New make target 'check-perf' and new dir gdb.perf
[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
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4*** Changes since GDB 7.6
5
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6* GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
7 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
8
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9* New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
10 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
11 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
12 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
13 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
14 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
15 "void".
16
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17* The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
18
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19* The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
20
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21* GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
22 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
23 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
24 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
25
26 (gdb) p $rax
27 $1 = <not saved>
28
29 (gdb) info registers rax
30 rax <not saved>
31
32 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
33 "*value not available*".
34
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35* Python scripting
36
37 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
38
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39* New targets
40
41Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
42Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
42059f0e 43Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
a1217d97 44
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45* Removed native configurations
46
47Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
48been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
49
50arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
51i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
52i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
53i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
54m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
55sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
56vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
57
bd712aed 58* New commands:
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59catch rethrow
60 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
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61maint check-psymtabs
62 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
63maint check-symtabs
64 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
65maint expand-symtabs
66 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
b340913d 67
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68show configuration
69 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
70
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71maint set|show per-command
72maint set|show per-command space
73maint set|show per-command time
74maint set|show per-command symtab
75 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
76
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77remove-symbol-file FILENAME
78remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
79 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
80 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
81 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
82
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83* New options
84
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85set debug symfile off|on
86show debug symfile
87 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
88 symbol tables within those files
89
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90set print raw frame-arguments
91show print raw frame-arguments
92 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
93 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
94
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95set remote trace-status-packet
96show remote trace-status-packet
97 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
98
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99set debug nios2
100show debug nios2
101 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
102
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103set range-stepping
104show range-stepping
105 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
106
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107set startup-with-shell
108show startup-with-shell
109 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
110 directly.
111
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112* You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
113 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
114 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
115 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
116 "set height 0".
117
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118* New command-line options
119--configuration
120 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
121
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122* The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
123 buffer in Common Trace Format.
124
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125* Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
126 GDB command gcore.
127
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128* GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
129
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130* The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
131 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
132
133* The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
134 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
135
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136* The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
137 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
138 due to an uncaught signal.
139
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140* MI changes
141
142 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
143 Trace Format now.
144
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145 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
146
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147 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
148 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
149 are displayed.
150
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151 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
152 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
153
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154 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
155 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
156 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
157
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158 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
159 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
160 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
161 main subprogram.
162
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163 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
164 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
165
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166* New system-wide configuration scripts
167 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
168 configuration scripts for the following systems:
169 ** ElinOS
170 ** Wind River Linux
171
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172* GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
173 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
174 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
175 below.
176
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177* GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
178 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
179
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180* On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
181 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
182 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
183
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184* New remote packets
185
186vCont;r
187
188 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
189 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
190 involvemement at each single-step.
191
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192qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
193 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
194 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
195 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
196 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
197 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
198 speedup.
199
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200* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
201
202 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
203 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
204
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205 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
206 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
207 trace state variables.
208
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209 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
210 target.
211
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212* New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
213 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
214
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215* GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
216
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217* The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
218 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
219 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
220 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
221
2d450646 222*** Changes in GDB 7.6
80c8d323 223
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224* Target record has been renamed to record-full.
225 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
226 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
227 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
228
229set|show record full insn-number-max
230set|show record full stop-at-limit
231set|show record full memory-query
232
233* A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
234 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
235 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
236 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
237 This new recording method can be enabled using:
238
239record btrace
240
241 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
242 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
243
244* Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
245 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
246 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
247
248record instruction-history prints the execution history at
249 instruction granularity
250
251record function-call-history prints the execution history at
252 function granularity
253
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254* New native configurations
255
51d66578 256ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
543bf33d 257FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
4f4352f7 258x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
ea5f3910 259Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
543bf33d 260
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261* New targets
262
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263ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
264ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
249729c4 265Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
3c095f49 266x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
ea5f3910 267Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
249729c4 268
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269* If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
270 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
271 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
272 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
273 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
274 --data-directory command-line option.
275
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276* New command line options:
277
278-nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
279 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
280
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281* Removed command line options
282
283-epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
284 Emacs.
285
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286* The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
287 type formatting.
288
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289* 'info proc' now works on some core files.
290
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291* Python scripting
292
293 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
294
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295 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
296
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297 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
298
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299 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
300
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301 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
302 of architecture in the Python API.
303
304 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
305 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
306
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307* New Python-based convenience functions:
308
309 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
310 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
311 ** $_strlen(str)
312 ** $_regex(str, regex)
313
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314* The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
315 given an argument.
316
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317* The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
318 default for GCC since November 2000.
319
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320* The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
321
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322* The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
323 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
324
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325* New configure options
326
327--enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
328 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
329 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
330 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
331 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
332 options allow the user to override that default.
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333--with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
334 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
335 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
23a80689 336
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337* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
338
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339catch signal
340 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
341 conditions to be attached.
342
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343maint info bfds
344 List the BFDs known to GDB.
345
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346python-interactive [command]
347pi [command]
348 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
349 and print the result of expressions.
350
351py [command]
352 "py" is a new alias for "python".
353
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354enable type-printer [name]...
355disable type-printer [name]...
356 Enable or disable type printers.
357
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358* Removed commands
359
360 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
361 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
362 instead.
363
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364* New options
365
366set print type methods (on|off)
367show print type methods
368 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
369 The default is to show them.
370
371set print type typedefs (on|off)
372show print type typedefs
373 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
374 The default is to show them.
375
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376set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
377show filename-display
378 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
379 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
380
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381set trace-buffer-size
382show trace-buffer-size
383 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
384
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385set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
386show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
387 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
388
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389set debug aarch64
390show debug aarch64
391 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
392 The default is off.
393
394set debug coff-pe-read
395show debug coff-pe-read
396 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
397 exported symbols.
398
399set debug mach-o
400show debug mach-o
401 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
402 processing.
403
404set debug notification
405show debug notification
406 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
407
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408* MI changes
409
410 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
411 "=cmd-param-changed".
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412 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
413 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
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414 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
415 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
416 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
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417 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
418 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
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419 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
420 "=memory-changed".
ed8a1c2d 421 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
ec83d211 422 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
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423 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
424 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
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425 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
426 library load/unload events.
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427 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
428 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
429 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
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430 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
431 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
432 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
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433 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
434 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
5b9afe8a 435
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436* GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
437 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
438 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
439 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
440
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441* New remote packets
442
443QTBuffer:size
444 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
445 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
446
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447Qbtrace:bts
448 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
449 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
450 qSupported query.
451
452Qbtrace:off
453 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
454 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
455
456qXfer:btrace:read
457 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
458 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
459
80c8d323 460*** Changes in GDB 7.5
d6e00af6 461
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462* GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
463 for more x32 ABI info.
464
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465* GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
466
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467* GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
468
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469* The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
470 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
471 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
472 "info os files" lists file descriptors
473 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
474 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
475 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
476 "info os msg" lists message queues
477 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
478
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479* GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
480 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
481 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
482 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
483 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
484 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
485
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486* GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
487 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
488 record/replay support.
489
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490* The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
491
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492* Python scripting
493
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494 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
495 "gdb.COMMAND_USER".
496
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497 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
498
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499 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
500 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
501
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502 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
503
504 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
505 the source at which the symbol was defined.
506
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507 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
508 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
509 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
510 symbol's value.
511
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512 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
513 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
514
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515 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
516 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
517 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
518
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519 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
520 object associated with a PC value.
521
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522 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
523 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
524
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525* Go language support.
526 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
527 language.
528
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529* GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
530 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
531
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532* The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
533 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
534
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535* GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
536 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
537 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
538 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
539 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
540 $1 = (ONE | TWO)
541
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542* The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
543 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
544 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
545 build/libcpp/expr.c.
546
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547* The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
548 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
549
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550* The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
551 since December 2007.
552
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553* The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
554 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
555 command does. For instance:
556
557 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
558
559 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
560 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
561 created, using the "condition" command.
562
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563* The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
564 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
565
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566* GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
567
568* The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
569 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
570 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
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571 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
572 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
573 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
574 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
575 files with older .gdb_index sections.
481860b3 576
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577 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
578 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
579 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
580 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
581 the .gdb_index section.
582
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583* Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
584
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585* GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
586 target.
587
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588* MI changes
589
590 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
591
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592 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
593
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TT
594* New commands
595
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DE
596 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
597 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
598 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
599
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TT
600 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
601 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
602
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SS
603 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
604 several hits.
605
57651221 606 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
c4aeac85
TT
607 C++ and Java objects.
608
06fc020f
SCR
609 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
610 can be used to reccursively explore values and types of
611 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
612 configured with '--with-python'.
613
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614 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
615 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
616 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
617 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
618 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
619 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
620 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
621
622 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
623 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
624 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
625 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
626
e7e0cddf
SS
627 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
628 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
629 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
630 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
631
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TT
632 ** "set print symbol"
633 "show print symbol"
634 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
635 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
636 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
637
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TS
638* Deprecated commands
639
640 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
641 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
642
a58b110a
KB
643* New targets
644
645Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
60c9a3c0 646HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
a58b110a 647
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LM
648* GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
649 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
650 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
651 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
652 evaluates to true.
653
654* New options
655
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MR
656set mips compression
657show mips compression
658 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
659 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
660 mips16
661 micromips
662 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
663
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LM
664set breakpoint condition-evaluation
665show breakpoint condition-evaluation
cf65ecd3 666 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
5b43fab2
JK
667 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
668 available mode.
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669 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
670 target.
671
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JK
672set auto-load off
673 Disable auto-loading globally.
674
675show auto-load
676 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
677
678set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
679show auto-load gdb-scripts
680 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
681
682set auto-load python-scripts on|off
683show auto-load python-scripts
684 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
685
686set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
687show auto-load local-gdbinit
688 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
689
690set auto-load libthread-db on|off
691show auto-load libthread-db
692 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
693
7349ff92 694set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
9cc815f5 695show auto-load scripts-directory
7349ff92
JK
696 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
697 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
698 of the directories listed by this option.
699 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
700
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701set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
702show auto-load safe-path
703 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
704 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
705
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JK
706set debug auto-load on|off
707show debug auto-load
708 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
709
d3ce09f5 710set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
e7e0cddf 711show dprintf-style
d3ce09f5
SS
712 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
713 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
714 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
715 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
e7e0cddf
SS
716
717set dprintf-function <expr>
718show dprintf-function
719set dprintf-channel <expr>
720show dprintf-channel
721 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
722 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
723
d3ce09f5
SS
724set disconnected-dprintf on|off
725show disconnected-dprintf
726 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
727 after GDB disconnects.
728
6dea1fbd
JK
729* New configure options
730
7349ff92
JK
731--with-auto-load-dir
732 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
1564a261
JK
733 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
734 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
735 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
736 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
7349ff92 737
6dea1fbd
JK
738--with-auto-load-safe-path
739 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
7349ff92 740 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
6dea1fbd
JK
741
742--without-auto-load-safe-path
743 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
744 security feature.
745
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LM
746* New remote packets
747
74c48cbb
PA
748z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
749
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LM
750 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
751 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
752 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
753 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
754
9b224c5e
PA
755QProgramSignals:
756
757 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
758 program without GDB involvement.
759
8320cc4f
JK
760* New command line options
761
762--init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
763 before loading inferior.
764--init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
765 execute it before loading inferior.
766
8837a20f
JB
767*** Changes in GDB 7.4
768
f8eba3c6
TT
769* GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
770 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
771 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
772 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
773 inferior changes.
774
1bfeeb0f
JL
775* GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
776 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
777
480a3f21
PW
778* GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
779 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
780 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
781 target hardware watchpoint.
782
783 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
784 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
785 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
786 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
787
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PM
788* Python scripting
789
32d1c362 790 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
7d0aff21 791 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
32d1c362
DE
792 existing one.
793
3a7bf607 794 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
4795f398
DE
795 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
796 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
797 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
798 now "message", which just prints the error message without
799 the stack trace.
3a7bf607 800
baacfb07 801 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
3a7bf607 802 Python API.
713389e0 803
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PM
804 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
805 modules library. This module provides functionality for
baacfb07 806 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
fa3a4f15
PM
807 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
808 corresponding value.
809
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PM
810 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
811 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
812 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
813 on GDB start-up.
814
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PM
815 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
816 static_block will return the global and static blocks
817 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
818 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
819
457e09f0
DE
820 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
821
6839b47f
KP
822 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
823 "gdb.breakpoints".
824
cc72b2a2
KP
825 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
826 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
827 available in the CLI.
828
84ad80e6
PK
829 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
830 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
831 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
832 "some_type.items()".
833
20c168b5
KP
834 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
835 new object file.
836
03c3051a
PK
837 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
838 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
839 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
840 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
841 any anonymous fields.
842
7376e450
TT
843* MI changes
844
845 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
846 "solib-event".
847
848 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
849 "=breakpoint-modified".
850
851 ** New command -ada-task-info.
852
98a5dd13
DE
853* libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
854 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
855 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
856 lives.
857
858 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
859 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
860 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
861 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
862 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
863
864 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
865 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
866
478aac75
DE
867* New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
868 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
869 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
870 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
871 use this option to specify where to find it.
872
9c06b0b4
TJB
873* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
874 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
875 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
876 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
877 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
878 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
879 section in the user manual for more details.
880
03f2bd59
JK
881* The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
882 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
883 become available after that.
884
71eba9c2 885* New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
edc84990 886
2bda9cc5
JK
887* New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
888 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
889 gcc version 4.7.
890
ed59ded5
DE
891* New commands
892
893!SHELL COMMAND
894 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
895 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
896
9c06b0b4
TJB
897* Changed commands
898
899watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
900 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
901 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
902
dbaefcf7
DE
903info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
904 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
905 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
906
71eba9c2 907info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
908 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
909 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
910 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
911 name starts with a hyphen.
912
3065dfb6
SS
913collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
914 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
915 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
916 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
917 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
918 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
919 number of bytes that will be collected.
920
f196051f
SS
921tstart [NOTES]
922 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
923 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
924 setting the variable trace-notes.
925
926tstop [NOTES]
927 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
928 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
929 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
930 trace-stop-notes.
931
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KY
932* Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
933 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
934 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
935 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
936 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
937 is running.
938
405f8e94
SS
939* Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
940 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
941 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
942
2bda9cc5
JK
943* New options
944
45cfd468
DE
945set debug dwarf2-read
946show debug dwarf2-read
947 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
948 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
949
950set debug symtab-create
951show debug symtab-create
952 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
953 creation. The default is off.
954
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PM
955set extended-prompt
956show extended-prompt
957 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
958 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
959 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
960 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
961 prompt is displayed.
962
2bda9cc5
JK
963set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
964show print entry-values
965 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
966 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
967 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
968
969set debug entry-values
970show debug entry-values
971 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
972 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
973
c011a4f4
DE
974set basenames-may-differ
975show basenames-may-differ
976 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
977 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
978 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
979 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
980 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
981 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
982 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
983 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
984
f196051f
SS
985set trace-user
986show trace-user
987set trace-notes
988show trace-notes
989 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
990 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
991 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
992 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
993
994set trace-stop-notes
995show trace-stop-notes
996 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
997 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
998 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
999 started by someone else.
1000
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KY
1001* New remote packets
1002
1003QTEnable
1004
1005 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1006
1007QTDisable
1008
1009 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1010
f196051f
SS
1011QTNotes
1012
1013 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
1014
1015qTP
1016
1017 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
1018
405f8e94
SS
1019qTMinFTPILen
1020
1021 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
1022 be placed.
1023
1a532630
PP
1024* Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
1025 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
1026
11315641
YQ
1027* New targets
1028
1029Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
1030
87326c78
DD
1031* New Simulators
1032
1033Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
1034
e8d56f18
JB
1035*** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
1036
1037* The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
1038
d6e00af6 1039*** Changes in GDB 7.3
797054e6 1040
60f98dde
MS
1041* GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
1042 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
1043 matches the given regular expression.
1044
eee5b35e
DD
1045* The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
1046
b716877b
AB
1047* The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
1048 dumping the instruction opcodes.
1049
aae1c79a
DE
1050* New command line options
1051
1052-data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
1053 This is mostly for testing purposes.
1054
a86caf66
DE
1055* The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
1056 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
1057
99e7ae30
DE
1058* GDB has a new command: "set directories".
1059 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
1060 source path list instead of augmenting it.
1061
4694da01
TT
1062* GDB now understands thread names.
1063
1064 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
1065 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
1066
1067 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
1068 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
1069
f4b8a18d
KW
1070* OpenCL C
1071 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
1072 has been integrated into GDB.
1073
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PM
1074* Python scripting
1075
da5d4055
PM
1076 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
1077 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
1078 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
1079
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PM
1080 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1081 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
1082 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
1083 and allows for more dynamic content.
1084
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PM
1085 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
1086 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
1087 have an is_valid method.
1088
350c6c65
PM
1089 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1090 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
1091 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
1092
6e6fbe60
DE
1093 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
1094
585d1eb8
PM
1095 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
1096 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
1097 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
1098 that function like so:
1099
1100 result = some_value (10,20)
1101
0e3509db
DE
1102 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
1103 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
1104 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
1105
7b51bc51
DE
1106 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
1107 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
1108 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
1109 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
1110 New function: register_pretty_printer.
1111
1112 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
1113 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
1114
99e7ae30
DE
1115 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
1116
d8e22779
TT
1117 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
1118 selected thread.
1119
4694da01
TT
1120 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
1121 holds the thread's name.
1122
505500db
SW
1123 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
1124 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
824446ad 1125 occurring in the process being debugged.
c17a9e46
HZ
1126 The following events are currently supported:
1127 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
1128 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
1129 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
1130
def98928
TT
1131* C++ Improvements:
1132
1133 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
1134 instantiation. For example, if you have:
1135
1136 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
1137
1138 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
1139 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
1140 was added to GCC 4.5.
1141
66cb8159
TT
1142 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
1143 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
1144 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
1145 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
1146 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
1147 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
1148
4aac0db7
UW
1149* GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
1150 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
1151 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
1152 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
1153 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
1154
283e6a52
TT
1155* GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
1156 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
1157 execution to a label.
1158
1159* GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
1160 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
1161 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
1162 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
1163
b56df873 1164* The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
14c0d4e1 1165 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
b56df873
TT
1166 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
1167 of scope.
1168
ae53ffa4
PA
1169* GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
1170
1171 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
1172 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
1173 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
1174 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
1175 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
1176 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
1177
1178 (gdb) info threads
1179 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
1180
1181 While now you see this:
1182
1183 (gdb) info threads
1184 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
1185
1186 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
1187 dumps.
1188
1189 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
1190 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
1191 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
1192 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
1193
f1310107
TJB
1194* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
1195 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
1196 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
1197 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
1198 section in the user manual for more details.
1199
248c9dbc
JB
1200* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1201
1aee7009
JB
1202 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
1203 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
248c9dbc 1204
eb826dc6
MF
1205 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
1206
44603653
JB
1207* New native configurations
1208
1209ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
1210
91021223
MF
1211* New targets:
1212
1213Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
1214
6e1bb179
JB
1215* Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
1216 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
1217 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
1218 in the GDB user manual.
1219
50c97f38
TT
1220* Guile support was removed.
1221
448a92bf
MF
1222* New features in the GNU simulator
1223
1224 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
1225
66ee2731
MF
1226 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
1227
76b8507d 1228*** Changes in GDB 7.2
bfbf3774 1229
ba25b921
PA
1230* Shared library support for remote targets by default
1231
1232 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
1233 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
1234 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
1235 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
1236 was always disabled for such configurations.
1237
4656f5c6
SW
1238* C++ Improvements:
1239
1240 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
1241
1242 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
1243 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
1244 For example:
1245 namespace A
1246 {
1247 class B { };
1248 void foo (B) { }
1249 }
1250 ...
1251 A::B b
1252 foo(b)
1253 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
1254 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
1255 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
1256
1257 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
1258
1259 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
1260 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
1261 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
1262 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
1263 entry.
1264 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
1265 mentioned flavors of operators.
1266
254e6b9e
DE
1267 ** static const class members
1268
1269 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
1270 class definition has been fixed.
1271
711e434b
PM
1272* Windows Thread Information Block access.
1273
1274 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
1275 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
1276 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
1277 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
1278 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
1279 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
1280
0fb4aa4b
PA
1281* Static tracepoints
1282
1283 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
1284 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
1285 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
1286 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
1287 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
1288 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
1289 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
1290 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
1291 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
1292 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
1293 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
1294 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
1295 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
1296 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
1297 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
1298 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
1299 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
1300 the "New remote packets" section below.
1301
ca11e899
SS
1302* Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
1303
1304 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
1305 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
1306 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
1307 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
1308
1309* Observer mode
1310
1311 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
1312 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
1313 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
1314 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
1315 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
1316 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
1317 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
1318
1319* The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
1320 current thread.
1321
711e434b
PM
1322* New remote packets
1323
1324qGetTIBAddr
1325
1326 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
1327
dde08ee1
PA
1328qRelocInsn
1329
1330 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
1331 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
1332 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
1333 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
1334 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
1335 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
1336
0fb4aa4b
PA
1337qTfSTM, qTsSTM
1338
1339 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
1340
1341qTSTMat
1342
1343 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
1344 program.
1345
1346qXfer:statictrace:read
1347
1348 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
1349 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
1350 to gdb's qSupported query.
1351
ca11e899
SS
1352QAllow
1353
1354 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
1355
1356QTDPsrc
1357
1358 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
1359 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
1360
3f7b2faa
DE
1361* The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
1362 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
1363 a directory.
1364
d337e9f0
PA
1365* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1366
0fb4aa4b
PA
1367 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
1368 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
1369 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
1370 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
1371
1372 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
1373 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
1374 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
1375 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
1376 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
1377 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
1378 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
1379
1380 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
1381 for static tracepoints support.
d337e9f0 1382
c24d0242
PM
1383 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
1384
c8d5aac9
L
1385* GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
1386 it understands register description.
1387
7c953934
TT
1388* The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
1389
8685c86f
L
1390* X86 general purpose registers
1391
1392 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
1393 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
1394 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
1395 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
1396 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
1397
95a42b64 1398* The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
86b17b60
PA
1399 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
1400 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
1401 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
1402 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
1403 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
95a42b64 1404
8bd10a10
CM
1405* The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
1406 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
1407 in the specified file.
1408
ab38a727
PA
1409* Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
1410 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
1411 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
1412 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
1413 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
1414 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
1415 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
1416 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
1417 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
1418 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
1419
6149aea9
PA
1420* New commands
1421
f1421989
HZ
1422eval template, expressions...
1423 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
1424 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
1425
ab38a727
PA
1426set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
1427show target-file-system-kind
1428 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
1429 names.
1430
6149aea9
PA
1431save breakpoints <filename>
1432 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
1433 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
1434 definitions, use the `source' command.
1435
1436`save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
1437is now deprecated.
1438
0fb4aa4b
PA
1439info static-tracepoint-markers
1440 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
1441
1442strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
1443 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
1444 function, line, address, or marker ID.
1445
ca11e899
SS
1446set observer on|off
1447show observer
1448 Enable and disable observer mode.
1449
1450set may-write-registers on|off
1451set may-write-memory on|off
1452set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
1453set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
1454set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
1455set may-interrupt on|off
1456 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
1457 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
1458 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
1459 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
1460 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
1461 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
1462 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
1463
1464set record memory-query on|off
1465show record memory-query
1466 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
1467 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
1468
53a71c06
CR
1469* Changed commands
1470
1471disassemble
1472 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
1473
f3e9a817
PM
1474* Python scripting
1475
9279c692
JB
1476** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
1477 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
1478 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
1479 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
1480 GDB using Python' in the manual.
1481
adc36818 1482** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
595939de
PM
1483 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
1484 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
1485 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
f870a310 1486
fa33c3cd 1487** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
07ca107c
DE
1488 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
1489
1490** New exception gdb.GdbError.
fa33c3cd
DE
1491
1492** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
f3e9a817 1493
967cf477
DE
1494** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
1495
8a1ea21f
DE
1496** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
1497 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
1498 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
1499
a7bdde9e
VP
1500* Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
1501there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
1502tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
1503regular breakpoints.
1504
05071a4d
PA
1505* New targets
1506
1507ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
1508
6aecb9c2
JB
1509* D language support.
1510 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
1511 language.
1512
431e49aa
TJB
1513* GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
1514 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
1515 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
1516 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
1517 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
1518
1519* GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
1520 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
1521 conditions of the form:
1522
1523 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
1524
1525 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
1526 interface mentioned above.
1527
bfbf3774 1528*** Changes in GDB 7.1
abc7453d 1529
4eef138c
TT
1530* C++ Improvements
1531
1532 ** Namespace Support
71dee663
SW
1533
1534 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
1535 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
1536 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
1537 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
1538 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
1539
4eef138c
TT
1540 ** Bug Fixes
1541
1542 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
1543 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
1544 qualified name.
1545
1546 ** Cast Operators
1547
1548 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
1549 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
1550
2d1c1221
ME
1551* New targets
1552
1553Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
34207b9e 1554Renesas RX rx-*-elf
2d1c1221
ME
1555
1556* New Simulators
1557
1558Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
34207b9e 1559Renesas RX rx
2d1c1221 1560
6c95b8df
PA
1561* Multi-program debugging.
1562
1563 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
1564 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
1565 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
1566 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
1567 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
1568 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
1569 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
1570 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
1571
d5551862
SS
1572* New tracing features
1573
1574 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
1575
1576 ** Trace state variables
f61e138d
SS
1577
1578 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
1579 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
1580 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
1581 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
1582 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
1583 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
1584 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
1585 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
1586 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
1587 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
7a697b8d 1588
d5551862 1589 ** Fast tracepoints
7a697b8d
SS
1590
1591 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
1592 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
1593 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
1594 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
1595 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
1596 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
1597 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
1598 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
1599 the regular trace command.
1600
d5551862
SS
1601 ** Disconnected tracing
1602
1603 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
1604 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
1605 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
1606 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
1607 connection is lost unexpectedly.
1608
00bf0b85
SS
1609 ** Trace files
1610
1611 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
1612 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
1613 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
1614 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
1615 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
1616 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
1617 <name>".
4daf5ac0
SS
1618
1619 ** Circular trace buffer
1620
1621 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
1622 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
1623 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
1624 not be available for all target agents.
1625
21a0512e
PP
1626* Changed commands
1627
1628disassemble
1629 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
1630 the arguments to be comma-separated.
1631
0fe7935b
DJ
1632info variables
1633 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
1634 which only declare a variable are not shown.
1635
fb2e7cb4
JB
1636source
1637 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
1638 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
1639 support.
1640
1641 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
1642 "set script-extension" (see below).
1643
6c95b8df
PA
1644* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1645
399cd161
MS
1646record save [<FILENAME>]
1647 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
1648 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
1649
1650record restore <FILENAME>
1651 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
1652 earlier time, for replay debugging.
1653
6c95b8df
PA
1654add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
1655 Add a new inferior.
1656
1657clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
1658 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
1659 inferior has loaded.
1660
1661remove-inferior ID
1662 Remove an inferior.
1663
1664maint info program-spaces
1665 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
1666
9a7071a8
JB
1667set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
1668show remote interrupt-sequence
1669 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
1670 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
1671 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
1672 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
1673 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
1674
1675set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
1676show remote interrupt-on-connect
1677 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
1678 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
1679 Linux kernel.
1680
1681set remotebreak [on | off]
1682show remotebreak
1683Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
1684
f61e138d
SS
1685tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
1686 Create or modify a trace state variable.
1687
1688info tvariables
1689 List trace state variables and their values.
1690
1691delete tvariable $NAME ...
1692 Delete one or more trace state variables.
1693
6da95a67
SS
1694teval EXPR, ...
1695 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
1696 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
1697
7a697b8d
SS
1698ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
1699 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
1700
b0f02ee9
JK
1701* New expression syntax
1702
1703 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
1704 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
1705
6c95b8df
PA
1706* New options
1707
1708set follow-exec-mode new|same
1709show follow-exec-mode
1710 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
1711 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
1712 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
1713
236f1d4d
SS
1714set default-collect EXPR, ...
1715show default-collect
1716 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
1717 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
1718 such as registers or a critical global variable.
1719
d5551862
SS
1720set disconnected-tracing
1721show disconnected-tracing
1722 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
1723 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
1724 upon disconnection.
1725
4daf5ac0
SS
1726set circular-trace-buffer
1727show circular-trace-buffer
1728 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
1729 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
1730 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
1731 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
1732
fb2e7cb4
JB
1733set script-extension off|soft|strict
1734show script-extension
1735 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
1736 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
1737 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
1738 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
1739 evaluation failed.
1740 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
1741
2b71fc8e
JB
1742set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
1743show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
1744 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
1745 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
1746 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
1747 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
1748 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
1749 is on.
1750
de2e5182
TT
1751* Python API Improvements
1752
1753 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
1754 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
1755 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
1756
1757 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
1758 `is_base_class' attribute.
1759
1760 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
1761
1762 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
1763 evaluate an expression.
1764
f61e138d
SS
1765* New remote packets
1766
1767QTDV
1768 Define a trace state variable.
1769
1770qTV
1771 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
1772
d5551862
SS
1773QTDisconnected
1774 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
1775
4daf5ac0
SS
1776QTBuffer:circular
1777 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
1778
d5551862
SS
1779qTfP, qTsP
1780 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
1781
2d483d34
MS
1782* Bug fixes
1783
1784Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
1785
6e0e5977
JB
1786Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
1787much more reliable. In particular:
1788 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
1789 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
1790 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
1791 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
1792 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
1793 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
1794 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
1795 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
1796 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
1797 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
1798 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
1799 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
1800 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
1801 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
1802 non-threaded programs.
1803
93c26624
JK
1804PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
1805This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
1806libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
1807executable program.
1808
abc7453d 1809*** Changes in GDB 7.0
75feb17d 1810
4efc6507
DE
1811* GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
1812dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
1813them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
1814for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
1815"JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
1816
782b2b07
SS
1817* Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
1818breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
1819or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
1820the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
1821for tracepoint actions.
1822
53a71c06
CR
1823* The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
1824raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
1825modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
e6158f16 1826
e7a8dbfb
HZ
1827* Process record and replay
1828
1829 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
1830 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
1831 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
1832 execute commands.
1833
64644d9b
MS
1834* Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
1835step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
1836set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
1837reverse execution.
1838
b9412953
DD
1839* GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
1840feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
18412.6.28 or later.
1842
6c7a06a3
TT
1843* GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
1844target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
1845char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
1846literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
1847U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
1848`printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
1849system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
1850the installation instructions for more information.
1851
f1838a98
UW
1852* GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
1853remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
1854with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
1855the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
1856
55333a84
DE
1857* "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
1858and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
1859
7f6a6314
PM
1860* Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
1861now complete on file names.
1862
65d12d83
TT
1863* When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
1864completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
1865For instance, consider:
1866
1867 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
1868 # struct example variable;
1869 (gdb) p variable.
1870
1871If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
1872completions will be "f1" and "f2".
1873
edb3359d
DJ
1874* Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
1875the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
1876
2fae03e8
TT
1877* GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
1878operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
1879macros.
1880
47a3467a 1881* GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
58d6951d
DJ
1882the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
1883implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
1884
1885* GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
1886registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
1887can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
1888and simulator targets may also provide them.
47a3467a 1889
08388c79
DE
1890* New remote packets
1891
1892qSearch:memory:
1893 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1894
a6f3e723
SL
1895QStartNoAckMode
1896 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
1897 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
1898 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
1899
d7713ae0
EZ
1900vKill
1901 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
1902 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
1903
07e059b5
VP
1904qXfer:osdata:read
1905 Obtains additional operating system information
1906
47a3467a
PA
1907qXfer:siginfo:read
1908qXfer:siginfo:write
1909 Read or write additional signal information.
1910
060871df
PA
1911* Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
1912
1913 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
1914 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
1915 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
1916
c055b101 1917* GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
a0ef4274 1918DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
c055b101
CV
1919
1920* The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
a0ef4274
DJ
1921and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
1922`set/show sh calling-convention'.
c055b101 1923
31fffb02
CS
1924* GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
1925with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
1926
88d8a8e0
JB
1927* 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
1928
7f99b190
JB
1929* Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
1930
ccd213ac
DJ
1931* Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
1932which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
1933
1fddbabb 1934* The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
31fffb02 1935list of section offsets.
1fddbabb 1936
a0ef4274
DJ
1937* On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
1938conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
1939have also been fixed.
1940
bfb8797a 1941* GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
158c7665
PH
1942From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
1943are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
bfb8797a 1944
71c25dea
TT
1945* GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
1946example, given:
1947
1948 template<typename T> class C { };
1949 C<char const *> c;
1950
1951GDB will now correctly handle all of:
1952
1953 ptype C<char const *>
1954 ptype C<char const*>
1955 ptype C<const char *>
1956 ptype C<const char*>
1957
ccd213ac
DJ
1958* New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
1959
1960 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
1961 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
1962
7ae0e2a2
UW
1963 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
1964 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1965 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
1966
a6f3e723
SL
1967 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
1968 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
1969
da8bd9a3
DJ
1970 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
1971 gdbserver.
1972
d70e31dd
DE
1973 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
1974 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1975
1976 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
1977 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
1978 as appropriate.
1979
d57a3c85
TJB
1980* Python scripting
1981
1982 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
1983 available is determined at configure time.
1984
d8906c6f
TJB
1985 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
1986
aadc346a
JB
1987* Ada tasking support
1988
1989 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
1990 been introduced:
1991
1992 info tasks
1993 Print the list of Ada tasks.
1994 info task N
1995 Print detailed information about task number N.
1996 task
1997 Print the task number of the current task.
1998 task N
1999 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
2000
adb483fe
DJ
2001* Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
2002add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
2003
2277426b
PA
2004* Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
2005
2006 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
2007 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
2008 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
2009 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
2010 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
2011 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
2012 below.
2013
08d16641
PA
2014* Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
2015"Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
2016information.
2017
e35359c5
UW
2018* Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
2019to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
2020architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
2021See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
2022more information.
2023
85e747d2
UW
2024* Multi-architecture debugging.
2025
2026 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
2027 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
2028 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
2029 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
2030 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
2031
2032* GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
2033use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
2034Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
2035powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
2036--enable-targets configure option.
2037
11ade57a
PA
2038* Non-stop mode debugging.
2039
2040 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
2041 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
2042 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
2043 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
2044 section in the user manual for more information.
2045
2046 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
2047 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
2048 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
2049 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
2050 extensions on linux targets.
2051
d7713ae0 2052* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
75feb17d 2053
a96d9b2e
SDJ
2054catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
2055 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
2056 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
2057 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
2058 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
2059 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
2060 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
2061 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
2062 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
2063
08388c79
DE
2064find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
2065 val1 [, val2, ...]
2066 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
2067
d57a3c85
TJB
2068maint set python print-stack
2069maint show python print-stack
2070 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
2071
2072python [CODE]
2073 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
2074
d7713ae0
EZ
2075macro define
2076macro list
2077macro undef
2078 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
2079 interactively.
2080
2081info os processes
2082 Show operating system information about processes.
2083
2277426b
PA
2084info inferiors
2085 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
2086
2087inferior NUM
2088 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
2089
2090detach inferior NUM
2091 Detach from inferior number NUM.
2092
2093kill inferior NUM
2094 Kill inferior number NUM.
2095
d7713ae0
EZ
2096* New options
2097
3285f3fe
UW
2098set spu stop-on-load
2099show spu stop-on-load
2100 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2101
ff1a52c6
UW
2102set spu auto-flush-cache
2103show spu auto-flush-cache
2104 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
2105 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2106
d7713ae0
EZ
2107set sh calling-convention
2108show sh calling-convention
2109 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
2110
e0a3ce09 2111set debug timestamp
75feb17d 2112show debug timestamp
d7713ae0
EZ
2113 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
2114
2115set disassemble-next-line
2116show disassemble-next-line
2117 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
2118 the debuggee stops.
2119
2120set remote noack-packet
2121show remote noack-packet
2122 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
2123 under "New remote packets."
2124
2125set remote query-attached-packet
2126show remote query-attached-packet
2127 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
2128
2129set remote read-siginfo-object
2130show remote read-siginfo-object
2131 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
2132 packet.
2133
2134set remote write-siginfo-object
2135show remote write-siginfo-object
2136 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
2137 packet.
2138
40ab02ce
MS
2139set remote reverse-continue
2140show remote reverse-continue
2141 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
2142
2143set remote reverse-step
2144show remote reverse-step
2145 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
2146
d7713ae0
EZ
2147set displaced-stepping
2148show displaced-stepping
2149 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
2150 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
2151 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
2152
2153set debug displaced
2154show debug displaced
2155 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
2156
2157maint set internal-error
2158maint show internal-error
2159 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
2160
2161maint set internal-warning
2162maint show internal-warning
2163 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
75feb17d 2164
ccd213ac
DJ
2165set exec-wrapper
2166show exec-wrapper
2167unset exec-wrapper
2168 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
fa4727a6 2169
aad4b048
JB
2170set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
2171show multiple-symbols
2172 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
2173 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
2174 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
2175
74960c60
VP
2176set breakpoint always-inserted
2177show breakpoint always-inserted
2178 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
2179 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
2180 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
2181
0428b8f5
DJ
2182set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2183show arm fallback-mode
2184set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2185show arm force-mode
2186 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
2187 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
2188 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
2189 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
2190
10568435
JK
2191set disable-randomization
2192show disable-randomization
2193 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
2194 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
2195 multiple debugging sessions.
2196
d7713ae0
EZ
2197set non-stop
2198show non-stop
2199 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
2200 a breakpoint.
2201
b3eb342c 2202set target-async
d7713ae0 2203show target-async
b3eb342c
VP
2204 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
2205 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
2206 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
2207 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
2208
6c7a06a3
TT
2209set target-wide-charset
2210show target-wide-charset
2211 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
2212 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
2213
84603566
SL
2214set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
2215show tcp auto-retry
2216set tcp connect-timeout
2217show tcp connect-timeout
2218 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
2219 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
2220 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
2221
17a37d48
PP
2222set libthread-db-search-path
2223show libthread-db-search-path
2224 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
2225 libthread_db.
2226
d4db2f36
PA
2227set schedule-multiple (on|off)
2228show schedule-multiple
2229 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
2230 the current process.
2231
4e5d721f
DE
2232set stack-cache
2233show stack-cache
2234 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
2235 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
2236 affecting correctness.
2237
910c5da8
JB
2238set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
2239show interactive-mode
2240 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
2241 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
2242 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
2243 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
2244 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
2245
2277426b
PA
2246* Removed commands
2247
2248info forks
2249 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
2250 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
2251 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
2252 command.
2253
2254fork NUM
2255 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
2256 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
2257 alias for the `fork' command.
2258
2259process PID
2260 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
2261 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
2262 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
2263
2264delete fork NUM
2265 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
2266 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
2267 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
2268 fork' command.
2269
2270detach fork NUM
2271 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
2272 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
2273 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
2274 fork' command.
2275
a80b95ba
TG
2276* New native configurations
2277
2278x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
2279
b8bfd3ed
JB
2280x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
2281
75a2d5e7
TT
2282* New targets
2283
c28c63d8 2284Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
75a2d5e7 2285x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
4c1d2973 2286x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
5f814c3b 2287S+core 3 score-*-*
75a2d5e7 2288
6de3146c
PA
2289* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
2290 (mingw32ce) debugging.
2291
d5cbbe6e
JB
2292* Removed commands
2293
2294catch load
2295catch unload
2296 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
2297
75feb17d 2298*** Changes in GDB 6.8
f9ed52be 2299
af5ca30d
NH
2300* New native configurations
2301
2302NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
94a0e877 2303Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d
NH
2304
2305* New targets
2306
2307NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
94a0e877 2308Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d 2309
7a404eba
PA
2310* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2311
2312 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
2313 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
2314 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
2315 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
2316
430ebac9
PA
2317* GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
2318(mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
2319
fe6fbf8b 2320* Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
8d5f9c6f 2321is resolved.
fe6fbf8b
VP
2322
2323* GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
8d5f9c6f
DJ
2324including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
2325and in inlined functions.
fe6fbf8b 2326
10665d76
JB
2327* GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
2328accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
2329more than one contiguous range of addresses.
2330
7cc46491
DJ
2331* Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
2332
d71340b8
DJ
2333* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
2334registers on PowerPC targets.
2335
523c4513
DJ
2336* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
2337targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
2338
a6b151f1
DJ
2339* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
2340commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
2341
2d717e4f
DJ
2342* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
2343extended-remote mode.
2344
24a836bd 2345* hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
d001be7a
DJ
2346The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
2347error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
2348The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
24a836bd 2349
d0c678e6
UW
2350* GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
2351building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
2352target architectures.
2353
d64a946d
TJB
2354* GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
2355Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
2356now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
2357stored in two consecutive float registers.
2358
ee163bf5
VP
2359* The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
2360breakpoints now.
2361
b93b6ca7 2362* Improved support for debugging Ada
d001be7a
DJ
2363Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
2364include:
b93b6ca7
JB
2365 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
2366 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
2367 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
2368 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
2369 of an assignment
2370 - Improved command completion in Ada
2371 - Several bug fixes
2372
d001be7a
DJ
2373* GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
2374process.
2375
a6b151f1
DJ
2376* New commands
2377
6d53d0af
JB
2378set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
2379show print frame-arguments
2380 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
2381 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
2382
a6b151f1
DJ
2383remote put
2384remote get
2385remote delete
2386 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2387
2388* New MI commands
2389
2390-target-file-put
2391-target-file-get
2392-target-file-delete
2393 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2394
2395* New remote packets
2396
2397vFile:open:
2398vFile:close:
2399vFile:pread:
2400vFile:pwrite:
2401vFile:unlink:
2402 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
d0c678e6 2403
2d717e4f
DJ
2404vAttach
2405 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
2406 mode.
2407
2408vRun
2409 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
2410
8d5f9c6f 2411*** Changes in GDB 6.7
6dd09645 2412
19d378fc
MS
2413* Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
2414bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
2415Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
2416
3a40aaa0
UW
2417* When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
2418symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
2419-Bsymbolic linker option.
2420
a6ec25f2
BW
2421* When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
2422recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
2423is not supported.
2424
6dd09645
JB
2425* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
2426frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
2427
c9bb8148
DJ
2428* GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
242932-bit or 64-bit register values.
2430
0d5de010
DJ
2431* Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
2432
23181151
DJ
2433* GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
2434target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
2435a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
2436
ea37ba09
DJ
2437* Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
2438automatically displayed as character or string data.
2439
2440* The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
2441arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
2442as strings.
e1f48ead 2443
123dc839
DJ
2444* Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
2445for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
8d5f9c6f 2446only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
123dc839 2447
05a4558a
DJ
2448* GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
2449iWMMXt coprocessor.
fb1e4ffc 2450
7c963485
PA
2451* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
2452ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
2453has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
2454
b18be20d
DJ
2455* GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
2456
0ca420ce
UW
2457* GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
2458
31d99776
DJ
2459* The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
2460layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
2461segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
2462
a4642986
MR
2463* The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
2464immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
2465
cfa9d6d9
DJ
2466* The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
2467"library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
2468packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
2469where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
2470Windows and SymbianOS).
255e7678
DJ
2471
2472* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
2473(DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
f5db8714
JK
2474
2475* GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
2476according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
cfa9d6d9 2477
c9bb8148
DJ
2478* New commands
2479
23776285
MR
2480set remoteflow
2481show remoteflow
2482 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
2483 when debugging using remote targets.
2484
c9bb8148
DJ
2485set mem inaccessible-by-default
2486show mem inaccessible-by-default
2487 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2488 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2489 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
2490 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
2491 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
2492
2493set breakpoint auto-hw
2494show breakpoint auto-hw
2495 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2496 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2497 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
2498 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
2499 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
2500 including "next" and "finish".
2501
0e420bd8
JB
2502catch exception
2503catch exception unhandled
2504 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
2505
2506catch assert
2507 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
2508
f822c95b
DJ
2509set sysroot
2510show sysroot
2511 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
2512 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
2513 an alias to "set sysroot".
2514
83cc5c53
UW
2515info spu
2516 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
2517 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
2518 architecture.
2519
bd372731
MK
2520* New native configurations
2521
2522OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
2523
23181151
DJ
2524set tdesc filename
2525unset tdesc filename
2526show tdesc filename
2527 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
2528 not query the target for its built-in description.
2529
c9bb8148
DJ
2530* New targets
2531
54fe9172 2532OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
c9bb8148 2533MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
c077150c 2534Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
c9bb8148 2535
6dd09645
JB
2536* New remote packets
2537
2538QPassSignals:
2539 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
2540 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
2541
23181151
DJ
2542qXfer:features:read:
2543 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
2544 features.
6dd09645 2545
83cc5c53
UW
2546qXfer:spu:read:
2547qXfer:spu:write:
2548 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
2549 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
2550
cfa9d6d9
DJ
2551qXfer:libraries:read:
2552 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
2553 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
2554 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
2555 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
2556
483367ee
DJ
2557* Removed targets
2558
2559Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
2560
d08950c4
UW
2561alpha*-*-osf1*
2562alpha*-*-osf2*
7ce59000 2563d10v-*-*
483367ee
DJ
2564hppa*-*-hiux*
2565i[34567]86-ncr-*
2566i[34567]86-*-dgux*
2567i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
2568i[34567]86-*-netware*
2569i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
2570i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
2571i[34567]86-*-sco*
2572i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
2573i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
2574i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
2575i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
2576i[34567]86-*-unixware*
2577i[34567]86-*-sysv*
2578i[34567]86-*-isc*
2579m68*-cisco*-*
2580m68*-tandem-*
ad527d2e 2581mips*-*-pe
483367ee 2582rs6000-*-lynxos*
ad527d2e 2583sh*-*-pe
483367ee 2584
7ce59000
DJ
2585* Other removed features
2586
2587target abug
2588target cpu32bug
2589target est
2590target rom68k
2591
2592 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
2593
ea35711c
DJ
2594target hms
2595target e7000
2596target sh3
2597target sh3e
2598
2599 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
2600 H8/300.
2601
2602target ocd
2603
2604 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
2605 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
2606 interfaces.
2607
7ce59000
DJ
2608DWARF 1 support
2609
2610 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
2611 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
2612
54d61198
DJ
2613Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
2614
2615 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
2616 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
2617 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
2618 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
2619
ea35711c
DJ
2620MIPS ".pdr" sections
2621
2622 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
2623 in debugging information.
2624
2625Scheme support
2626
2627 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
2628 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
2629
1a69e1e4
DJ
2630set mips stack-arg-size
2631set mips saved-gpreg-size
2632
2633 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
2634
6dd09645 2635*** Changes in GDB 6.6
e374b601 2636
ca3bf3bd
DJ
2637* New targets
2638
2639Xtensa xtensa-elf
9c309e77 2640Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
ca3bf3bd 2641
6aec2e11
DJ
2642* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
2643(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
2644running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
2645
2646* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
2647Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
2648supported.
2649
17218d91
DJ
2650* The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
2651broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
2652
9ebce043
DJ
2653* The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
2654stub provides the required support.
2655
7d3d3ece
DJ
2656* Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
2657longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
2658
4f8253f3
JB
2659* New commands
2660
2661set substitute-path
2662unset substitute-path
2663show substitute-path
2664 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
2665 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
2666 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
2667 between compilation and debugging.
2668
9fa66fd7
AS
2669set trace-commands
2670show trace-commands
2671 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
2672 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
2673 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
2674
1f5befc1
DJ
2675* REMOVED features
2676
2677The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
2678
2ec3381a
DJ
2679Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
2680an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
2681
3d00d119
DJ
2682The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
2683
be2a5f71
DJ
2684* New remote packets
2685
2686qSupported:
2687 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
2688 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
2689 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
2690 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
2691 target.
2692
0876f84a
DJ
2693qXfer:auxv:read:
2694 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
2695 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
2696
9ebce043
DJ
2697qXfer:memory-map:read:
2698 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
2699 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
2700
2701vFlashErase:
2702vFlashWrite:
2703vFlashDone:
2704 Erase and program a flash memory device.
2705
0876f84a
DJ
2706* Removed remote packets
2707
2708qPart:auxv:read:
2709 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
2710 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
2711
e374b601 2712*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 2713
96309189
MS
2714* New targets
2715
2716Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
2717
2718Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
2719
53e5f3cf
AS
2720* New commands
2721
2722init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
2723 only if it doesn't already have a value.
2724
ac264b3b
MS
2725The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
2726
2727checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
2728
2729restart <n> Return the program state to a
2730 previously saved state.
2731
2732info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
2733
2734delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
2735
2736set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
2737 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
2738
2739info forks List forks of the user program that
2740 are available to be debugged.
2741
2742fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
2743 forks of the user program that are
2744 available to be debugged.
2745
2746delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
2747 that are available to be debugged (and
2748 kill the forked process).
2749
2750detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
2751 that are available to be debugged (and
2752 allow the process to continue).
2753
3950dc3f
NS
2754* New architecture
2755
2756Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
2757
0ea3f30e
DJ
2758* Improved Windows host support
2759
2760GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
2761native console support, and remote communications using either
2762network sockets or serial ports.
2763
f79daebb
GM
2764* Improved Modula-2 language support
2765
2766GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
2767basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
2768pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
2769printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
2770written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
2771GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
2772
acab6ab2
MM
2773* REMOVED features
2774
2775The ARM rdi-share module.
2776
f4267320
DJ
2777The Netware NLM debug server.
2778
53e5f3cf 2779*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 2780
e0ecbda1
MK
2781* New native configurations
2782
02a677ac 2783OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
e0ecbda1
MK
2784OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
2785
d64a6579
KB
2786* New targets
2787
2788Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
2789
b33a6190
AS
2790* New command line options
2791
2792--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
2793--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
2794 the child (debugged) program exited with.
2795--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
2796 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
2797 specified multiple times and in conjunction
2798 with the --command (-x) option.
2799
11dced61
AC
2800* Deprecated commands removed
2801
2802The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
2803removed:
2804
2805 Command Replacement
2806 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
2807 othernames set arm disassembler
2808 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
2809 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
2810 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
2811 regs info registers
2812
6fe85783
MK
2813* New BSD user-level threads support
2814
2815It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
2816library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
2817configurations are:
2818
2819FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2820FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
2821OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
2822
2823Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
2824are not yet supported.
2825
5260ca71
MS
2826* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
2827(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
2828
e84ecc99
AC
2829* REMOVED configurations and files
2830
2831VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 2832Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 2833National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 2834
31e35378
JB
2835* New "set print array-indexes" command
2836
2837After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
2838when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
2839behavior.
2840
e85e5c83
MK
2841* VAX floating point support
2842
2843GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
2844
d91e9901
AS
2845* User-defined command support
2846
2847In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
2848to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
2849section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
2850
f2cb65ca
MC
2851*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
2852
f47b1503
AS
2853* New command line option
2854
2855GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
2856debugging.
2857
f2cb65ca
MC
2858* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
2859
2860GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
2861information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
2862by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
2863proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
2864to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 2865
d08c0230
AC
2866* Internationalization
2867
2868When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
2869internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
2870continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
2871
117ea3cf
PH
2872* Ada
2873
2874Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
2875implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
2876into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
2877
d08c0230
AC
2878* New native configurations
2879
2880GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
2881
2882* Remote 'p' packet
2883
2884GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
2885packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
2886
2887* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
2888
2889GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2890The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
2891features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
2892i386 application).
2893
2894GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
2895compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
2896continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
2897configurations:
2898
2899hppa-*-hpux
2900ia64-*-aix
2901mips-*-irix*
2902*-*-lynx
2903mips-*-linux-gnu
2904sds protocol
2905xdr protocol
2906powerpc bdm protocol
2907
2908Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2909made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
2910
2911* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2912
2913Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2914been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2915configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2916permanently REMOVED.
2917
2918h8300-*-*
2919mcore-*-*
2920mn10300-*-*
2921ns32k-*-*
2922sh64-*-*
2923v850-*-*
2924
ebb7c577
AC
2925*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
2926
2927* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
2928
2929When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
2930heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
2931been fixed.
2932
2933* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
2934
2935When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
2936fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
2937IRIX long double values).
2938
2939* VAX and "next"
2940
2941A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
2942command. This problem has been fixed.
2943
860660cb 2944*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 2945
0dea2468
AC
2946* Fix for ``many threads''
2947
2948On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
2949rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
2950error message:
2951
2952 ptrace: No such process.
2953 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
2954
2955This problem has been fixed.
2956
2c07db7a
AC
2957* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
2958
2959Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
2960GDB to dump core).
2961
c23968a2
JB
2962* New ``start'' command.
2963
2964This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
2965
71009278
MK
2966* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
2967
2968Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
2969live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
2970platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
2971
2972FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2973FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
2974NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
2975NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
2976NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
2977OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2978OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
2979OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
2980OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2981
3c0b7db2
AC
2982* Signal trampoline code overhauled
2983
2984Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
2985These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
2986of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
2987call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
2988signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
2989
73cc75f3
AC
2990Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
2991features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
2992include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 2993
7243600a
BF
2994* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
2995
6f606e1c
MK
2996* New native configurations
2997
97dc871c 2998GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 2999OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
bf2ca189
MK
3000OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
3001OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 3002OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 3003NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 3004OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 3005
a1b461bf
AC
3006* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
3007
3008GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
3009The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
3010including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
3011migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
3012compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
3013work, was also included.
3014
3015GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
3016module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
3017
3018h8300-*-*
3019mcore-*-*
3020mn10300-*-*
3021ns32k-*-*
3022sh64-*-*
3023v850-*-*
3024xstormy16-*-*
3025
3026Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
3027made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
3028
3c7012f5
AC
3029* REMOVED configurations and files
3030
3031Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3032Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3033Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3034Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3035Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3036AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3037Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
3038decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3039riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3040sonymips mips-sony-*
3041sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
3042
e5fe55f7
AC
3043*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
3044
3045* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
3046
3047The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
3048GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
3049command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
3050program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
3051with GDB".
3052
3053* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
3054
3055Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
3056libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
3057cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
3058GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
3059shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
3060the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
3061are created.
3062
3063Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
3064
3065* Fixed ISO-C build problems
3066
3067The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
3068non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
3069compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
3070
3071* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
3072
3073Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
3074wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
3075
3076* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
3077
3078The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
3079permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
3080systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
3081
3082* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
3083
3084Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
3085has been updated to use constant array sizes.
3086
3087* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
3088
3089GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
3090its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
3091panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
3092
3093* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
3094
3095When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
3096by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
3097not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
3098
faae5abe 3099*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 3100
9175c9a3
MC
3101* Removed --with-mmalloc
3102
3103Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
3104conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
3105
3cc87ec0
MK
3106* Changes in AMD64 configurations
3107
3108The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
3109the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
3110and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
3111you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
3112
f0424ef6
MK
3113* Revised SPARC target
3114
3115The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
3116FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
03cebad2
MK
3117support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
3118from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
3119(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 3120
59659be2
ILT
3121* New C++ demangler
3122
3123GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
3124names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
3125with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
3126programs.
3127
9e08b29b
DJ
3128* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3129
3130GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
3131arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
3132encountered these.
3133
8dfe8985
DC
3134* C++ nested types and namespaces
3135
3136GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
3137improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
3138is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
3139Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
3140namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
3141"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
3142frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
3143if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
3144GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
3145
cced5e27
MK
3146* New native configurations
3147
3148NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 3149OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 3150OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
f2cab569
MK
3151OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
3152OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 3153
b4b4b794
KI
3154* New debugging protocols
3155
3156M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
3157
7989c619
AC
3158* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
3159
3160The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
3161and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
3162tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
3163
5994185b
AC
3164* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3165
3166Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3167been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3168configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3169permanently REMOVED.
3170
3171Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3172Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3173Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3174Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3175Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3176AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3177Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
0748d941
AC
3178decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3179riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3180sonymips mips-sony-*
3181sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 3182
0ddabb4c
AC
3183* REMOVED configurations and files
3184
3185SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
3186SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4a8269c0
AC
3187Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3188Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3189H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3190HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3191HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3192HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
3193PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 3194386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4a8269c0
AC
3195Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3196 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3197 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f0424ef6
MK
3198SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
3199SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4a8269c0
AC
3200Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3201Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 3202
c7f1390e
DJ
3203*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
3204
1fe43d45
AC
3205* Objective-C
3206
3207Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
3208integrated into GDB.
3209
e6beb428
AC
3210* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
3211
3212DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
3213information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
3214By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
3215backtraces.
3216
3217The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
3218have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
3219DWARF 2 CFI support.
3220
3221* Hosted file I/O.
3222
3223GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
3224file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
3225remote protocol documentation for details.
3226
3227* All targets using the new architecture framework.
3228
3229All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
3230architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
3231to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
3232ppc32 on ppc64).
3233
3234* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
3235
3236GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
3237per-thread variables.
3238
3239* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
3240
3241GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
3242GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
3243
3244* Separate debug info.
3245
3246GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
3247automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
3248of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
3249system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
3250and optional debug files.
3251
3252* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3253
3254DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
3255describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
3256debugger.
3257
3258GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
3259for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
3260
3261* Java
3262
3263A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
3264Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
3265considered "useable".
3266
85f8f974
DJ
3267* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
3268
3269The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
3270commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
3271kernel.
3272
0fac0b41
DJ
3273* GDB supports logging output to a file
3274
3275There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
3276used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 3277
6ad8ae5c
DJ
3278* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
3279
3280The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
3281disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
3282command.
3283
e286caf2 3284* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5f601589
AC
3285
3286The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
3287registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
3288
d28f9cdf
DJ
3289* Profiling support
3290
3291A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
3292be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
3293session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
3294"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
3295data, for more informative profiling results.
3296
da0f9dcd
AC
3297* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
3298
3299The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
3300option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 3301"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
da0f9dcd
AC
3302
3303Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
3304removed.
3305
fb9b6b35
JJ
3306Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
3307Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
3308Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
3309 in a subsequent -var-update.
3310
954a4db8
MK
3311* New native configurations.
3312
3313FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3314
6760f9e6
JB
3315* Multi-arched targets.
3316
b4263afa 3317HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 3318Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 3319
1b831c93
AC
3320* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3321
3322Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3323been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3324configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3325permanently REMOVED.
3326
8b0e5691 3327Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 3328Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 3329H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
56056df7
AC
3330HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3331HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3332HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 3333PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
AC
3334Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3335 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3336 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
AC
3337Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3338Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 3339
5835abe7
NC
3340* REMOVED configurations and files
3341
3342V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
3343Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3344IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
3345i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3346i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3347i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
3348HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3349 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
3350 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
3351Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3352Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3353Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3354OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3355I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 3356
a094c6fb
AC
3357* MIPS $fp behavior changed
3358
3359The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
3360the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
3361context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
3362address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
3363The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
3364
299ffc64 3365*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 3366
46248966
AC
3367* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
3368
3369When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
3370`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
3371in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
3372library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
3373shared libs like mad''.
3374
b9d14705 3375* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 3376
b9d14705
DJ
3377Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
3378the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
3379arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
3380powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 3381
e0e9281e
JB
3382* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
3383
3384GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
3385and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
3386they expand.
3387
dd73b9bb
AC
3388The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
3389invocations in expression, and shows the result.
3390
3391The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
3392macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
3393
e0e9281e
JB
3394Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
3395information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
3396your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
3397information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
3398
2250ee0c
CV
3399* Multi-arched targets.
3400
6e3ba3b8
JT
3401DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
3402DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 3403NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 3404National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
3405Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
3406Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 3407
cd9bfe15 3408* New targets.
e33ce519 3409
456f8b9d
DB
3410Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
3411
e33ce519 3412
da8ca43d
JT
3413* New native configurations
3414
3415Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 3416SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 3417MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 3418UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 3419
cd9bfe15
AC
3420* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3421
3422Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3423been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3424configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3425permanently REMOVED.
3426
92eb23c5 3427Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 3428OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 3429IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 3430Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 3431Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 3432Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
3433i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3434i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3435i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
3436HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3437 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
3438 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 3439I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 3440
db034ac5
AC
3441* OBSOLETE languages
3442
3443CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
3444
cd9bfe15
AC
3445* REMOVED configurations and files
3446
3447AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3448A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3449AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3450AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3451AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3452
3453testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
3454
20f01a46
DH
3455* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
3456
3457This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
3458commands. The default is 1024.
3459
a5941fbf
MK
3460* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
3461
3462Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
3463
89743e04
MS
3464* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
3465
3466These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
3467to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
3468from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 3469
9fb14e79
JB
3470* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
3471
3472The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
3473including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
3474of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
3475
2037aebb
AC
3476*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
3477
3478* New targets.
3479
3480Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
3481
3482* Bug fixes
3483
3484gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
3485mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
3486Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
3487
3488gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
3489dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
3490Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
3491
3492Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
3493Surprisingly enough, it works now.
3494By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
3495
3496i386 hardware watchpoint support:
3497avoid misses on second run for some targets.
3498By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
3499
37057839 3500*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 3501
1a703748
MS
3502* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
3503
3504This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
3505really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
3506In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
3507target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
3508This can be a significant performance improvement on some
3509(notably embedded) targets.
3510
cefd4ef5
MS
3511* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
3512
55241689
AC
3513This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
3514process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
3515GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
3516hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 3517
352ed7b4
MS
3518* New command line option
3519
3520GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
3521
3522* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
3523
3524There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
3525command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
3526a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
3527be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
3528open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
3529issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
3530a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
3531it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
3532GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
3533is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
3534
fe419ffc
RE
3535* Changes in ARM configurations.
3536
3537Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
3538configuration is fully multi-arch.
3539
eb7cedd9
MK
3540* New native configurations
3541
fe419ffc 3542ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 3543x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 3544AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 3545Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 3546
c9f63e6b
CV
3547* New targets
3548
3549Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
3550
9b4ff276
AC
3551* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3552
3553Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3554been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3555configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3556permanently REMOVED.
3557
3558AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3559A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3560AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3561AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3562AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3563
b4ceaee6 3564testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 3565
e2caac18
AC
3566* REMOVED configurations and files
3567
3568TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 3569WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
3570PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3571PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3572PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 3573Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
3574Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
3575 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 3576SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 3577Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
3578Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
3579ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 3580Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 3581
c2a727fa
TT
3582* Changes to command line processing
3583
3584The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
3585for the inferior from gdb's command line.
3586
467d8519
TT
3587* Changes to key bindings
3588
3589There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
3590
7072a954
AC
3591*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
3592
3593Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
3594
3595Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
3596corrupted.
3597
3598Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
3599
3600Numerous documentation fixes.
3601
3602Numerous testsuite fixes.
3603
34f47bc4 3604*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
3605
3606* New native configurations
3607
3608Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
3609x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 3610MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
3611MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
3612ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 3613s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 3614
bf64bfd6
AC
3615* New targets
3616
def90278 3617Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 3618CRIS cris-axis
55241689 3619UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 3620
17e78a56 3621* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
3622
3623x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 3624Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
3625Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
3626 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
3627TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3628WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 3629Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
3630PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3631PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3632PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 3633SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
3634Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
3635ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 3636Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 3637
17e78a56
AC
3638stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
3639kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
3640
7fcca85b
AC
3641Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3642been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3643configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3644permanently REMOVED.
3645
a196c81c 3646* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
3647
3648Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
3649Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
3650Pyramid pyramid-*-*
3651ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
3652Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 3653ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 3654
6d6b80e5 3655* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 3656
6d6b80e5 3657GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
3658sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
3659present.
3660
bf64bfd6
AC
3661* Other news:
3662
e23194cb
EZ
3663* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
3664
3665* The MI enabled by default.
3666
3667The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
3668revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
3669engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
3670using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
3671which is now deprecated.
3672
3673* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
3674
3675GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
3676main features are supported:
3677
3678 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
3679
3680 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
3681 extension;
3682
3683 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
3684
3685 - a Pascal expression parser.
3686
3687However, some important features are not yet supported.
3688
3689 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
3690
3691 - there are some problems with boolean types;
3692
3693 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
3694 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
3695
3696 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
3697
3698 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
3699
3700* Changes in completion.
3701
3702Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
3703to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
3704users expect at the shell prompt.
3705
3706Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
3707`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
3708program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
3709files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
3710be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
3711considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
3712name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
3713
3714`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
3715
3716* New platform-independent commands:
3717
3718It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
3719hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
3720documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
3721
3722* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
3723
d7275149
MK
3724Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
3725revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
3726many threads as your system allows you to have.
3727
e23194cb
EZ
3728Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
3729
d7275149
MK
3730Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
3731multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
3732
3733* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
3734
3735Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
3736
e23194cb
EZ
3737GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
3738debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
3739supported.)
3740
3741* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
3742
3743Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
3744breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
3745implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
3746put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
3747and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
3748registers.
3749
3750The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
3751debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
3752watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
3753
3754* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
3755
3756New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
3757the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
3758
3759New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
3760display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
3761IDT.
3762
3763New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
3764from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
3765New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
3766a given linear address.
3767
3768GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
3769program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
3770which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
3771
3772DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
3773
6c56c069
EZ
3774It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
3775
e23194cb
EZ
3776* Changes in documentation.
3777
3778All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
3779Documentation License.
3780
3781Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3782manual.
3783
3784TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
3785
3786Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3787manual.
3788
3789The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
3790documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
3791hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
3792
5d6640b1
AC
3793* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
3794
3795The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
3796``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
3797contents of this file.
3798
1a1d8446
AC
3799* gdba.el deleted
3800
3801GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 3802
9debab2f 3803*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 3804
c63ce875
EZ
3805* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
3806
3807Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
3808programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
3809displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
3810greater level of detail.
3811
3812* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
3813
3814It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
3815bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
3816on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
3817written.
3818
3819* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
3820
3821The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
3822necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
3823machines ``out of the box''.
3824
3825The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
3826possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
3827signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
3828would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
3829interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
3830
3831It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
3832standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
3833even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
3834and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
3835terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
3836
3837The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
3838enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
3839also works.
3840
3841DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
3842GDB.
3843
3844It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
3845directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
3846times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
3847breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
3848
ed9a39eb
JM
3849* New native configurations
3850
3851ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 3852PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 3853
7a292a7a
SS
3854* New targets
3855
96baa820 3856Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
3857x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
3858PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
3859TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3860
085dd6e6
JM
3861* OBSOLETE configurations
3862
3863Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
3864Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 3865Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 3866ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 3867Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 3868
9debab2f
AC
3869Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3870but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3871these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3872be permanently REMOVED.
3873
5330533d
SS
3874* Gould support removed
3875
3876Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
3877
bc9e5bbf
AC
3878* New features for SVR4
3879
3880On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
3881without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
3882load symbols from the running process's executable file.
3883
3884* Many C++ enhancements
3885
3886C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
3887in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
3888
adf40b2e
JM
3889* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
3890
3891A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
3892sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
3893with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
3894``|<program> <args>'' vis:
3895
3896 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
3897 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
3898
43e526b9
JM
3899* MIPS 64 remote protocol
3900
3901A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
3902expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
3903instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
3904
3905The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
3906added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
3907
96baa820
JM
3908* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
3909
3910The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
3911``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
3912include ``set remote P-packet''.
3913
11cf8741
JM
3914* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
3915
3916The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
3917accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
3918``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
3919
7876dd43
DB
3920* ``apropos'' command added.
3921
3922The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
3923documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
3924try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
3925
bc9e5bbf
AC
3926* New MI interface
3927
3928A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
3929interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
3930process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
3931"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
3932enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
3933
3934 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
3935
c906108c
SS
3936*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
3937
3938* New native configurations
3939
3940HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
3941HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 3942M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
3943
3944* New targets
3945
3946Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3947Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
3948Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3949
3950* OBSOLETE configurations
3951
3952Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
3953
3954Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3955but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3956these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3957be permanently REMOVED.
3958
3959* ANSI/ISO C
3960
3961As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
3962buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
3963containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
3964use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
3965available. If this is not true, please report the affected
3966configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
3967information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
3968already.
3969
3970* Readline 2.2
3971
3972GDB now uses readline 2.2.
3973
3974* set extension-language
3975
3976You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
3977languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
3978you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
3979 set extension-language .c c++
3980The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
3981and their associated languages.
3982
3983* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
3984
3985When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
3986you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
3987PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
3988
3989 set processor NAME
3990
3991sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
3992following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
3993
3994 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
3995 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
3996 403 IBM PowerPC 403
3997 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
3998 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
3999 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
4000 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
4001 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
4002 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
4003 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
4004 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
4005
4006At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
4007special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
4008registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
4009only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
4010
4011* HP-UX support
4012
4013Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
4014more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
4015library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
4016support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
4017for xdb and dbx commands.
4018
4019* Catchpoints
4020
4021HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
4022generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
4023to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
4024
4025This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
4026argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
4027output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
4028
4029* Debugging across forks
4030
4031On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
4032in the inferior.
4033
4034* TUI
4035
4036HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
4037it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
4038configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
4039
4040* GDB remote protocol additions
4041
4042A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
4043Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
4044fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
4045allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
4046
4047For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
4048full 64-bit address. The command
4049
4050 set remoteaddresssize 32
4051
4052can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
4053the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
4054will be discarded.
4055
4056In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
4057command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
4058
4059 maint packet heythere
4060
4061sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
4062disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
4063time.
4064
4065The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
4066target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
4067downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
4068
4069* Tracing can collect general expressions
4070
4071You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
4072further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
4073doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
4074
4075* mask-address variable for Mips
4076
4077For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
4078a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
4079of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
4080
4081* Higher serial baud rates
4082
4083GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
4084230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
4085to achieve all of these rates.)
4086
4087* i960 simulator
4088
4089The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
4090builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
4091
4092
4093*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
4094
4095* New native configurations
4096
4097Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
4098Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
4099Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4100PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
4101PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4102Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
4103Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
4104
4105* New targets
4106
4107Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4108Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
4109Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4110Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
4111MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
4112MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
4113MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
4114Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
4115Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
4116Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4117NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
4118
4119* New debugging protocols
4120
4121ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
4122M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
4123DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
4124PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4125PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4126Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4127
4128* DWARF 2
4129
4130All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
4131format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
4132information.
4133
4134* Java frontend
4135
4136GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
4137only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
4138
4139* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
4140
4141For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
4142loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
4143locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
4144
4145* Live range splitting
4146
4147GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
4148range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
4149more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
4150
4151* Hurd support
4152
4153GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
4154updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
4155
4156* ARM Thumb support
4157
4158GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
4159instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
4160instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
4161accordingly.
4162
4163* MIPS16 support
4164
4165GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
4166instruction set.
4167
4168* Overlay support
4169
4170GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
4171linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
4172will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
4173control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
4174additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
4175in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
4176
4177* info symbol
4178
4179The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
4180the symbol at the specified address.
4181
4182* Trace support
4183
4184The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
4185asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
4186extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
4187includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
4188file tracepoint.c for more details.
4189
4190* MIPS simulator
4191
4192Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
4193by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
4194of most MIPS variants.
4195
4196* Sparc simulator
4197
4198Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
4199by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
4200Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
4201
4202* set architecture
4203
4204For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
4205basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
4206architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
4207the possible architectures.
4208
4209*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
4210
4211* New native configurations
4212
4213Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
4214M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
4215PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
4216PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
4217PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4218RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
4219
4220* New targets
4221
4222ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
4223I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4224MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
4225MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
4226PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
4227Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
4228Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4229
4230* PowerPC simulator
4231
4232The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
4233contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
4234PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
4235basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
4236performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
4237
4238* Solaris 2.5
4239
4240GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
4241
4242* Windows 95/NT native
4243
4244GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
4245To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
4246which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
4247Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
4248ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
4249
4250* dont-repeat command
4251
4252If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
4253command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
4254useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
4255extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
4256
4257* Send break instead of ^C
4258
4259The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
4260rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
4261GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
4262
4263* Remote protocol timeout
4264
4265The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
4266that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
4267to read from the target. The default value is 2.
4268
4269* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
4270
4271By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
4272loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
4273stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
4274when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
4275in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
4276
4277Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
4278/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
4279automatically on hpux10.
4280
4281* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
4282
4283Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
4284
4285* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
4286
4287When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
4288may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
4289the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
4290every character. The default value is 1050.
4291
4292* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
4293
4294If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
4295a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
4296replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
4297details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
4298remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
4299to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
4300
4301* Speedups for remote debugging
4302
4303GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
4304the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
4305and more efficient S-record downloading.
4306
4307* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
4308
4309GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
4310Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
4311
4312*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
4313
4314* Psymtabs for XCOFF
4315
4316The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
4317can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
4318
4319* Remote targets use caching
4320
4321Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
4322remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
4323it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
4324debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
4325off' turns the the data cache off.
4326
4327* Remote targets may have threads
4328
4329The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
4330in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
4331gdb/remote.c for details.
4332
4333* NetROM support
4334
4335If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
4336support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
4337acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
4338write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
4339support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
4340another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
4341sequence is something like
4342
4343 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
4344 load <prog>
4345 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
4346
4347* Macintosh host
4348
4349GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
4350may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
4351it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
4352available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
4353device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
4354directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
4355scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
4356mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
4357
4358* Autoconf
4359
4360GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
4361but does simplify configuration and building.
4362
4363* hpux10
4364
4365GDB now supports hpux10.
4366
4367*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
4368
4369* New native configurations
4370
4371x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
4372x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
4373NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
4374Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
4375
4376* New targets
4377
4378A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4379HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
4380CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
4381PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
4382WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4383
4384* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
4385
4386GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
4387possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
4388filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
4389the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
4390if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
4391
4392* Arguments to user-defined commands
4393
4394User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
4395Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
4396trivial example:
4397define adder
4398 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
4399
4400To execute the command use:
4401adder 1 2 3
4402
4403Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
4404Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
4405use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
4406
4407* New `if' and `while' commands
4408
4409This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
4410commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
4411expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
4412execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
4413terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
4414`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
4415if the expression is zero.
4416
4417* Fortran source language mode
4418
4419GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
4420Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
4421variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
4422with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
4423Fortran compilers.
4424
4425* Better HPUX support
4426
4427Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
4428running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
4429processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
4430for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
4431that behavior do the following before running the program:
4432
4433 adb -w a.out
4434 __dld_flags?W 0x5
4435 control-d
4436
4437This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
4438To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
4439
4440 adb -w a.out
4441 __dld_flags?W 0x4
4442 control-d
4443
4444You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
4445the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
4446external linkage.
4447
4448GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
4449HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
4450
4451* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
4452
4453You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
4454commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
4455current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
4456"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
4457associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
4458configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
4459
4460* New DOS host serial code
4461
4462This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
4463no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
4464a PC's serial port.
4465
4466*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
4467
4468* New "complete" command
4469
4470This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
4471were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
4472
4473* Trailing space optional in prompt
4474
4475"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
4476allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
4477
4478* Breakpoint hit counts
4479
4480"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
4481has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
4482can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
4483to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
4484less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
4485that breakpoint.
4486
4487* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
4488
4489"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
4490an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
4491arrays actually contain only short strings.
4492
4493* Shared library breakpoints
4494
4495In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
4496breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
4497
4498* Hardware watchpoints
4499
4500There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
4501targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
4502
55241689 4503Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
4504
4505* Annotations
4506
4507Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
4508and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
4509
4510* Improved Irix 5 support
4511
4512GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
4513
4514* Improved HPPA support
4515
4516GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
4517
4518* New native configurations
4519
4520Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
4521HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4522Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
4523RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
4524
4525* New targets
4526
4527OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4528MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
4529Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
4530
4531* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
4532
4533There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
4534This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
4535
4536* Fixes
4537
4538As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
4539and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
4540
4541*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
4542
4543* Irix 5 is now supported
4544
4545* HPPA support
4546
4547GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
4548to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
4549GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
4550of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
4551can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
4552
4553
4554*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
4555
4556* User visible changes:
4557
4558* Remote Debugging
4559
4560The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
4561target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
4562debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
4563integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
4564debugging info for the mips target).
4565
4566* DEC Alpha native support
4567
4568GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
4569debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
4570work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
4571Alpha-specific notes.
4572
4573* Preliminary thread implementation
4574
4575GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
4576
4577* LynxOS native and target support for 386
4578
4579This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
4580to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
4581for details).
4582
4583* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
4584
4585This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
4586mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
4587call methods, ...etc.
4588
4589*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
4590
4591 * User visible changes:
4592
4593Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
4594supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
4595other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
4596somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
4597
4598Filename completion now works.
4599
4600When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
4601arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
4602addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
4603
4604All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
4605vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
4606should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
4607your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
4608to be on the far side of a thin network line.
4609
4610 * DEC alpha support
4611
4612This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
4613cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
4614
4615
4616*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
4617
4618 * Testsuite
4619
4620This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
4621The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
4622via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
4623
4624 * C++ demangling
4625
4626'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
4627emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
4628Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
4629disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
4630use gdb with AT&T cfront.
4631
4632 * Simulators
4633
4634GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
4635So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
4636Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
4637
4638 * New targets supported
4639
4640H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
4641H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4642SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
4643Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4644IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
4645
4646Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
4647version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
4648GO32 memory extender.
4649
4650 * New remote protocols
4651
4652MIPS remote debugging protocol.
4653
4654 * New source languages supported
4655
4656This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
4657used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
4658into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
4659
4660
4661*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
4662
4663 * HP Precision Architecture supported
4664
4665GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
4666version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
4667University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
4668compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
4669format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
4670(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
4671
4672Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
4673
4674 * Faster and better demangling
4675
4676We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
4677demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
4678character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
4679only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
4680This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
4681increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
4682symbol lookups.
4683
4684`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
4685from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
4686compiler does not actually implement.
4687
4688 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
4689
4690In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
4691inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
4692recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
4693very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
4694The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
4695circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
4696fix.
4697
4698The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
4699release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
4700
4701 * Improved configure script
4702
4703The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
4704you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
4705host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
4706done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
4707
4708We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
4709version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
4710`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
4711The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
4712only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
4713We hope to make this the default in a future release.
4714
4715 * Documentation improvements
4716
4717There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
4718produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
4719before submitting changes.
4720
4721The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
4722M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
4723`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
4724you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
4725a future texinfo-X.Y release.
4726
4727*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
4728We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
4729been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
4730or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
4731`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
4732around this problem.
4733
4734 * New features
4735
4736GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
4737the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
4738`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
4739the target program.
4740
4741The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
4742how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
4743
4744 * New native hosts supported
4745
4746HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
4747386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
4748
4749 * New targets supported
4750
4751AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
4752
4753 * New file formats supported
4754
4755BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
4756HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
4757
4758 * Major bug fixes
4759
4760Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
4761
4762We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
4763printf_filtered("%s") problems.
4764
4765We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
4766for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
4767release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
4768
4769You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
4770will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
4771
4772We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
4773for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
4774especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
4775libraries.
4776
4777The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
4778information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
4779command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
4780any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
4781when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
4782
4783 * Internal improvements
4784
4785GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
4786debugging of multiple languages in the future.
4787
4788GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
4789Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
4790symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
4791contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
4792shared code that handles any of them.
4793
4794 * New command line options
4795
4796We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
4797
4798 * Mmalloc licensing
4799
4800The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
4801General Public License.
4802
4803*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
4804
4805 * Host/native/target split
4806
4807GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
4808hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
4809target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
4810local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
4811ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
4812
4813The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
4814GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
4815is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
4816code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
4817any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
4818built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
4819handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
4820
4821GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
4822It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
4823plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
4824
4825 * New hosts supported
4826
4827HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
4828386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4829386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
4830
4831 * New targets supported
4832
4833Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
483468030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
4835
4836 * New native hosts supported
4837
4838386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4839 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
4840386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
4841
4842 * New file formats supported
4843
4844BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
4845supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
4846format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
4847
4848 * New commands
4849
4850`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
4851`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
4852These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
4853
4854`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
4855
4856You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
4857scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
4858prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
4859executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
4860
4861 * C++ improvements
4862
4863We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
4864info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
4865symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
4866
4867Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
4868
4869 * Major bug fixes
4870
4871The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
4872fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
4873by the compiler.
4874
4875We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
4876support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
4877
4878John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
4879slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
4880that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
4881purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
4882the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
4883mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
4884
4885Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
4886about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
4887completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
4888we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
4889
4890 * AMD 29k support
4891
4892A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
4893specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
4894calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
4895usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
4896in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
4897
4898We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
4899Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
4900of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
4901resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
4902
4903 * Remote interfaces
4904
4905We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
4906with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
4907message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
4908This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
4909needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
4910breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
4911each instruction being stepped through.
4912
4913The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
4914registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
4915
4916There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
4917find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
4918Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
4919processor with a serial port.
4920
4921 * Configuration
4922
4923Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
4924`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
4925supported, and what files each one uses.
4926
4927 * Library changes
4928
4929There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
4930disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
4931Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
4932disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
4933
4934The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
4935Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
4936can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
4937grants all the rights from the General Public License.
4938
4939 * Documentation
4940
4941The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
4942reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
4943as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
4944encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
4945system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
4946bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
4947
4948And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
4949
4950
4951*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
4952
4953 * Better support for C++ function names
4954
4955GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
4956names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
4957(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
4958single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
4959Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
4960
4961GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
4962the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
4963You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
4964lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
4965for the list of formats.
4966
4967 * G++ symbol mangling problem
4968
4969Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
4970C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
4971directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
4972can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
4973usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
4974about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
4975this problem.)
4976
4977 * New 'maintenance' command
4978
4979All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
4980the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
4981can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
4982
4983 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
4984 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
4985 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
4986 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
4987 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
4988 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
4989
4990The following commands are new:
4991
4992 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
4993 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
4994 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
4995
4996 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
4997
4998We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
4999(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
5000be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
5001read after argv processing.
5002
5003 * New hosts supported
5004
5005Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
5006
55241689 5007GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
5008
5009We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
5010is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
5011for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
5012masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
5013fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
5014It costs extra.
5015
5016 * New targets supported
5017
5018Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5019
5020 * More smarts about finding #include files
5021
5022GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
5023all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
5024greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
5025especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
5026the one that contains your sources.
5027
5028We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
5029breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
5030try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
5031
5032 * Interesting infernals change
5033
5034GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
5035section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
5036target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
5037stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
5038
5039 * Bug fixes (of course!)
5040
5041There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
5042 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
5043 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
5044
5045See the ChangeLog for details.
5046
5047*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
5048
5049 * New machines supported (host and target)
5050
5051IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
5052
5053SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
5054
5055 * New malloc package
5056
5057GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
5058Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
5059capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
5060This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
5061pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
5062more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
5063
5064 * info proc
5065
5066The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
5067'help info proc' for details.
5068
5069 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
5070
5071The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
5072Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
5073possible.
5074
5075 * File name changes for MS-DOS
5076
5077Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
5078support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
5079conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
5080environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
5081that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
5082in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
5083
5084 * Cross byte order fixes
5085
5086Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
5087targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
5088
5089 * New -mapped and -readnow options
5090
5091If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
5092system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
5093`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
5094program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
5095called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
5096Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
5097and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
5098the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
5099option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
5100starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
5101
5102You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
5103the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
5104information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
5105slower, but makes future operations faster.
5106
5107The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
5108build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
5109A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
5110use is:
5111
5112 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
5113
5114The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
5115It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
5116shared across multiple host platforms.
5117
5118 * longjmp() handling
5119
5120GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
5121siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
5122all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
5123platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
5124
5125 * Solaris 2.0
5126
5127Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
5128this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
5129reading symbols.
5130
5131 * Bug fixes
5132
5133As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
5134People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
5135crashes and trashed symbol tables.
5136
5137*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
5138
5139 * New machines supported (host and target)
5140
5141SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5142 (except core files)
5143BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
5144Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
5145
5146 * New machines supported (target)
5147
5148AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5149
5150 * C++ support
5151
5152GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
5153The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
5154per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
5155
5156GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
5157`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
5158extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
5159good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
5160will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
5161released.
5162
5163 * New features for SVR4
5164
5165GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
5166shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
5167only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
5168
5169The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
5170on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
5171it prints the address mappings of the process.
5172
5173If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
5174bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
5175
5176 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
5177
5178Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
5179now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
5180skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
5181make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
5182same code linked statically.
5183
5184 * New Getopt
5185
5186GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
5187version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
5188continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
5189Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
5190added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
5191future by other options that begin with the same letter.
5192
5193 * Bugs fixed
5194
5195The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5196Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5197See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5198
5199
5200*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
5201
5202 * New machines supported (host and target)
5203
5204Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
5205NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
5206Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5207
5208 * Almost SCO Unix support
5209
5210We had hoped to support:
5211SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5212(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
5213that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
5214about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
5215
5216 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
5217
5218GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
5219debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
5220is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
5221send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
5222reqired (if any).
5223
5224 * New Readline
5225
5226GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
5227is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
5228required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
5229
5230 * Bugs fixed
5231
5232The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5233Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5234See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5235
5236 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
5237
5238GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
5239supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
5240symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
5241
5242Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
5243mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
5244debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
5245mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
5246version 2.
5247
5248Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
5249really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
5250line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
5251variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
5252situation somewhat.
5253
5254When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
5255However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
5256methods.
5257
5258We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
5259DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
5260encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
5261
5262
5263*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
5264
5265 * Improved configuration
5266
5267Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
5268Porting BFD is simpler.
5269
5270 * Stepping improved
5271
5272The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
5273of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
5274in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
5275function that has debugging information is called within the line.
5276
5277 * Bug fixing
5278
5279Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
5280
5281 * New host supported (not target)
5282
5283Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
5284
5285
5286*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
5287
5288 * Multiple source language support
5289
5290GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
5291It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
5292and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
5293language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
5294You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
5295`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
5296
5297 * GDB and Modula-2
5298
5299GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
5300currently under development at the State University of New York at
5301Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
5302continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
5303
5304Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
5305debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
5306symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
5307
5308There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
5309in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
5310
5311 * set write on/off
5312
5313GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
5314a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
5315the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
5316by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
5317effect immediately.
5318
5319 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
5320
5321When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
5322shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
5323The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
5324examining core files.
5325
5326 * set listsize
5327
5328You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
5329The default is 10.
5330
5331 * New machines supported (host and target)
5332
5333SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
5334Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
5335Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
5336
5337 * New hosts supported (not targets)
5338
5339IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
5340
5341 * New targets supported (not hosts)
5342
5343AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5344AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5345Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
5346
5347 * New remote interfaces
5348
5349AMD 29000 Adapt
5350AMD 29000 Minimon
5351
5352
5353*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
5354
5355 * New Facilities
5356
5357Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
5358
5359Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
5360target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
5361is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
5362remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
5363remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
5364also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
5365using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
5366stub on the target system.
5367
5368New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
5369
5370GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
5371library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
5372object file types such as a.out and coff.
5373
5374There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
5375refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
5376
5377
5378 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
5379
5380All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
5381by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
5382
5383For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
5384``Show prompt'' produces the response:
5385Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
5386
5387What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
5388print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
5389will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
5390all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
5391
5392confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
5393 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
5394 it is already running. Default is ON.
5395
5396editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
5397 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
5398 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
5399 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
5400 Default is ON.
5401
5402history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
5403 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
5404 or the value of the environment variable
5405 GDBHISTFILE.
5406
5407history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
5408 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
5409 HISTSIZE.
5410
5411history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
5412 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
5413 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
5414
5415history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
5416 history expansion will be performed on
5417 command line input. The default is OFF.
5418
5419radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
5420 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
5421 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
5422
5423height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
5424 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
5425 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5426 variable TERM.
5427
5428width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
5429 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
5430 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5431 variable TERM.
5432
5433Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
5434``set width'' instead.
5435
5436print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
5437 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
5438 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
5439 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
5440
5441print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
5442 is OFF.
5443
5444print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
5445 "raw" form if off.
5446
5447print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
5448 like instructions.
5449
5450print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
5451
5452
5453 * Support for Epoch Environment.
5454
5455The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
5456new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
5457are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
5458window.
5459
5460
5461 * Support for Shared Libraries
5462
5463GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
5464Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
5465before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
5466happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
5467At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
5468from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
5469shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
5470It can be abbreviated ``share''.
5471
5472sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
5473 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
5474 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
5475
5476info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
5477
5478
5479 * Watchpoints
5480
5481A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
5482expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
5483tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
5484quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
5485problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
5486more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
5487
5488watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
5489
5490info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
5491
5492delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5493disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5494enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5495
5496
5497 * C++ multiple inheritance
5498
5499When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
5500for C++ programs.
5501
5502 * C++ exception handling
5503
5504Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
5505ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
5506the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
5507handler's context).
5508
5509catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
5510 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
5511 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
5512
5513info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
5514 current stack frame.
5515
5516
5517 * Minor command changes
5518
5519The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
5520command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
5521is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
5522
5523The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
5524at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
5525frames without printing.
5526
5527 * New directory command
5528
5529'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
5530The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
5531about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
5532with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
5533find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
5534
5535 * Configuring GDB for compilation
5536
5537For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
5538for more details.
5539
5540GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
5541two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
5542Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
5543where the program that you are debugging will run.
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