote packets" section below.
557
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558* Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
559
560 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
561 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
562 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
563 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
564
565* Observer mode
566
567 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
568 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
569 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
570 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
571 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
572 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
573 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
574
575* The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
576 current thread.
577
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578* New remote packets
579
580qGetTIBAddr
581
582 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
583
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584qRelocInsn
585
586 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
587 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
588 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
589 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
590 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
591 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
592
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593qTfSTM, qTsSTM
594
595 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
596
597qTSTMat
598
599 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
600 program.
601
602qXfer:statictrace:read
603
604 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
605 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
606 to gdb's qSupported query.
607
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608QAllow
609
610 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
611
612QTDPsrc
613
614 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
615 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
616
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617* The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
618 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
619 a directory.
620
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PA
621* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
622
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PA
623 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
624 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
625 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
626 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
627
628 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
629 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
630 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
631 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
632 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
633 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
634 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
635
636 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
637 for static tracepoints support.
d337e9f0 638
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PM
639 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
640
c8d5aac9
L
641* GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
642 it understands register description.
643
7c953934
TT
644* The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
645
8685c86f
L
646* X86 general purpose registers
647
648 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
649 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
650 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
651 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
652 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
653
95a42b64 654* The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
86b17b60
PA
655 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
656 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
657 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
658 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
659 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
95a42b64 660
8bd10a10
CM
661* The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
662 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
663 in the specified file.
664
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PA
665* Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
666 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
667 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
668 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
669 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
670 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
671 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
672 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
673 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
674 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
675
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PA
676* New commands
677
f1421989
HZ
678eval template, expressions...
679 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
680 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
681
ab38a727
PA
682set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
683show target-file-system-kind
684 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
685 names.
686
6149aea9
PA
687save breakpoints <filename>
688 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
689 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
690 definitions, use the `source' command.
691
692`save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
693is now deprecated.
694
0fb4aa4b
PA
695info static-tracepoint-markers
696 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
697
698strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
699 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
700 function, line, address, or marker ID.
701
ca11e899
SS
702set observer on|off
703show observer
704 Enable and disable observer mode.
705
706set may-write-registers on|off
707set may-write-memory on|off
708set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
709set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
710set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
711set may-interrupt on|off
712 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
713 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
714 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
715 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
716 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
717 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
718 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
719
720set record memory-query on|off
721show record memory-query
722 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
723 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
724
53a71c06
CR
725* Changed commands
726
727disassemble
728 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
729
f3e9a817
PM
730* Python scripting
731
9279c692
JB
732** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
733 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
734 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
735 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
736 GDB using Python' in the manual.
737
adc36818 738** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
595939de
PM
739 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
740 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
741 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
f870a310 742
fa33c3cd 743** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
07ca107c
DE
744 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
745
746** New exception gdb.GdbError.
fa33c3cd
DE
747
748** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
f3e9a817 749
967cf477
DE
750** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
751
8a1ea21f
DE
752** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
753 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
754 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
755
a7bdde9e
VP
756* Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
757there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
758tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
759regular breakpoints.
760
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PA
761* New targets
762
763ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
764
6aecb9c2
JB
765* D language support.
766 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
767 language.
768
431e49aa
TJB
769* GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
770 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
771 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
772 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
773 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
774
775* GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
776 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
777 conditions of the form:
778
779 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
780
781 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
782 interface mentioned above.
783
bfbf3774 784*** Changes in GDB 7.1
abc7453d 785
4eef138c
TT
786* C++ Improvements
787
788 ** Namespace Support
71dee663
SW
789
790 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
791 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
792 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
793 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
794 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
795
4eef138c
TT
796 ** Bug Fixes
797
798 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
799 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
800 qualified name.
801
802 ** Cast Operators
803
804 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
805 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
806
2d1c1221
ME
807* New targets
808
809Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
34207b9e 810Renesas RX rx-*-elf
2d1c1221
ME
811
812* New Simulators
813
814Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
34207b9e 815Renesas RX rx
2d1c1221 816
6c95b8df
PA
817* Multi-program debugging.
818
819 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
820 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
821 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
822 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
823 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
824 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
825 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
826 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
827
d5551862
SS
828* New tracing features
829
830 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
831
832 ** Trace state variables
f61e138d
SS
833
834 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
835 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
836 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
837 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
838 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
839 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
840 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
841 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
842 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
843 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
7a697b8d 844
d5551862 845 ** Fast tracepoints
7a697b8d
SS
846
847 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
848 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
849 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
850 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
851 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
852 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
853 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
854 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
855 the regular trace command.
856
d5551862
SS
857 ** Disconnected tracing
858
859 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
860 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
861 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
862 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
863 connection is lost unexpectedly.
864
00bf0b85
SS
865 ** Trace files
866
867 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
868 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
869 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
870 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
871 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
872 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
873 <name>".
4daf5ac0
SS
874
875 ** Circular trace buffer
876
877 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
878 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
879 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
880 not be available for all target agents.
881
21a0512e
PP
882* Changed commands
883
884disassemble
885 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
886 the arguments to be comma-separated.
887
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DJ
888info variables
889 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
890 which only declare a variable are not shown.
891
fb2e7cb4
JB
892source
893 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
894 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
895 support.
896
897 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
898 "set script-extension" (see below).
899
6c95b8df
PA
900* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
901
399cd161
MS
902record save [<FILENAME>]
903 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
904 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
905
906record restore <FILENAME>
907 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
908 earlier time, for replay debugging.
909
6c95b8df
PA
910add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
911 Add a new inferior.
912
913clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
914 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
915 inferior has loaded.
916
917remove-inferior ID
918 Remove an inferior.
919
920maint info program-spaces
921 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
922
9a7071a8
JB
923set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
924show remote interrupt-sequence
925 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
926 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
927 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
928 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
929 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
930
931set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
932show remote interrupt-on-connect
933 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
934 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
935 Linux kernel.
936
937set remotebreak [on | off]
938show remotebreak
939Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
940
f61e138d
SS
941tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
942 Create or modify a trace state variable.
943
944info tvariables
945 List trace state variables and their values.
946
947delete tvariable $NAME ...
948 Delete one or more trace state variables.
949
6da95a67
SS
950teval EXPR, ...
951 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
952 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
953
7a697b8d
SS
954ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
955 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
956
b0f02ee9
JK
957* New expression syntax
958
959 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
960 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
961
6c95b8df
PA
962* New options
963
964set follow-exec-mode new|same
965show follow-exec-mode
966 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
967 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
968 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
969
236f1d4d
SS
970set default-collect EXPR, ...
971show default-collect
972 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
973 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
974 such as registers or a critical global variable.
975
d5551862
SS
976set disconnected-tracing
977show disconnected-tracing
978 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
979 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
980 upon disconnection.
981
4daf5ac0
SS
982set circular-trace-buffer
983show circular-trace-buffer
984 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
985 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
986 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
987 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
988
fb2e7cb4
JB
989set script-extension off|soft|strict
990show script-extension
991 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
992 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
993 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
994 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
995 evaluation failed.
996 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
997
2b71fc8e
JB
998set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
999show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
1000 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
1001 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
1002 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
1003 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
1004 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
1005 is on.
1006
de2e5182
TT
1007* Python API Improvements
1008
1009 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
1010 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
1011 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
1012
1013 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
1014 `is_base_class' attribute.
1015
1016 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
1017
1018 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
1019 evaluate an expression.
1020
f61e138d
SS
1021* New remote packets
1022
1023QTDV
1024 Define a trace state variable.
1025
1026qTV
1027 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
1028
d5551862
SS
1029QTDisconnected
1030 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
1031
4daf5ac0
SS
1032QTBuffer:circular
1033 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
1034
d5551862
SS
1035qTfP, qTsP
1036 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
1037
2d483d34
MS
1038* Bug fixes
1039
1040Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
1041
6e0e5977
JB
1042Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
1043much more reliable. In particular:
1044 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
1045 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
1046 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
1047 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
1048 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
1049 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
1050 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
1051 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
1052 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
1053 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
1054 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
1055 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
1056 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
1057 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
1058 non-threaded programs.
1059
93c26624
JK
1060PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
1061This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
1062libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
1063executable program.
1064
abc7453d 1065*** Changes in GDB 7.0
75feb17d 1066
4efc6507
DE
1067* GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
1068dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
1069them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
1070for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
1071"JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
1072
782b2b07
SS
1073* Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
1074breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
1075or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
1076the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
1077for tracepoint actions.
1078
53a71c06
CR
1079* The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
1080raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
1081modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
e6158f16 1082
e7a8dbfb
HZ
1083* Process record and replay
1084
1085 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
1086 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
1087 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
1088 execute commands.
1089
64644d9b
MS
1090* Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
1091step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
1092set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
1093reverse execution.
1094
b9412953
DD
1095* GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
1096feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
10972.6.28 or later.
1098
6c7a06a3
TT
1099* GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
1100target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
1101char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
1102literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
1103U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
1104`printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
1105system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
1106the installation instructions for more information.
1107
f1838a98
UW
1108* GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
1109remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
1110with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
1111the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
1112
55333a84
DE
1113* "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
1114and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
1115
7f6a6314
PM
1116* Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
1117now complete on file names.
1118
65d12d83
TT
1119* When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
1120completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
1121For instance, consider:
1122
1123 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
1124 # struct example variable;
1125 (gdb) p variable.
1126
1127If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
1128completions will be "f1" and "f2".
1129
edb3359d
DJ
1130* Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
1131the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
1132
2fae03e8
TT
1133* GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
1134operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
1135macros.
1136
47a3467a 1137* GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
58d6951d
DJ
1138the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
1139implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
1140
1141* GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
1142registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
1143can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
1144and simulator targets may also provide them.
47a3467a 1145
08388c79
DE
1146* New remote packets
1147
1148qSearch:memory:
1149 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1150
a6f3e723
SL
1151QStartNoAckMode
1152 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
1153 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
1154 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
1155
d7713ae0
EZ
1156vKill
1157 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
1158 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
1159
07e059b5
VP
1160qXfer:osdata:read
1161 Obtains additional operating system information
1162
47a3467a
PA
1163qXfer:siginfo:read
1164qXfer:siginfo:write
1165 Read or write additional signal information.
1166
060871df
PA
1167* Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
1168
1169 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
1170 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
1171 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
1172
c055b101 1173* GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
a0ef4274 1174DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
c055b101
CV
1175
1176* The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
a0ef4274
DJ
1177and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
1178`set/show sh calling-convention'.
c055b101 1179
31fffb02
CS
1180* GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
1181with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
1182
88d8a8e0
JB
1183* 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
1184
7f99b190
JB
1185* Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
1186
ccd213ac
DJ
1187* Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
1188which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
1189
1fddbabb 1190* The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
31fffb02 1191list of section offsets.
1fddbabb 1192
a0ef4274
DJ
1193* On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
1194conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
1195have also been fixed.
1196
bfb8797a 1197* GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
158c7665
PH
1198From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
1199are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
bfb8797a 1200
71c25dea
TT
1201* GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
1202example, given:
1203
1204 template<typename T> class C { };
1205 C<char const *> c;
1206
1207GDB will now correctly handle all of:
1208
1209 ptype C<char const *>
1210 ptype C<char const*>
1211 ptype C<const char *>
1212 ptype C<const char*>
1213
ccd213ac
DJ
1214* New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
1215
1216 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
1217 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
1218
7ae0e2a2
UW
1219 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
1220 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1221 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
1222
a6f3e723
SL
1223 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
1224 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
1225
da8bd9a3
DJ
1226 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
1227 gdbserver.
1228
d70e31dd
DE
1229 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
1230 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1231
1232 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
1233 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
1234 as appropriate.
1235
d57a3c85
TJB
1236* Python scripting
1237
1238 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
1239 available is determined at configure time.
1240
d8906c6f
TJB
1241 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
1242
aadc346a
JB
1243* Ada tasking support
1244
1245 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
1246 been introduced:
1247
1248 info tasks
1249 Print the list of Ada tasks.
1250 info task N
1251 Print detailed information about task number N.
1252 task
1253 Print the task number of the current task.
1254 task N
1255 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
1256
adb483fe
DJ
1257* Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
1258add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
1259
2277426b
PA
1260* Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
1261
1262 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
1263 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
1264 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
1265 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
1266 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
1267 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
1268 below.
1269
08d16641
PA
1270* Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
1271"Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
1272information.
1273
e35359c5
UW
1274* Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
1275to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
1276architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
1277See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
1278more information.
1279
85e747d2
UW
1280* Multi-architecture debugging.
1281
1282 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
1283 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
1284 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
1285 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
1286 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
1287
1288* GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
1289use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
1290Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
1291powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
1292--enable-targets configure option.
1293
11ade57a
PA
1294* Non-stop mode debugging.
1295
1296 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
1297 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
1298 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
1299 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
1300 section in the user manual for more information.
1301
1302 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
1303 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
1304 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
1305 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
1306 extensions on linux targets.
1307
d7713ae0 1308* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
75feb17d 1309
a96d9b2e
SDJ
1310catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
1311 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
1312 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
1313 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
1314 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
1315 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
1316 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
1317 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
1318 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
1319
08388c79
DE
1320find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
1321 val1 [, val2, ...]
1322 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1323
d57a3c85
TJB
1324maint set python print-stack
1325maint show python print-stack
1326 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
1327
1328python [CODE]
1329 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
1330
d7713ae0
EZ
1331macro define
1332macro list
1333macro undef
1334 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
1335 interactively.
1336
1337info os processes
1338 Show operating system information about processes.
1339
2277426b
PA
1340info inferiors
1341 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
1342
1343inferior NUM
1344 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
1345
1346detach inferior NUM
1347 Detach from inferior number NUM.
1348
1349kill inferior NUM
1350 Kill inferior number NUM.
1351
d7713ae0
EZ
1352* New options
1353
3285f3fe
UW
1354set spu stop-on-load
1355show spu stop-on-load
1356 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
1357
ff1a52c6
UW
1358set spu auto-flush-cache
1359show spu auto-flush-cache
1360 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
1361 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
1362
d7713ae0
EZ
1363set sh calling-convention
1364show sh calling-convention
1365 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
1366
e0a3ce09 1367set debug timestamp
75feb17d 1368show debug timestamp
d7713ae0
EZ
1369 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
1370
1371set disassemble-next-line
1372show disassemble-next-line
1373 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
1374 the debuggee stops.
1375
1376set remote noack-packet
1377show remote noack-packet
1378 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
1379 under "New remote packets."
1380
1381set remote query-attached-packet
1382show remote query-attached-packet
1383 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
1384
1385set remote read-siginfo-object
1386show remote read-siginfo-object
1387 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
1388 packet.
1389
1390set remote write-siginfo-object
1391show remote write-siginfo-object
1392 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
1393 packet.
1394
40ab02ce
MS
1395set remote reverse-continue
1396show remote reverse-continue
1397 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
1398
1399set remote reverse-step
1400show remote reverse-step
1401 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
1402
d7713ae0
EZ
1403set displaced-stepping
1404show displaced-stepping
1405 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
1406 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
1407 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
1408
1409set debug displaced
1410show debug displaced
1411 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
1412
1413maint set internal-error
1414maint show internal-error
1415 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
1416
1417maint set internal-warning
1418maint show internal-warning
1419 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
75feb17d 1420
ccd213ac
DJ
1421set exec-wrapper
1422show exec-wrapper
1423unset exec-wrapper
1424 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
fa4727a6 1425
aad4b048
JB
1426set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
1427show multiple-symbols
1428 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
1429 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
1430 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
1431
74960c60
VP
1432set breakpoint always-inserted
1433show breakpoint always-inserted
1434 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
1435 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
1436 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
1437
0428b8f5
DJ
1438set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
1439show arm fallback-mode
1440set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
1441show arm force-mode
1442 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
1443 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
1444 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
1445 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
1446
10568435
JK
1447set disable-randomization
1448show disable-randomization
1449 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
1450 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
1451 multiple debugging sessions.
1452
d7713ae0
EZ
1453set non-stop
1454show non-stop
1455 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
1456 a breakpoint.
1457
b3eb342c 1458set target-async
d7713ae0 1459show target-async
b3eb342c
VP
1460 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
1461 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
1462 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
1463 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
1464
6c7a06a3
TT
1465set target-wide-charset
1466show target-wide-charset
1467 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
1468 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
1469
84603566
SL
1470set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
1471show tcp auto-retry
1472set tcp connect-timeout
1473show tcp connect-timeout
1474 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
1475 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
1476 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
1477
17a37d48
PP
1478set libthread-db-search-path
1479show libthread-db-search-path
1480 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
1481 libthread_db.
1482
d4db2f36
PA
1483set schedule-multiple (on|off)
1484show schedule-multiple
1485 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
1486 the current process.
1487
4e5d721f
DE
1488set stack-cache
1489show stack-cache
1490 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
1491 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
1492 affecting correctness.
1493
910c5da8
JB
1494set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
1495show interactive-mode
1496 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
1497 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
1498 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
1499 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
1500 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
1501
2277426b
PA
1502* Removed commands
1503
1504info forks
1505 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
1506 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
1507 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
1508 command.
1509
1510fork NUM
1511 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
1512 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
1513 alias for the `fork' command.
1514
1515process PID
1516 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
1517 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
1518 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
1519
1520delete fork NUM
1521 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
1522 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
1523 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
1524 fork' command.
1525
1526detach fork NUM
1527 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
1528 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
1529 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
1530 fork' command.
1531
a80b95ba
TG
1532* New native configurations
1533
1534x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
1535
b8bfd3ed
JB
1536x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
1537
75a2d5e7
TT
1538* New targets
1539
c28c63d8 1540Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
75a2d5e7 1541x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
4c1d2973 1542x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
5f814c3b 1543S+core 3 score-*-*
75a2d5e7 1544
6de3146c
PA
1545* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
1546 (mingw32ce) debugging.
1547
d5cbbe6e
JB
1548* Removed commands
1549
1550catch load
1551catch unload
1552 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
1553
75feb17d 1554*** Changes in GDB 6.8
f9ed52be 1555
af5ca30d
NH
1556* New native configurations
1557
1558NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
94a0e877 1559Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d
NH
1560
1561* New targets
1562
1563NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
94a0e877 1564Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d 1565
7a404eba
PA
1566* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
1567
1568 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
1569 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
1570 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
1571 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
1572
430ebac9
PA
1573* GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
1574(mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
1575
fe6fbf8b 1576* Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
8d5f9c6f 1577is resolved.
fe6fbf8b
VP
1578
1579* GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
8d5f9c6f
DJ
1580including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
1581and in inlined functions.
fe6fbf8b 1582
10665d76
JB
1583* GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
1584accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
1585more than one contiguous range of addresses.
1586
7cc46491
DJ
1587* Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
1588
d71340b8
DJ
1589* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
1590registers on PowerPC targets.
1591
523c4513
DJ
1592* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
1593targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
1594
a6b151f1
DJ
1595* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
1596commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
1597
2d717e4f
DJ
1598* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
1599extended-remote mode.
1600
24a836bd 1601* hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
d001be7a
DJ
1602The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
1603error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
1604The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
24a836bd 1605
d0c678e6
UW
1606* GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
1607building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
1608target architectures.
1609
d64a946d
TJB
1610* GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
1611Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
1612now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
1613stored in two consecutive float registers.
1614
ee163bf5
VP
1615* The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
1616breakpoints now.
1617
b93b6ca7 1618* Improved support for debugging Ada
d001be7a
DJ
1619Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
1620include:
b93b6ca7
JB
1621 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
1622 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
1623 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
1624 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
1625 of an assignment
1626 - Improved command completion in Ada
1627 - Several bug fixes
1628
d001be7a
DJ
1629* GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
1630process.
1631
a6b151f1
DJ
1632* New commands
1633
6d53d0af
JB
1634set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
1635show print frame-arguments
1636 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
1637 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
1638
a6b151f1
DJ
1639remote put
1640remote get
1641remote delete
1642 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
1643
1644* New MI commands
1645
1646-target-file-put
1647-target-file-get
1648-target-file-delete
1649 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
1650
1651* New remote packets
1652
1653vFile:open:
1654vFile:close:
1655vFile:pread:
1656vFile:pwrite:
1657vFile:unlink:
1658 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
d0c678e6 1659
2d717e4f
DJ
1660vAttach
1661 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
1662 mode.
1663
1664vRun
1665 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
1666
8d5f9c6f 1667*** Changes in GDB 6.7
6dd09645 1668
19d378fc
MS
1669* Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
1670bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
1671Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
1672
3a40aaa0
UW
1673* When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
1674symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
1675-Bsymbolic linker option.
1676
a6ec25f2
BW
1677* When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
1678recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
1679is not supported.
1680
6dd09645
JB
1681* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
1682frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
1683
c9bb8148
DJ
1684* GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
168532-bit or 64-bit register values.
1686
0d5de010
DJ
1687* Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
1688
23181151
DJ
1689* GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
1690target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
1691a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
1692
ea37ba09
DJ
1693* Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
1694automatically displayed as character or string data.
1695
1696* The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
1697arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
1698as strings.
e1f48ead 1699
123dc839
DJ
1700* Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
1701for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
8d5f9c6f 1702only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
123dc839 1703
05a4558a
DJ
1704* GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
1705iWMMXt coprocessor.
fb1e4ffc 1706
7c963485
PA
1707* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
1708ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
1709has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
1710
b18be20d
DJ
1711* GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
1712
0ca420ce
UW
1713* GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
1714
31d99776
DJ
1715* The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
1716layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
1717segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
1718
a4642986
MR
1719* The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
1720immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
1721
cfa9d6d9
DJ
1722* The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
1723"library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
1724packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
1725where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
1726Windows and SymbianOS).
255e7678
DJ
1727
1728* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
1729(DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
f5db8714
JK
1730
1731* GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
1732according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
cfa9d6d9 1733
c9bb8148
DJ
1734* New commands
1735
23776285
MR
1736set remoteflow
1737show remoteflow
1738 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
1739 when debugging using remote targets.
1740
c9bb8148
DJ
1741set mem inaccessible-by-default
1742show mem inaccessible-by-default
1743 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1744 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1745 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
1746 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
1747 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
1748
1749set breakpoint auto-hw
1750show breakpoint auto-hw
1751 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1752 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1753 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
1754 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
1755 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
1756 including "next" and "finish".
1757
0e420bd8
JB
1758catch exception
1759catch exception unhandled
1760 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
1761
1762catch assert
1763 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
1764
f822c95b
DJ
1765set sysroot
1766show sysroot
1767 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
1768 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
1769 an alias to "set sysroot".
1770
83cc5c53
UW
1771info spu
1772 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
1773 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
1774 architecture.
1775
bd372731
MK
1776* New native configurations
1777
1778OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
1779
23181151
DJ
1780set tdesc filename
1781unset tdesc filename
1782show tdesc filename
1783 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
1784 not query the target for its built-in description.
1785
c9bb8148
DJ
1786* New targets
1787
54fe9172 1788OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
c9bb8148 1789MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
c077150c 1790Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
c9bb8148 1791
6dd09645
JB
1792* New remote packets
1793
1794QPassSignals:
1795 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
1796 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
1797
23181151
DJ
1798qXfer:features:read:
1799 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
1800 features.
6dd09645 1801
83cc5c53
UW
1802qXfer:spu:read:
1803qXfer:spu:write:
1804 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
1805 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
1806
cfa9d6d9
DJ
1807qXfer:libraries:read:
1808 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
1809 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
1810 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
1811 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
1812
483367ee
DJ
1813* Removed targets
1814
1815Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
1816
d08950c4
UW
1817alpha*-*-osf1*
1818alpha*-*-osf2*
7ce59000 1819d10v-*-*
483367ee
DJ
1820hppa*-*-hiux*
1821i[34567]86-ncr-*
1822i[34567]86-*-dgux*
1823i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
1824i[34567]86-*-netware*
1825i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
1826i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
1827i[34567]86-*-sco*
1828i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
1829i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
1830i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
1831i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
1832i[34567]86-*-unixware*
1833i[34567]86-*-sysv*
1834i[34567]86-*-isc*
1835m68*-cisco*-*
1836m68*-tandem-*
ad527d2e 1837mips*-*-pe
483367ee 1838rs6000-*-lynxos*
ad527d2e 1839sh*-*-pe
483367ee 1840
7ce59000
DJ
1841* Other removed features
1842
1843target abug
1844target cpu32bug
1845target est
1846target rom68k
1847
1848 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
1849
ea35711c
DJ
1850target hms
1851target e7000
1852target sh3
1853target sh3e
1854
1855 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
1856 H8/300.
1857
1858target ocd
1859
1860 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
1861 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
1862 interfaces.
1863
7ce59000
DJ
1864DWARF 1 support
1865
1866 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
1867 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
1868
54d61198
DJ
1869Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
1870
1871 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
1872 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
1873 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
1874 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
1875
ea35711c
DJ
1876MIPS ".pdr" sections
1877
1878 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
1879 in debugging information.
1880
1881Scheme support
1882
1883 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
1884 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
1885
1a69e1e4
DJ
1886set mips stack-arg-size
1887set mips saved-gpreg-size
1888
1889 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
1890
6dd09645 1891*** Changes in GDB 6.6
e374b601 1892
ca3bf3bd
DJ
1893* New targets
1894
1895Xtensa xtensa-elf
9c309e77 1896Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
ca3bf3bd 1897
6aec2e11
DJ
1898* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
1899(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
1900running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
1901
1902* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
1903Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
1904supported.
1905
17218d91
DJ
1906* The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
1907broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
1908
9ebce043
DJ
1909* The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
1910stub provides the required support.
1911
7d3d3ece
DJ
1912* Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
1913longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
1914
4f8253f3
JB
1915* New commands
1916
1917set substitute-path
1918unset substitute-path
1919show substitute-path
1920 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
1921 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
1922 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
1923 between compilation and debugging.
1924
9fa66fd7
AS
1925set trace-commands
1926show trace-commands
1927 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
1928 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
1929 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
1930
1f5befc1
DJ
1931* REMOVED features
1932
1933The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
1934
2ec3381a
DJ
1935Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
1936an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
1937
3d00d119
DJ
1938The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
1939
be2a5f71
DJ
1940* New remote packets
1941
1942qSupported:
1943 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
1944 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
1945 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
1946 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
1947 target.
1948
0876f84a
DJ
1949qXfer:auxv:read:
1950 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
1951 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
1952
9ebce043
DJ
1953qXfer:memory-map:read:
1954 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
1955 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
1956
1957vFlashErase:
1958vFlashWrite:
1959vFlashDone:
1960 Erase and program a flash memory device.
1961
0876f84a
DJ
1962* Removed remote packets
1963
1964qPart:auxv:read:
1965 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
1966 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
1967
e374b601 1968*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 1969
96309189
MS
1970* New targets
1971
1972Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
1973
1974Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
1975
53e5f3cf
AS
1976* New commands
1977
1978init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
1979 only if it doesn't already have a value.
1980
ac264b3b
MS
1981The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
1982
1983checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
1984
1985restart <n> Return the program state to a
1986 previously saved state.
1987
1988info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
1989
1990delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
1991
1992set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
1993 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
1994
1995info forks List forks of the user program that
1996 are available to be debugged.
1997
1998fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
1999 forks of the user program that are
2000 available to be debugged.
2001
2002delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
2003 that are available to be debugged (and
2004 kill the forked process).
2005
2006detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
2007 that are available to be debugged (and
2008 allow the process to continue).
2009
3950dc3f
NS
2010* New architecture
2011
2012Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
2013
0ea3f30e
DJ
2014* Improved Windows host support
2015
2016GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
2017native console support, and remote communications using either
2018network sockets or serial ports.
2019
f79daebb
GM
2020* Improved Modula-2 language support
2021
2022GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
2023basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
2024pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
2025printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
2026written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
2027GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
2028
acab6ab2
MM
2029* REMOVED features
2030
2031The ARM rdi-share module.
2032
f4267320
DJ
2033The Netware NLM debug server.
2034
53e5f3cf 2035*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 2036
e0ecbda1
MK
2037* New native configurations
2038
02a677ac 2039OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
e0ecbda1
MK
2040OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
2041
d64a6579
KB
2042* New targets
2043
2044Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
2045
b33a6190
AS
2046* New command line options
2047
2048--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
2049--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
2050 the child (debugged) program exited with.
2051--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
2052 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
2053 specified multiple times and in conjunction
2054 with the --command (-x) option.
2055
11dced61
AC
2056* Deprecated commands removed
2057
2058The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
2059removed:
2060
2061 Command Replacement
2062 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
2063 othernames set arm disassembler
2064 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
2065 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
2066 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
2067 regs info registers
2068
6fe85783
MK
2069* New BSD user-level threads support
2070
2071It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
2072library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
2073configurations are:
2074
2075FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2076FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
2077OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
2078
2079Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
2080are not yet supported.
2081
5260ca71
MS
2082* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
2083(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
2084
e84ecc99
AC
2085* REMOVED configurations and files
2086
2087VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 2088Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 2089National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 2090
31e35378
JB
2091* New "set print array-indexes" command
2092
2093After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
2094when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
2095behavior.
2096
e85e5c83
MK
2097* VAX floating point support
2098
2099GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
2100
d91e9901
AS
2101* User-defined command support
2102
2103In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
2104to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
2105section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
2106
f2cb65ca
MC
2107*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
2108
f47b1503
AS
2109* New command line option
2110
2111GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
2112debugging.
2113
f2cb65ca
MC
2114* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
2115
2116GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
2117information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
2118by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
2119proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
2120to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 2121
d08c0230
AC
2122* Internationalization
2123
2124When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
2125internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
2126continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
2127
117ea3cf
PH
2128* Ada
2129
2130Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
2131implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
2132into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
2133
d08c0230
AC
2134* New native configurations
2135
2136GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
2137
2138* Remote 'p' packet
2139
2140GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
2141packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
2142
2143* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
2144
2145GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2146The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
2147features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
2148i386 application).
2149
2150GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
2151compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
2152continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
2153configurations:
2154
2155hppa-*-hpux
2156ia64-*-aix
2157mips-*-irix*
2158*-*-lynx
2159mips-*-linux-gnu
2160sds protocol
2161xdr protocol
2162powerpc bdm protocol
2163
2164Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2165made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
2166
2167* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2168
2169Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2170been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2171configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2172permanently REMOVED.
2173
2174h8300-*-*
2175mcore-*-*
2176mn10300-*-*
2177ns32k-*-*
2178sh64-*-*
2179v850-*-*
2180
ebb7c577
AC
2181*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
2182
2183* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
2184
2185When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
2186heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
2187been fixed.
2188
2189* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
2190
2191When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
2192fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
2193IRIX long double values).
2194
2195* VAX and "next"
2196
2197A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
2198command. This problem has been fixed.
2199
860660cb 2200*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 2201
0dea2468
AC
2202* Fix for ``many threads''
2203
2204On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
2205rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
2206error message:
2207
2208 ptrace: No such process.
2209 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
2210
2211This problem has been fixed.
2212
2c07db7a
AC
2213* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
2214
2215Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
2216GDB to dump core).
2217
c23968a2
JB
2218* New ``start'' command.
2219
2220This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
2221
71009278
MK
2222* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
2223
2224Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
2225live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
2226platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
2227
2228FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2229FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
2230NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
2231NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
2232NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
2233OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2234OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
2235OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
2236OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2237
3c0b7db2
AC
2238* Signal trampoline code overhauled
2239
2240Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
2241These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
2242of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
2243call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
2244signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
2245
73cc75f3
AC
2246Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
2247features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
2248include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 2249
7243600a
BF
2250* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
2251
6f606e1c
MK
2252* New native configurations
2253
97dc871c 2254GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 2255OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
bf2ca189
MK
2256OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
2257OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 2258OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 2259NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 2260OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 2261
a1b461bf
AC
2262* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
2263
2264GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2265The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
2266including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
2267migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
2268compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
2269work, was also included.
2270
2271GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
2272module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
2273
2274h8300-*-*
2275mcore-*-*
2276mn10300-*-*
2277ns32k-*-*
2278sh64-*-*
2279v850-*-*
2280xstormy16-*-*
2281
2282Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2283made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
2284
3c7012f5
AC
2285* REMOVED configurations and files
2286
2287Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
2288Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
2289Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
2290Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
2291Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
2292AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
2293Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
2294decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
2295riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
2296sonymips mips-sony-*
2297sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
2298
e5fe55f7
AC
2299*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
2300
2301* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
2302
2303The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
2304GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
2305command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
2306program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
2307with GDB".
2308
2309* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
2310
2311Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
2312libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
2313cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
2314GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
2315shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
2316the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
2317are created.
2318
2319Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
2320
2321* Fixed ISO-C build problems
2322
2323The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
2324non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
2325compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
2326
2327* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
2328
2329Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
2330wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
2331
2332* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
2333
2334The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
2335permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
2336systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
2337
2338* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
2339
2340Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
2341has been updated to use constant array sizes.
2342
2343* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
2344
2345GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
2346its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
2347panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
2348
2349* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
2350
2351When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
2352by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
2353not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
2354
faae5abe 2355*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 2356
9175c9a3
MC
2357* Removed --with-mmalloc
2358
2359Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
2360conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
2361
3cc87ec0
MK
2362* Changes in AMD64 configurations
2363
2364The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
2365the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
2366and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
2367you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
2368
f0424ef6
MK
2369* Revised SPARC target
2370
2371The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
2372FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
03cebad2
MK
2373support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
2374from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
2375(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 2376
59659be2
ILT
2377* New C++ demangler
2378
2379GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
2380names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
2381with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
2382programs.
2383
9e08b29b
DJ
2384* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
2385
2386GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
2387arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
2388encountered these.
2389
8dfe8985
DC
2390* C++ nested types and namespaces
2391
2392GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
2393improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
2394is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
2395Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
2396namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
2397"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
2398frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
2399if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
2400GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
2401
cced5e27
MK
2402* New native configurations
2403
2404NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 2405OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 2406OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
f2cab569
MK
2407OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2408OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 2409
b4b4b794
KI
2410* New debugging protocols
2411
2412M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
2413
7989c619
AC
2414* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
2415
2416The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
2417and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
2418tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
2419
5994185b
AC
2420* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2421
2422Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2423been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2424configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2425permanently REMOVED.
2426
2427Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
2428Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
2429Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
2430Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
2431Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
2432AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
2433Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
0748d941
AC
2434decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
2435riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
2436sonymips mips-sony-*
2437sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 2438
0ddabb4c
AC
2439* REMOVED configurations and files
2440
2441SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2442SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4a8269c0
AC
2443Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2444Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2445H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2446HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
2447HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2448HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
2449PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 2450386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4a8269c0
AC
2451Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
2452 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
2453 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f0424ef6
MK
2454SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
2455SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4a8269c0
AC
2456Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2457Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 2458
c7f1390e
DJ
2459*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
2460
1fe43d45
AC
2461* Objective-C
2462
2463Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
2464integrated into GDB.
2465
e6beb428
AC
2466* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
2467
2468DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
2469information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
2470By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
2471backtraces.
2472
2473The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
2474have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
2475DWARF 2 CFI support.
2476
2477* Hosted file I/O.
2478
2479GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
2480file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
2481remote protocol documentation for details.
2482
2483* All targets using the new architecture framework.
2484
2485All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
2486architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
2487to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
2488ppc32 on ppc64).
2489
2490* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
2491
2492GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
2493per-thread variables.
2494
2495* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
2496
2497GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
2498GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
2499
2500* Separate debug info.
2501
2502GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
2503automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
2504of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
2505system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
2506and optional debug files.
2507
2508* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
2509
2510DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
2511describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
2512debugger.
2513
2514GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
2515for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
2516
2517* Java
2518
2519A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
2520Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
2521considered "useable".
2522
85f8f974
DJ
2523* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
2524
2525The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
2526commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
2527kernel.
2528
0fac0b41
DJ
2529* GDB supports logging output to a file
2530
2531There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
2532used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 2533
6ad8ae5c
DJ
2534* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
2535
2536The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
2537disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
2538command.
2539
e286caf2 2540* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5f601589
AC
2541
2542The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
2543registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
2544
d28f9cdf
DJ
2545* Profiling support
2546
2547A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
2548be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
2549session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
2550"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
2551data, for more informative profiling results.
2552
da0f9dcd
AC
2553* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
2554
2555The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
2556option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 2557"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
da0f9dcd
AC
2558
2559Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
2560removed.
2561
fb9b6b35
JJ
2562Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
2563Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
2564Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
2565 in a subsequent -var-update.
2566
954a4db8
MK
2567* New native configurations.
2568
2569FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2570
6760f9e6
JB
2571* Multi-arched targets.
2572
b4263afa 2573HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 2574Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 2575
1b831c93
AC
2576* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2577
2578Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2579been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2580configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2581permanently REMOVED.
2582
8b0e5691 2583Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 2584Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 2585H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
56056df7
AC
2586HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
2587HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2588HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 2589PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
AC
2590Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
2591 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
2592 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
AC
2593Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2594Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 2595
5835abe7
NC
2596* REMOVED configurations and files
2597
2598V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
2599Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2600IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
2601i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
2602i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
2603i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
2604HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
2605 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
2606 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
2607Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2608Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
2609Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
2610OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2611I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 2612
a094c6fb
AC
2613* MIPS $fp behavior changed
2614
2615The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
2616the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
2617context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
2618address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
2619The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
2620
299ffc64 2621*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 2622
46248966
AC
2623* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
2624
2625When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
2626`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
2627in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
2628library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
2629shared libs like mad''.
2630
b9d14705 2631* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 2632
b9d14705
DJ
2633Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
2634the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
2635arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
2636powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 2637
e0e9281e
JB
2638* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
2639
2640GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
2641and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
2642they expand.
2643
dd73b9bb
AC
2644The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
2645invocations in expression, and shows the result.
2646
2647The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
2648macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
2649
e0e9281e
JB
2650Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
2651information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
2652your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
2653information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
2654
2250ee0c
CV
2655* Multi-arched targets.
2656
6e3ba3b8
JT
2657DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
2658DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 2659NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 2660National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
2661Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
2662Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 2663
cd9bfe15 2664* New targets.
e33ce519 2665
456f8b9d
DB
2666Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
2667
e33ce519 2668
da8ca43d
JT
2669* New native configurations
2670
2671Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 2672SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 2673MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 2674UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 2675
cd9bfe15
AC
2676* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2677
2678Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2679been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2680configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2681permanently REMOVED.
2682
92eb23c5 2683Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 2684OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 2685IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 2686Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 2687Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 2688Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
2689i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
2690i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
2691i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
2692HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
2693 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
2694 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 2695I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 2696
db034ac5
AC
2697* OBSOLETE languages
2698
2699CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
2700
cd9bfe15
AC
2701* REMOVED configurations and files
2702
2703AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2704A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2705AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2706AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2707AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2708
2709testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
2710
20f01a46
DH
2711* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
2712
2713This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
2714commands. The default is 1024.
2715
a5941fbf
MK
2716* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
2717
2718Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
2719
89743e04
MS
2720* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
2721
2722These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
2723to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
2724from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 2725
9fb14e79
JB
2726* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
2727
2728The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
2729including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
2730of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
2731
2037aebb
AC
2732*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
2733
2734* New targets.
2735
2736Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
2737
2738* Bug fixes
2739
2740gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
2741mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
2742Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
2743
2744gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
2745dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
2746Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
2747
2748Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
2749Surprisingly enough, it works now.
2750By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
2751
2752i386 hardware watchpoint support:
2753avoid misses on second run for some targets.
2754By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
2755
37057839 2756*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 2757
1a703748
MS
2758* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
2759
2760This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
2761really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
2762In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
2763target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
2764This can be a significant performance improvement on some
2765(notably embedded) targets.
2766
cefd4ef5
MS
2767* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
2768
55241689
AC
2769This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
2770process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
2771GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
2772hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 2773
352ed7b4
MS
2774* New command line option
2775
2776GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
2777
2778* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2779
2780There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
2781command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
2782a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
2783be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
2784open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
2785issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
2786a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
2787it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
2788GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
2789is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
2790
fe419ffc
RE
2791* Changes in ARM configurations.
2792
2793Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
2794configuration is fully multi-arch.
2795
eb7cedd9
MK
2796* New native configurations
2797
fe419ffc 2798ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 2799x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 2800AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 2801Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 2802
c9f63e6b
CV
2803* New targets
2804
2805Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
2806
9b4ff276
AC
2807* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2808
2809Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2810been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2811configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2812permanently REMOVED.
2813
2814AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2815A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2816AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2817AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2818AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2819
b4ceaee6 2820testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 2821
e2caac18
AC
2822* REMOVED configurations and files
2823
2824TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 2825WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
2826PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2827PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2828PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 2829Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
2830Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2831 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 2832SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 2833Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
2834Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2835ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 2836Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 2837
c2a727fa
TT
2838* Changes to command line processing
2839
2840The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
2841for the inferior from gdb's command line.
2842
467d8519
TT
2843* Changes to key bindings
2844
2845There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
2846
7072a954
AC
2847*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
2848
2849Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
2850
2851Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
2852corrupted.
2853
2854Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
2855
2856Numerous documentation fixes.
2857
2858Numerous testsuite fixes.
2859
34f47bc4 2860*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
2861
2862* New native configurations
2863
2864Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
2865x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 2866MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
2867MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
2868ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 2869s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 2870
bf64bfd6
AC
2871* New targets
2872
def90278 2873Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 2874CRIS cris-axis
55241689 2875UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 2876
17e78a56 2877* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
2878
2879x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 2880Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
2881Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2882 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
2883TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2884WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 2885Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
2886PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2887PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2888PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 2889SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
2890Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2891ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 2892Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 2893
17e78a56
AC
2894stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
2895kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
2896
7fcca85b
AC
2897Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2898been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2899configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2900permanently REMOVED.
2901
a196c81c 2902* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
2903
2904Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
2905Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
2906Pyramid pyramid-*-*
2907ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
2908Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 2909ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 2910
6d6b80e5 2911* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 2912
6d6b80e5 2913GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
2914sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
2915present.
2916
bf64bfd6
AC
2917* Other news:
2918
e23194cb
EZ
2919* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
2920
2921* The MI enabled by default.
2922
2923The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
2924revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
2925engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
2926using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
2927which is now deprecated.
2928
2929* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
2930
2931GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
2932main features are supported:
2933
2934 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
2935
2936 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
2937 extension;
2938
2939 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
2940
2941 - a Pascal expression parser.
2942
2943However, some important features are not yet supported.
2944
2945 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
2946
2947 - there are some problems with boolean types;
2948
2949 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
2950 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
2951
2952 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
2953
2954 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
2955
2956* Changes in completion.
2957
2958Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
2959to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
2960users expect at the shell prompt.
2961
2962Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
2963`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
2964program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
2965files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
2966be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
2967considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
2968name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
2969
2970`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
2971
2972* New platform-independent commands:
2973
2974It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
2975hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
2976documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
2977
2978* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
2979
d7275149
MK
2980Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
2981revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
2982many threads as your system allows you to have.
2983
e23194cb
EZ
2984Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
2985
d7275149
MK
2986Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
2987multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
2988
2989* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
2990
2991Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
2992
e23194cb
EZ
2993GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
2994debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
2995supported.)
2996
2997* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
2998
2999Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
3000breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
3001implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
3002put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
3003and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
3004registers.
3005
3006The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
3007debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
3008watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
3009
3010* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
3011
3012New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
3013the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
3014
3015New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
3016display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
3017IDT.
3018
3019New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
3020from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
3021New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
3022a given linear address.
3023
3024GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
3025program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
3026which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
3027
3028DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
3029
6c56c069
EZ
3030It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
3031
e23194cb
EZ
3032* Changes in documentation.
3033
3034All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
3035Documentation License.
3036
3037Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3038manual.
3039
3040TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
3041
3042Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3043manual.
3044
3045The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
3046documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
3047hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
3048
5d6640b1
AC
3049* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
3050
3051The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
3052``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
3053contents of this file.
3054
1a1d8446
AC
3055* gdba.el deleted
3056
3057GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 3058
9debab2f 3059*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 3060
c63ce875
EZ
3061* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
3062
3063Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
3064programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
3065displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
3066greater level of detail.
3067
3068* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
3069
3070It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
3071bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
3072on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
3073written.
3074
3075* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
3076
3077The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
3078necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
3079machines ``out of the box''.
3080
3081The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
3082possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
3083signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
3084would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
3085interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
3086
3087It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
3088standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
3089even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
3090and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
3091terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
3092
3093The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
3094enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
3095also works.
3096
3097DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
3098GDB.
3099
3100It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
3101directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
3102times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
3103breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
3104
ed9a39eb
JM
3105* New native configurations
3106
3107ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 3108PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 3109
7a292a7a
SS
3110* New targets
3111
96baa820 3112Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
3113x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
3114PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
3115TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3116
085dd6e6
JM
3117* OBSOLETE configurations
3118
3119Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
3120Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 3121Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 3122ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 3123Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 3124
9debab2f
AC
3125Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3126but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3127these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3128be permanently REMOVED.
3129
5330533d
SS
3130* Gould support removed
3131
3132Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
3133
bc9e5bbf
AC
3134* New features for SVR4
3135
3136On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
3137without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
3138load symbols from the running process's executable file.
3139
3140* Many C++ enhancements
3141
3142C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
3143in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
3144
adf40b2e
JM
3145* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
3146
3147A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
3148sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
3149with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
3150``|<program> <args>'' vis:
3151
3152 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
3153 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
3154
43e526b9
JM
3155* MIPS 64 remote protocol
3156
3157A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
3158expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
3159instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
3160
3161The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
3162added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
3163
96baa820
JM
3164* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
3165
3166The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
3167``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
3168include ``set remote P-packet''.
3169
11cf8741
JM
3170* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
3171
3172The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
3173accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
3174``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
3175
7876dd43
DB
3176* ``apropos'' command added.
3177
3178The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
3179documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
3180try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
3181
bc9e5bbf
AC
3182* New MI interface
3183
3184A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
3185interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
3186process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
3187"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
3188enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
3189
3190 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
3191
c906108c
SS
3192*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
3193
3194* New native configurations
3195
3196HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
3197HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 3198M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
3199
3200* New targets
3201
3202Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3203Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
3204Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3205
3206* OBSOLETE configurations
3207
3208Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
3209
3210Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3211but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3212these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3213be permanently REMOVED.
3214
3215* ANSI/ISO C
3216
3217As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
3218buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
3219containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
3220use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
3221available. If this is not true, please report the affected
3222configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
3223information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
3224already.
3225
3226* Readline 2.2
3227
3228GDB now uses readline 2.2.
3229
3230* set extension-language
3231
3232You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
3233languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
3234you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
3235 set extension-language .c c++
3236The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
3237and their associated languages.
3238
3239* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
3240
3241When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
3242you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
3243PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
3244
3245 set processor NAME
3246
3247sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
3248following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
3249
3250 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
3251 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
3252 403 IBM PowerPC 403
3253 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
3254 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
3255 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
3256 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
3257 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
3258 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
3259 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
3260 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
3261
3262At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
3263special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
3264registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
3265only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
3266
3267* HP-UX support
3268
3269Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
3270more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
3271library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
3272support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
3273for xdb and dbx commands.
3274
3275* Catchpoints
3276
3277HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
3278generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
3279to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
3280
3281This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
3282argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
3283output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
3284
3285* Debugging across forks
3286
3287On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
3288in the inferior.
3289
3290* TUI
3291
3292HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
3293it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
3294configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
3295
3296* GDB remote protocol additions
3297
3298A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
3299Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
3300fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
3301allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
3302
3303For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
3304full 64-bit address. The command
3305
3306 set remoteaddresssize 32
3307
3308can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
3309the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
3310will be discarded.
3311
3312In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
3313command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
3314
3315 maint packet heythere
3316
3317sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
3318disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
3319time.
3320
3321The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
3322target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
3323downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
3324
3325* Tracing can collect general expressions
3326
3327You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
3328further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
3329doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
3330
3331* mask-address variable for Mips
3332
3333For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
3334a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
3335of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
3336
3337* Higher serial baud rates
3338
3339GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
3340230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
3341to achieve all of these rates.)
3342
3343* i960 simulator
3344
3345The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
3346builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
3347
3348
3349*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
3350
3351* New native configurations
3352
3353Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
3354Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
3355Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
3356PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
3357PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3358Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
3359Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
3360
3361* New targets
3362
3363Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3364Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
3365Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3366Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
3367MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
3368MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
3369MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
3370Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
3371Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
3372Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3373NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
3374
3375* New debugging protocols
3376
3377ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
3378M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
3379DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
3380PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3381PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3382Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3383
3384* DWARF 2
3385
3386All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
3387format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
3388information.
3389
3390* Java frontend
3391
3392GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
3393only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
3394
3395* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
3396
3397For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
3398loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
3399locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
3400
3401* Live range splitting
3402
3403GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
3404range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
3405more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
3406
3407* Hurd support
3408
3409GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
3410updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
3411
3412* ARM Thumb support
3413
3414GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
3415instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
3416instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
3417accordingly.
3418
3419* MIPS16 support
3420
3421GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
3422instruction set.
3423
3424* Overlay support
3425
3426GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
3427linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
3428will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
3429control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
3430additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
3431in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
3432
3433* info symbol
3434
3435The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
3436the symbol at the specified address.
3437
3438* Trace support
3439
3440The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
3441asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
3442extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
3443includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
3444file tracepoint.c for more details.
3445
3446* MIPS simulator
3447
3448Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
3449by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
3450of most MIPS variants.
3451
3452* Sparc simulator
3453
3454Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
3455by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
3456Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
3457
3458* set architecture
3459
3460For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
3461basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
3462architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
3463the possible architectures.
3464
3465*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
3466
3467* New native configurations
3468
3469Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
3470M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
3471PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
3472PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
3473PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3474RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
3475
3476* New targets
3477
3478ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
3479I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3480MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
3481MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
3482PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
3483Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
3484Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3485
3486* PowerPC simulator
3487
3488The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
3489contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
3490PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
3491basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
3492performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
3493
3494* Solaris 2.5
3495
3496GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
3497
3498* Windows 95/NT native
3499
3500GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
3501To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
3502which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
3503Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
3504ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
3505
3506* dont-repeat command
3507
3508If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
3509command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
3510useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
3511extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
3512
3513* Send break instead of ^C
3514
3515The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
3516rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
3517GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
3518
3519* Remote protocol timeout
3520
3521The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
3522that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
3523to read from the target. The default value is 2.
3524
3525* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
3526
3527By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
3528loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
3529stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
3530when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
3531in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
3532
3533Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
3534/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
3535automatically on hpux10.
3536
3537* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
3538
3539Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
3540
3541* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
3542
3543When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
3544may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
3545the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
3546every character. The default value is 1050.
3547
3548* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
3549
3550If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
3551a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
3552replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
3553details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
3554remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
3555to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
3556
3557* Speedups for remote debugging
3558
3559GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
3560the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
3561and more efficient S-record downloading.
3562
3563* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
3564
3565GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
3566Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
3567
3568*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
3569
3570* Psymtabs for XCOFF
3571
3572The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
3573can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
3574
3575* Remote targets use caching
3576
3577Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
3578remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
3579it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
3580debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
3581off' turns the the data cache off.
3582
3583* Remote targets may have threads
3584
3585The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
3586in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
3587gdb/remote.c for details.
3588
3589* NetROM support
3590
3591If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
3592support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
3593acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
3594write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
3595support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
3596another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
3597sequence is something like
3598
3599 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
3600 load <prog>
3601 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
3602
3603* Macintosh host
3604
3605GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
3606may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
3607it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
3608available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
3609device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
3610directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
3611scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
3612mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
3613
3614* Autoconf
3615
3616GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
3617but does simplify configuration and building.
3618
3619* hpux10
3620
3621GDB now supports hpux10.
3622
3623*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
3624
3625* New native configurations
3626
3627x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
3628x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
3629NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
3630Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
3631
3632* New targets
3633
3634A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3635HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
3636CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
3637PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
3638WDC 65816 w65-*-*
3639
3640* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
3641
3642GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
3643possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
3644filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
3645the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
3646if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
3647
3648* Arguments to user-defined commands
3649
3650User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
3651Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
3652trivial example:
3653define adder
3654 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
3655
3656To execute the command use:
3657adder 1 2 3
3658
3659Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
3660Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
3661use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
3662
3663* New `if' and `while' commands
3664
3665This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
3666commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
3667expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
3668execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
3669terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
3670`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
3671if the expression is zero.
3672
3673* Fortran source language mode
3674
3675GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
3676Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
3677variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
3678with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
3679Fortran compilers.
3680
3681* Better HPUX support
3682
3683Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
3684running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
3685processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
3686for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
3687that behavior do the following before running the program:
3688
3689 adb -w a.out
3690 __dld_flags?W 0x5
3691 control-d
3692
3693This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
3694To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
3695
3696 adb -w a.out
3697 __dld_flags?W 0x4
3698 control-d
3699
3700You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
3701the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
3702external linkage.
3703
3704GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
3705HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
3706
3707* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
3708
3709You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
3710commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
3711current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
3712"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
3713associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
3714configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
3715
3716* New DOS host serial code
3717
3718This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
3719no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
3720a PC's serial port.
3721
3722*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
3723
3724* New "complete" command
3725
3726This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
3727were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
3728
3729* Trailing space optional in prompt
3730
3731"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
3732allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
3733
3734* Breakpoint hit counts
3735
3736"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
3737has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
3738can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
3739to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
3740less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
3741that breakpoint.
3742
3743* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
3744
3745"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
3746an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
3747arrays actually contain only short strings.
3748
3749* Shared library breakpoints
3750
3751In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
3752breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
3753
3754* Hardware watchpoints
3755
3756There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
3757targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
3758
55241689 3759Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
3760
3761* Annotations
3762
3763Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
3764and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
3765
3766* Improved Irix 5 support
3767
3768GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
3769
3770* Improved HPPA support
3771
3772GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
3773
3774* New native configurations
3775
3776Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
3777HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3778Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
3779RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
3780
3781* New targets
3782
3783OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3784MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
3785Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
3786
3787* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
3788
3789There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
3790This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
3791
3792* Fixes
3793
3794As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
3795and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
3796
3797*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
3798
3799* Irix 5 is now supported
3800
3801* HPPA support
3802
3803GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
3804to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
3805GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
3806of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
3807can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
3808
3809
3810*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
3811
3812* User visible changes:
3813
3814* Remote Debugging
3815
3816The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
3817target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
3818debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
3819integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
3820debugging info for the mips target).
3821
3822* DEC Alpha native support
3823
3824GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
3825debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
3826work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
3827Alpha-specific notes.
3828
3829* Preliminary thread implementation
3830
3831GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
3832
3833* LynxOS native and target support for 386
3834
3835This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
3836to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
3837for details).
3838
3839* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
3840
3841This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
3842mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
3843call methods, ...etc.
3844
3845*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
3846
3847 * User visible changes:
3848
3849Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
3850supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
3851other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
3852somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
3853
3854Filename completion now works.
3855
3856When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
3857arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
3858addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
3859
3860All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
3861vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
3862should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
3863your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
3864to be on the far side of a thin network line.
3865
3866 * DEC alpha support
3867
3868This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
3869cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
3870
3871
3872*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
3873
3874 * Testsuite
3875
3876This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
3877The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
3878via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
3879
3880 * C++ demangling
3881
3882'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
3883emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
3884Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
3885disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
3886use gdb with AT&T cfront.
3887
3888 * Simulators
3889
3890GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
3891So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
3892Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
3893
3894 * New targets supported
3895
3896H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
3897H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3898SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
3899Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3900IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
3901
3902Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
3903version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
3904GO32 memory extender.
3905
3906 * New remote protocols
3907
3908MIPS remote debugging protocol.
3909
3910 * New source languages supported
3911
3912This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
3913used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
3914into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
3915
3916
3917*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
3918
3919 * HP Precision Architecture supported
3920
3921GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
3922version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
3923University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
3924compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
3925format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
3926(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
3927
3928Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
3929
3930 * Faster and better demangling
3931
3932We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
3933demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
3934character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
3935only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
3936This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
3937increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
3938symbol lookups.
3939
3940`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
3941from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
3942compiler does not actually implement.
3943
3944 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
3945
3946In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
3947inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
3948recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
3949very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
3950The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
3951circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
3952fix.
3953
3954The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
3955release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
3956
3957 * Improved configure script
3958
3959The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
3960you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
3961host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
3962done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
3963
3964We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
3965version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
3966`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
3967The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
3968only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
3969We hope to make this the default in a future release.
3970
3971 * Documentation improvements
3972
3973There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
3974produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
3975before submitting changes.
3976
3977The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
3978M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
3979`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
3980you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
3981a future texinfo-X.Y release.
3982
3983*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
3984We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
3985been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
3986or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
3987`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
3988around this problem.
3989
3990 * New features
3991
3992GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
3993the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
3994`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
3995the target program.
3996
3997The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
3998how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
3999
4000 * New native hosts supported
4001
4002HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
4003386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
4004
4005 * New targets supported
4006
4007AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
4008
4009 * New file formats supported
4010
4011BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
4012HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
4013
4014 * Major bug fixes
4015
4016Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
4017
4018We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
4019printf_filtered("%s") problems.
4020
4021We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
4022for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
4023release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
4024
4025You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
4026will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
4027
4028We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
4029for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
4030especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
4031libraries.
4032
4033The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
4034information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
4035command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
4036any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
4037when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
4038
4039 * Internal improvements
4040
4041GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
4042debugging of multiple languages in the future.
4043
4044GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
4045Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
4046symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
4047contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
4048shared code that handles any of them.
4049
4050 * New command line options
4051
4052We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
4053
4054 * Mmalloc licensing
4055
4056The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
4057General Public License.
4058
4059*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
4060
4061 * Host/native/target split
4062
4063GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
4064hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
4065target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
4066local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
4067ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
4068
4069The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
4070GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
4071is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
4072code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
4073any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
4074built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
4075handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
4076
4077GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
4078It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
4079plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
4080
4081 * New hosts supported
4082
4083HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
4084386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4085386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
4086
4087 * New targets supported
4088
4089Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
409068030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
4091
4092 * New native hosts supported
4093
4094386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4095 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
4096386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
4097
4098 * New file formats supported
4099
4100BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
4101supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
4102format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
4103
4104 * New commands
4105
4106`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
4107`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
4108These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
4109
4110`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
4111
4112You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
4113scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
4114prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
4115executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
4116
4117 * C++ improvements
4118
4119We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
4120info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
4121symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
4122
4123Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
4124
4125 * Major bug fixes
4126
4127The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
4128fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
4129by the compiler.
4130
4131We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
4132support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
4133
4134John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
4135slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
4136that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
4137purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
4138the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
4139mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
4140
4141Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
4142about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
4143completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
4144we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
4145
4146 * AMD 29k support
4147
4148A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
4149specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
4150calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
4151usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
4152in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
4153
4154We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
4155Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
4156of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
4157resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
4158
4159 * Remote interfaces
4160
4161We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
4162with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
4163message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
4164This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
4165needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
4166breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
4167each instruction being stepped through.
4168
4169The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
4170registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
4171
4172There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
4173find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
4174Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
4175processor with a serial port.
4176
4177 * Configuration
4178
4179Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
4180`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
4181supported, and what files each one uses.
4182
4183 * Library changes
4184
4185There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
4186disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
4187Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
4188disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
4189
4190The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
4191Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
4192can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
4193grants all the rights from the General Public License.
4194
4195 * Documentation
4196
4197The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
4198reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
4199as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
4200encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
4201system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
4202bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
4203
4204And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
4205
4206
4207*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
4208
4209 * Better support for C++ function names
4210
4211GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
4212names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
4213(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
4214single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
4215Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
4216
4217GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
4218the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
4219You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
4220lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
4221for the list of formats.
4222
4223 * G++ symbol mangling problem
4224
4225Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
4226C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
4227directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
4228can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
4229usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
4230about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
4231this problem.)
4232
4233 * New 'maintenance' command
4234
4235All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
4236the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
4237can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
4238
4239 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
4240 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
4241 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
4242 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
4243 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
4244 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
4245
4246The following commands are new:
4247
4248 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
4249 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
4250 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
4251
4252 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
4253
4254We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
4255(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
4256be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
4257read after argv processing.
4258
4259 * New hosts supported
4260
4261Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
4262
55241689 4263GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
4264
4265We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
4266is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
4267for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
4268masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
4269fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
4270It costs extra.
4271
4272 * New targets supported
4273
4274Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
4275
4276 * More smarts about finding #include files
4277
4278GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
4279all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
4280greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
4281especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
4282the one that contains your sources.
4283
4284We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
4285breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
4286try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
4287
4288 * Interesting infernals change
4289
4290GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
4291section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
4292target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
4293stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
4294
4295 * Bug fixes (of course!)
4296
4297There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
4298 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
4299 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
4300
4301See the ChangeLog for details.
4302
4303*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
4304
4305 * New machines supported (host and target)
4306
4307IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
4308
4309SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
4310
4311 * New malloc package
4312
4313GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
4314Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
4315capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
4316This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
4317pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
4318more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
4319
4320 * info proc
4321
4322The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
4323'help info proc' for details.
4324
4325 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
4326
4327The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
4328Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
4329possible.
4330
4331 * File name changes for MS-DOS
4332
4333Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
4334support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
4335conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
4336environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
4337that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
4338in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
4339
4340 * Cross byte order fixes
4341
4342Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
4343targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
4344
4345 * New -mapped and -readnow options
4346
4347If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
4348system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
4349`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
4350program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
4351called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
4352Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
4353and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
4354the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
4355option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
4356starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
4357
4358You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
4359the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
4360information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
4361slower, but makes future operations faster.
4362
4363The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
4364build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
4365A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
4366use is:
4367
4368 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
4369
4370The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
4371It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
4372shared across multiple host platforms.
4373
4374 * longjmp() handling
4375
4376GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
4377siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
4378all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
4379platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
4380
4381 * Solaris 2.0
4382
4383Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
4384this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
4385reading symbols.
4386
4387 * Bug fixes
4388
4389As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
4390People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
4391crashes and trashed symbol tables.
4392
4393*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
4394
4395 * New machines supported (host and target)
4396
4397SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
4398 (except core files)
4399BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
4400Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
4401
4402 * New machines supported (target)
4403
4404AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4405
4406 * C++ support
4407
4408GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
4409The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
4410per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
4411
4412GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
4413`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
4414extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
4415good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
4416will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
4417released.
4418
4419 * New features for SVR4
4420
4421GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
4422shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
4423only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
4424
4425The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
4426on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
4427it prints the address mappings of the process.
4428
4429If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
4430bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
4431
4432 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
4433
4434Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
4435now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
4436skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
4437make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
4438same code linked statically.
4439
4440 * New Getopt
4441
4442GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
4443version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
4444continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
4445Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
4446added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
4447future by other options that begin with the same letter.
4448
4449 * Bugs fixed
4450
4451The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
4452Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
4453See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
4454
4455
4456*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
4457
4458 * New machines supported (host and target)
4459
4460Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
4461NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
4462Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4463
4464 * Almost SCO Unix support
4465
4466We had hoped to support:
4467SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
4468(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
4469that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
4470about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
4471
4472 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
4473
4474GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
4475debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
4476is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
4477send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
4478reqired (if any).
4479
4480 * New Readline
4481
4482GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
4483is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
4484required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
4485
4486 * Bugs fixed
4487
4488The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
4489Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
4490See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
4491
4492 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
4493
4494GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
4495supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
4496symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
4497
4498Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
4499mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
4500debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
4501mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
4502version 2.
4503
4504Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
4505really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
4506line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
4507variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
4508situation somewhat.
4509
4510When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
4511However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
4512methods.
4513
4514We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
4515DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
4516encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
4517
4518
4519*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
4520
4521 * Improved configuration
4522
4523Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
4524Porting BFD is simpler.
4525
4526 * Stepping improved
4527
4528The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
4529of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
4530in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
4531function that has debugging information is called within the line.
4532
4533 * Bug fixing
4534
4535Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
4536
4537 * New host supported (not target)
4538
4539Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
4540
4541
4542*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
4543
4544 * Multiple source language support
4545
4546GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
4547It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
4548and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
4549language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
4550You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
4551`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
4552
4553 * GDB and Modula-2
4554
4555GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
4556currently under development at the State University of New York at
4557Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
4558continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
4559
4560Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
4561debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
4562symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
4563
4564There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
4565in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
4566
4567 * set write on/off
4568
4569GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
4570a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
4571the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
4572by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
4573effect immediately.
4574
4575 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
4576
4577When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
4578shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
4579The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
4580examining core files.
4581
4582 * set listsize
4583
4584You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
4585The default is 10.
4586
4587 * New machines supported (host and target)
4588
4589SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4590Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
4591Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
4592
4593 * New hosts supported (not targets)
4594
4595IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
4596
4597 * New targets supported (not hosts)
4598
4599AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4600AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4601Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
4602
4603 * New remote interfaces
4604
4605AMD 29000 Adapt
4606AMD 29000 Minimon
4607
4608
4609*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
4610
4611 * New Facilities
4612
4613Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
4614
4615Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
4616target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
4617is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
4618remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
4619remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
4620also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
4621using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
4622stub on the target system.
4623
4624New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
4625
4626GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
4627library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
4628object file types such as a.out and coff.
4629
4630There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
4631refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
4632
4633
4634 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
4635
4636All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
4637by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
4638
4639For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
4640``Show prompt'' produces the response:
4641Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
4642
4643What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
4644print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
4645will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
4646all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
4647
4648confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
4649 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
4650 it is already running. Default is ON.
4651
4652editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
4653 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
4654 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
4655 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
4656 Default is ON.
4657
4658history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
4659 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
4660 or the value of the environment variable
4661 GDBHISTFILE.
4662
4663history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
4664 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
4665 HISTSIZE.
4666
4667history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
4668 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
4669 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
4670
4671history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
4672 history expansion will be performed on
4673 command line input. The default is OFF.
4674
4675radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
4676 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
4677 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
4678
4679height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
4680 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
4681 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
4682 variable TERM.
4683
4684width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
4685 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
4686 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
4687 variable TERM.
4688
4689Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
4690``set width'' instead.
4691
4692print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
4693 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
4694 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
4695 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
4696
4697print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
4698 is OFF.
4699
4700print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
4701 "raw" form if off.
4702
4703print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
4704 like instructions.
4705
4706print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
4707
4708
4709 * Support for Epoch Environment.
4710
4711The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
4712new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
4713are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
4714window.
4715
4716
4717 * Support for Shared Libraries
4718
4719GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
4720Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
4721before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
4722happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
4723At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
4724from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
4725shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
4726It can be abbreviated ``share''.
4727
4728sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
4729 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
4730 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
4731
4732info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
4733
4734
4735 * Watchpoints
4736
4737A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
4738expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
4739tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
4740quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
4741problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
4742more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
4743
4744watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
4745
4746info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
4747
4748delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4749disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4750enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4751
4752
4753 * C++ multiple inheritance
4754
4755When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
4756for C++ programs.
4757
4758 * C++ exception handling
4759
4760Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
4761ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
4762the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
4763handler's context).
4764
4765catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
4766 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
4767 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
4768
4769info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
4770 current stack frame.
4771
4772
4773 * Minor command changes
4774
4775The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
4776command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
4777is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
4778
4779The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
4780at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
4781frames without printing.
4782
4783 * New directory command
4784
4785'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
4786The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
4787about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
4788with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
4789find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
4790
4791 * Configuring GDB for compilation
4792
4793For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
4794for more details.
4795
4796GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
4797two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
4798Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
4799where the program that you are debugging will run.
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