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[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
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4*** Changes since GDB 5.3:
5
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6* d10v `regs' command deprecated
7
8The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
9registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
10
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11* Profiling support
12
13A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
14be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
15session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
16"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
17data, for more informative profiling results.
18
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19* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
20
21The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
22option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
23"mi1", can be enabled by sepcifying the option "-i=mi1".
24
25Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
26removed.
27
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28Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
29Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
30Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
31 in a subsequent -var-update.
32
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33* OBSOLETE configurations and files
34
35Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
36been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
37configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
38permanently REMOVED.
39
67f16606 40Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
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41H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
42
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43* REMOVED configurations and files
44
45V850EA ISA
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46Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
47IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
48i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
49i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
50i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
51HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
52 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
53 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
54Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
55Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
56Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
57OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
58I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 59
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60* MIPS $fp behavior changed
61
62The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
63the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
64context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
65address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
66The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
67
299ffc64 68*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 69
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70* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
71
72When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
73`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
74in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
75library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
76shared libs like mad''.
77
b9d14705 78* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 79
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80Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
81the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
82arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
83powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 84
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85* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
86
87GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
88and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
89they expand.
90
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91The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
92invocations in expression, and shows the result.
93
94The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
95macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
96
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97Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
98information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
99your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
100information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
101
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102* Multi-arched targets.
103
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104DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
105DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 106NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 107National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
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108Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
109Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 110
cd9bfe15 111* New targets.
e33ce519 112
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113Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
114
e33ce519 115
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116* New native configurations
117
118Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 119SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 120MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 121UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 122
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123* OBSOLETE configurations and files
124
125Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
126been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
127configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
128permanently REMOVED.
129
92eb23c5 130Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 131OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 132IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 133Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 134Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 135Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
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136i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
137i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
138i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
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139HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
140 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
141 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 142I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 143
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144* OBSOLETE languages
145
146CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
147
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148* REMOVED configurations and files
149
150AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
151A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
152AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
153AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
154AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
155
156testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
157
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158* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
159
160This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
161commands. The default is 1024.
162
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163* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
164
165Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
166
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167* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
168
169These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
170to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
171from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 172
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173* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
174
175The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
176including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
177of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
178
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179*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
180
181* New targets.
182
183Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
184
185* Bug fixes
186
187gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
188mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
189Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
190
191gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
192dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
193Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
194
195Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
196Surprisingly enough, it works now.
197By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
198
199i386 hardware watchpoint support:
200avoid misses on second run for some targets.
201By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
202
37057839 203*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 204
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205* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
206
207This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
208really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
209In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
210target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
211This can be a significant performance improvement on some
212(notably embedded) targets.
213
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214* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
215
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216This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
217process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
218GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
219hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 220
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221* New command line option
222
223GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
224
225* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
226
227There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
228command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
229a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
230be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
231open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
232issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
233a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
234it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
235GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
236is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
237
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238* Changes in ARM configurations.
239
240Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
241configuration is fully multi-arch.
242
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243* New native configurations
244
fe419ffc 245ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 246x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 247AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 248Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 249
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250* New targets
251
252Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
253
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254* OBSOLETE configurations and files
255
256Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
257been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
258configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
259permanently REMOVED.
260
261AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
262A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
263AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
264AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
265AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
266
b4ceaee6 267testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 268
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269* REMOVED configurations and files
270
271TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 272WDC 65816 w65-*-*
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273PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
274PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
275PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 276Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
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277Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
278 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 279SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 280Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
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281Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
282ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 283Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 284
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285* Changes to command line processing
286
287The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
288for the inferior from gdb's command line.
289
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290* Changes to key bindings
291
292There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
293
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294*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
295
296Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
297
298Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
299corrupted.
300
301Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
302
303Numerous documentation fixes.
304
305Numerous testsuite fixes.
306
34f47bc4 307*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
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308
309* New native configurations
310
311Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
312x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 313MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
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314MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
315ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 316s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 317
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318* New targets
319
def90278 320Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 321CRIS cris-axis
55241689 322UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 323
17e78a56 324* OBSOLETE configurations and files
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325
326x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 327Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
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328Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
329 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
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330TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
331WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 332Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
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333PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
334PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
335PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 336SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
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337Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
338ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 339Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 340
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341stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
342kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
343
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344Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
345been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
346configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
347permanently REMOVED.
348
a196c81c 349* REMOVED configurations and files
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350
351Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
352Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
353Pyramid pyramid-*-*
354ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
355Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 356ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 357
6d6b80e5 358* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 359
6d6b80e5 360GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
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361sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
362present.
363
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364* Other news:
365
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366* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
367
368* The MI enabled by default.
369
370The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
371revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
372engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
373using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
374which is now deprecated.
375
376* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
377
378GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
379main features are supported:
380
381 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
382
383 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
384 extension;
385
386 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
387
388 - a Pascal expression parser.
389
390However, some important features are not yet supported.
391
392 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
393
394 - there are some problems with boolean types;
395
396 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
397 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
398
399 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
400
401 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
402
403* Changes in completion.
404
405Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
406to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
407users expect at the shell prompt.
408
409Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
410`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
411program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
412files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
413be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
414considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
415name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
416
417`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
418
419* New platform-independent commands:
420
421It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
422hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
423documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
424
425* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
426
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427Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
428revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
429many threads as your system allows you to have.
430
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431Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
432
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433Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
434multi-threaded programs though.
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435
436* Changes in MIPS configurations.
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437
438Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
439
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440GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
441debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
442supported.)
443
444* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
445
446Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
447breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
448implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
449put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
450and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
451registers.
452
453The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
454debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
455watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
456
457* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
458
459New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
460the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
461
462New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
463display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
464IDT.
465
466New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
467from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
468New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
469a given linear address.
470
471GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
472program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
473which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
474
475DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
476
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477It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
478
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479* Changes in documentation.
480
481All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
482Documentation License.
483
484Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
485manual.
486
487TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
488
489Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
490manual.
491
492The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
493documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
494hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
495
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496* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
497
498The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
499``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
500contents of this file.
501
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502* gdba.el deleted
503
504GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 505
9debab2f 506*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 507
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508* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
509
510Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
511programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
512displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
513greater level of detail.
514
515* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
516
517It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
518bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
519on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
520written.
521
522* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
523
524The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
525necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
526machines ``out of the box''.
527
528The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
529possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
530signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
531would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
532interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
533
534It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
535standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
536even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
537and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
538terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
539
540The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
541enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
542also works.
543
544DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
545GDB.
546
547It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
548directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
549times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
550breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
551
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552* New native configurations
553
554ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 555PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 556
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557* New targets
558
96baa820 559Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
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560x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
561PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
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562TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
563
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564* OBSOLETE configurations
565
566Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
567Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 568Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 569ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 570Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 571
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572Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
573but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
574these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
575be permanently REMOVED.
576
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577* Gould support removed
578
579Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
580
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581* New features for SVR4
582
583On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
584without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
585load symbols from the running process's executable file.
586
587* Many C++ enhancements
588
589C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
590in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
591
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JM
592* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
593
594A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
595sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
596with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
597``|<program> <args>'' vis:
598
599 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
600 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
601
43e526b9
JM
602* MIPS 64 remote protocol
603
604A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
605expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
606instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
607
608The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
609added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
610
96baa820
JM
611* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
612
613The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
614``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
615include ``set remote P-packet''.
616
11cf8741
JM
617* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
618
619The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
620accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
621``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
622
7876dd43
DB
623* ``apropos'' command added.
624
625The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
626documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
627try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
628
bc9e5bbf
AC
629* New MI interface
630
631A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
632interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
633process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
634"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
635enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
636
637 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
638
c906108c
SS
639*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
640
641* New native configurations
642
643HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
644HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 645M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
646
647* New targets
648
649Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
650Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
651Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
652
653* OBSOLETE configurations
654
655Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
656
657Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
658but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
659these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
660be permanently REMOVED.
661
662* ANSI/ISO C
663
664As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
665buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
666containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
667use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
668available. If this is not true, please report the affected
669configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
670information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
671already.
672
673* Readline 2.2
674
675GDB now uses readline 2.2.
676
677* set extension-language
678
679You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
680languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
681you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
682 set extension-language .c c++
683The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
684and their associated languages.
685
686* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
687
688When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
689you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
690PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
691
692 set processor NAME
693
694sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
695following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
696
697 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
698 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
699 403 IBM PowerPC 403
700 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
701 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
702 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
703 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
704 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
705 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
706 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
707 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
708
709At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
710special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
711registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
712only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
713
714* HP-UX support
715
716Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
717more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
718library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
719support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
720for xdb and dbx commands.
721
722* Catchpoints
723
724HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
725generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
726to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
727
728This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
729argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
730output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
731
732* Debugging across forks
733
734On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
735in the inferior.
736
737* TUI
738
739HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
740it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
741configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
742
743* GDB remote protocol additions
744
745A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
746Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
747fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
748allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
749
750For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
751full 64-bit address. The command
752
753 set remoteaddresssize 32
754
755can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
756the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
757will be discarded.
758
759In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
760command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
761
762 maint packet heythere
763
764sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
765disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
766time.
767
768The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
769target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
770downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
771
772* Tracing can collect general expressions
773
774You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
775further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
776doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
777
778* mask-address variable for Mips
779
780For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
781a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
782of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
783
784* Higher serial baud rates
785
786GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
787230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
788to achieve all of these rates.)
789
790* i960 simulator
791
792The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
793builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
794
795
796*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
797
798* New native configurations
799
800Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
801Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
802Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
803PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
804PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
805Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
806Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
807
808* New targets
809
810Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
811Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
812Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
813Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
814MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
815MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
816MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
817Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
818Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
819Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
820NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
821
822* New debugging protocols
823
824ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
825M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
826DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
827PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
828PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
829Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
830
831* DWARF 2
832
833All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
834format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
835information.
836
837* Java frontend
838
839GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
840only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
841
842* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
843
844For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
845loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
846locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
847
848* Live range splitting
849
850GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
851range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
852more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
853
854* Hurd support
855
856GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
857updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
858
859* ARM Thumb support
860
861GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
862instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
863instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
864accordingly.
865
866* MIPS16 support
867
868GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
869instruction set.
870
871* Overlay support
872
873GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
874linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
875will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
876control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
877additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
878in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
879
880* info symbol
881
882The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
883the symbol at the specified address.
884
885* Trace support
886
887The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
888asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
889extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
890includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
891file tracepoint.c for more details.
892
893* MIPS simulator
894
895Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
896by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
897of most MIPS variants.
898
899* Sparc simulator
900
901Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
902by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
903Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
904
905* set architecture
906
907For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
908basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
909architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
910the possible architectures.
911
912*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
913
914* New native configurations
915
916Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
917M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
918PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
919PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
920PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
921RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
922
923* New targets
924
925ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
926I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
927MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
928MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
929PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
930Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
931Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
932
933* PowerPC simulator
934
935The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
936contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
937PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
938basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
939performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
940
941* Solaris 2.5
942
943GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
944
945* Windows 95/NT native
946
947GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
948To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
949which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
950Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
951ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
952
953* dont-repeat command
954
955If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
956command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
957useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
958extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
959
960* Send break instead of ^C
961
962The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
963rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
964GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
965
966* Remote protocol timeout
967
968The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
969that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
970to read from the target. The default value is 2.
971
972* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
973
974By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
975loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
976stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
977when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
978in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
979
980Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
981/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
982automatically on hpux10.
983
984* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
985
986Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
987
988* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
989
990When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
991may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
992the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
993every character. The default value is 1050.
994
995* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
996
997If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
998a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
999replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
1000details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
1001remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
1002to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
1003
1004* Speedups for remote debugging
1005
1006GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
1007the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
1008and more efficient S-record downloading.
1009
1010* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
1011
1012GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
1013Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
1014
1015*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
1016
1017* Psymtabs for XCOFF
1018
1019The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
1020can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
1021
1022* Remote targets use caching
1023
1024Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
1025remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
1026it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
1027debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
1028off' turns the the data cache off.
1029
1030* Remote targets may have threads
1031
1032The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
1033in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
1034gdb/remote.c for details.
1035
1036* NetROM support
1037
1038If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
1039support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
1040acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
1041write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
1042support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
1043another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
1044sequence is something like
1045
1046 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
1047 load <prog>
1048 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
1049
1050* Macintosh host
1051
1052GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
1053may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
1054it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
1055available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
1056device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
1057directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
1058scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
1059mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
1060
1061* Autoconf
1062
1063GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
1064but does simplify configuration and building.
1065
1066* hpux10
1067
1068GDB now supports hpux10.
1069
1070*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
1071
1072* New native configurations
1073
1074x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
1075x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
1076NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
1077Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
1078
1079* New targets
1080
1081A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1082HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
1083CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
1084PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
1085WDC 65816 w65-*-*
1086
1087* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
1088
1089GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
1090possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
1091filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
1092the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
1093if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
1094
1095* Arguments to user-defined commands
1096
1097User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
1098Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
1099trivial example:
1100define adder
1101 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
1102
1103To execute the command use:
1104adder 1 2 3
1105
1106Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
1107Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
1108use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
1109
1110* New `if' and `while' commands
1111
1112This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
1113commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
1114expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
1115execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
1116terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
1117`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
1118if the expression is zero.
1119
1120* Fortran source language mode
1121
1122GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
1123Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
1124variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
1125with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
1126Fortran compilers.
1127
1128* Better HPUX support
1129
1130Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
1131running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
1132processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
1133for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
1134that behavior do the following before running the program:
1135
1136 adb -w a.out
1137 __dld_flags?W 0x5
1138 control-d
1139
1140This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
1141To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
1142
1143 adb -w a.out
1144 __dld_flags?W 0x4
1145 control-d
1146
1147You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
1148the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
1149external linkage.
1150
1151GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
1152HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
1153
1154* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
1155
1156You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
1157commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
1158current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
1159"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
1160associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
1161configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
1162
1163* New DOS host serial code
1164
1165This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
1166no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
1167a PC's serial port.
1168
1169*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
1170
1171* New "complete" command
1172
1173This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
1174were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
1175
1176* Trailing space optional in prompt
1177
1178"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
1179allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
1180
1181* Breakpoint hit counts
1182
1183"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
1184has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
1185can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
1186to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
1187less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
1188that breakpoint.
1189
1190* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
1191
1192"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
1193an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
1194arrays actually contain only short strings.
1195
1196* Shared library breakpoints
1197
1198In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
1199breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
1200
1201* Hardware watchpoints
1202
1203There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
1204targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
1205
55241689 1206Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
1207
1208* Annotations
1209
1210Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
1211and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
1212
1213* Improved Irix 5 support
1214
1215GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
1216
1217* Improved HPPA support
1218
1219GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
1220
1221* New native configurations
1222
1223Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
1224HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1225Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
1226RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
1227
1228* New targets
1229
1230OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1231MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
1232Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
1233
1234* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
1235
1236There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
1237This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
1238
1239* Fixes
1240
1241As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
1242and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
1243
1244*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
1245
1246* Irix 5 is now supported
1247
1248* HPPA support
1249
1250GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
1251to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
1252GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
1253of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
1254can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
1255
1256
1257*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
1258
1259* User visible changes:
1260
1261* Remote Debugging
1262
1263The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
1264target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
1265debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
1266integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
1267debugging info for the mips target).
1268
1269* DEC Alpha native support
1270
1271GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
1272debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
1273work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
1274Alpha-specific notes.
1275
1276* Preliminary thread implementation
1277
1278GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
1279
1280* LynxOS native and target support for 386
1281
1282This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
1283to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
1284for details).
1285
1286* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
1287
1288This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
1289mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
1290call methods, ...etc.
1291
1292*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
1293
1294 * User visible changes:
1295
1296Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
1297supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
1298other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
1299somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
1300
1301Filename completion now works.
1302
1303When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
1304arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
1305addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
1306
1307All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
1308vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
1309should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
1310your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
1311to be on the far side of a thin network line.
1312
1313 * DEC alpha support
1314
1315This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
1316cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
1317
1318
1319*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
1320
1321 * Testsuite
1322
1323This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
1324The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
1325via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
1326
1327 * C++ demangling
1328
1329'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
1330emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
1331Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
1332disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
1333use gdb with AT&T cfront.
1334
1335 * Simulators
1336
1337GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
1338So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
1339Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
1340
1341 * New targets supported
1342
1343H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1344H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1345SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
1346Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1347IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
1348
1349Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
1350version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
1351GO32 memory extender.
1352
1353 * New remote protocols
1354
1355MIPS remote debugging protocol.
1356
1357 * New source languages supported
1358
1359This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
1360used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
1361into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
1362
1363
1364*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
1365
1366 * HP Precision Architecture supported
1367
1368GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
1369version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
1370University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
1371compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
1372format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
1373(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
1374
1375Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
1376
1377 * Faster and better demangling
1378
1379We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
1380demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
1381character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
1382only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
1383This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
1384increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
1385symbol lookups.
1386
1387`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
1388from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
1389compiler does not actually implement.
1390
1391 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
1392
1393In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
1394inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
1395recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
1396very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
1397The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
1398circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
1399fix.
1400
1401The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
1402release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
1403
1404 * Improved configure script
1405
1406The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
1407you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
1408host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
1409done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
1410
1411We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
1412version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
1413`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
1414The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
1415only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
1416We hope to make this the default in a future release.
1417
1418 * Documentation improvements
1419
1420There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
1421produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
1422before submitting changes.
1423
1424The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
1425M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
1426`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
1427you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
1428a future texinfo-X.Y release.
1429
1430*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
1431We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
1432been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
1433or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
1434`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
1435around this problem.
1436
1437 * New features
1438
1439GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
1440the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
1441`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
1442the target program.
1443
1444The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
1445how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
1446
1447 * New native hosts supported
1448
1449HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
1450386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
1451
1452 * New targets supported
1453
1454AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
1455
1456 * New file formats supported
1457
1458BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
1459HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
1460
1461 * Major bug fixes
1462
1463Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
1464
1465We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
1466printf_filtered("%s") problems.
1467
1468We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
1469for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
1470release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
1471
1472You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
1473will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
1474
1475We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
1476for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
1477especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
1478libraries.
1479
1480The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
1481information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
1482command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
1483any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
1484when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
1485
1486 * Internal improvements
1487
1488GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
1489debugging of multiple languages in the future.
1490
1491GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
1492Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
1493symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
1494contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
1495shared code that handles any of them.
1496
1497 * New command line options
1498
1499We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
1500
1501 * Mmalloc licensing
1502
1503The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
1504General Public License.
1505
1506*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
1507
1508 * Host/native/target split
1509
1510GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
1511hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
1512target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
1513local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
1514ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
1515
1516The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
1517GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
1518is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
1519code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
1520any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
1521built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
1522handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
1523
1524GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
1525It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
1526plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
1527
1528 * New hosts supported
1529
1530HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
1531386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1532386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
1533
1534 * New targets supported
1535
1536Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
153768030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
1538
1539 * New native hosts supported
1540
1541386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1542 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
1543386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
1544
1545 * New file formats supported
1546
1547BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
1548supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
1549format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
1550
1551 * New commands
1552
1553`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
1554`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
1555These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
1556
1557`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
1558
1559You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
1560scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
1561prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
1562executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
1563
1564 * C++ improvements
1565
1566We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
1567info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
1568symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
1569
1570Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
1571
1572 * Major bug fixes
1573
1574The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
1575fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
1576by the compiler.
1577
1578We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
1579support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
1580
1581John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
1582slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
1583that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
1584purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
1585the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
1586mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
1587
1588Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
1589about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
1590completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
1591we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
1592
1593 * AMD 29k support
1594
1595A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
1596specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
1597calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
1598usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
1599in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
1600
1601We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
1602Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
1603of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
1604resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
1605
1606 * Remote interfaces
1607
1608We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
1609with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
1610message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
1611This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
1612needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
1613breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
1614each instruction being stepped through.
1615
1616The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
1617registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
1618
1619There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
1620find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
1621Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
1622processor with a serial port.
1623
1624 * Configuration
1625
1626Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
1627`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
1628supported, and what files each one uses.
1629
1630 * Library changes
1631
1632There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
1633disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
1634Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
1635disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
1636
1637The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
1638Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
1639can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
1640grants all the rights from the General Public License.
1641
1642 * Documentation
1643
1644The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
1645reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
1646as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
1647encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
1648system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
1649bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
1650
1651And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
1652
1653
1654*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
1655
1656 * Better support for C++ function names
1657
1658GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
1659names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
1660(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
1661single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
1662Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
1663
1664GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
1665the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
1666You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
1667lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
1668for the list of formats.
1669
1670 * G++ symbol mangling problem
1671
1672Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
1673C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
1674directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
1675can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
1676usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
1677about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
1678this problem.)
1679
1680 * New 'maintenance' command
1681
1682All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
1683the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
1684can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
1685
1686 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
1687 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
1688 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
1689 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
1690 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
1691 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
1692
1693The following commands are new:
1694
1695 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
1696 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
1697 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
1698
1699 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
1700
1701We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
1702(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
1703be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
1704read after argv processing.
1705
1706 * New hosts supported
1707
1708Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
1709
55241689 1710GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
1711
1712We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
1713is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
1714for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
1715masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
1716fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
1717It costs extra.
1718
1719 * New targets supported
1720
1721Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1722
1723 * More smarts about finding #include files
1724
1725GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
1726all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
1727greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
1728especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
1729the one that contains your sources.
1730
1731We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
1732breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
1733try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
1734
1735 * Interesting infernals change
1736
1737GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
1738section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
1739target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
1740stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
1741
1742 * Bug fixes (of course!)
1743
1744There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
1745 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
1746 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
1747
1748See the ChangeLog for details.
1749
1750*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
1751
1752 * New machines supported (host and target)
1753
1754IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
1755
1756SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1757
1758 * New malloc package
1759
1760GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
1761Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
1762capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
1763This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
1764pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
1765more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
1766
1767 * info proc
1768
1769The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
1770'help info proc' for details.
1771
1772 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
1773
1774The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
1775Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
1776possible.
1777
1778 * File name changes for MS-DOS
1779
1780Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
1781support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
1782conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
1783environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
1784that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
1785in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
1786
1787 * Cross byte order fixes
1788
1789Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
1790targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
1791
1792 * New -mapped and -readnow options
1793
1794If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
1795system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
1796`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
1797program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
1798called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
1799Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
1800and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
1801the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
1802option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
1803starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
1804
1805You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
1806the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
1807information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
1808slower, but makes future operations faster.
1809
1810The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
1811build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
1812A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
1813use is:
1814
1815 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
1816
1817The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
1818It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
1819shared across multiple host platforms.
1820
1821 * longjmp() handling
1822
1823GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
1824siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
1825all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
1826platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
1827
1828 * Solaris 2.0
1829
1830Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
1831this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
1832reading symbols.
1833
1834 * Bug fixes
1835
1836As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
1837People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
1838crashes and trashed symbol tables.
1839
1840*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
1841
1842 * New machines supported (host and target)
1843
1844SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
1845 (except core files)
1846BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
1847Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
1848
1849 * New machines supported (target)
1850
1851AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1852
1853 * C++ support
1854
1855GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
1856The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
1857per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
1858
1859GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
1860`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
1861extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
1862good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
1863will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
1864released.
1865
1866 * New features for SVR4
1867
1868GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
1869shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
1870only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
1871
1872The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
1873on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
1874it prints the address mappings of the process.
1875
1876If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
1877bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
1878
1879 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
1880
1881Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
1882now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
1883skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
1884make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
1885same code linked statically.
1886
1887 * New Getopt
1888
1889GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
1890version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
1891continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
1892Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
1893added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
1894future by other options that begin with the same letter.
1895
1896 * Bugs fixed
1897
1898The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
1899Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
1900See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
1901
1902
1903*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
1904
1905 * New machines supported (host and target)
1906
1907Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
1908NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
1909Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1910
1911 * Almost SCO Unix support
1912
1913We had hoped to support:
1914SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
1915(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
1916that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
1917about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
1918
1919 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
1920
1921GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
1922debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
1923is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
1924send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
1925reqired (if any).
1926
1927 * New Readline
1928
1929GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
1930is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
1931required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
1932
1933 * Bugs fixed
1934
1935The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
1936Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
1937See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
1938
1939 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
1940
1941GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
1942supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
1943symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
1944
1945Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
1946mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
1947debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
1948mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
1949version 2.
1950
1951Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
1952really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
1953line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
1954variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
1955situation somewhat.
1956
1957When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
1958However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
1959methods.
1960
1961We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
1962DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
1963encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
1964
1965
1966*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
1967
1968 * Improved configuration
1969
1970Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
1971Porting BFD is simpler.
1972
1973 * Stepping improved
1974
1975The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
1976of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
1977in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
1978function that has debugging information is called within the line.
1979
1980 * Bug fixing
1981
1982Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
1983
1984 * New host supported (not target)
1985
1986Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
1987
1988
1989*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
1990
1991 * Multiple source language support
1992
1993GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
1994It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
1995and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
1996language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
1997You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
1998`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
1999
2000 * GDB and Modula-2
2001
2002GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
2003currently under development at the State University of New York at
2004Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
2005continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
2006
2007Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
2008debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
2009symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
2010
2011There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
2012in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
2013
2014 * set write on/off
2015
2016GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
2017a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
2018the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
2019by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
2020effect immediately.
2021
2022 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
2023
2024When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
2025shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
2026The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
2027examining core files.
2028
2029 * set listsize
2030
2031You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
2032The default is 10.
2033
2034 * New machines supported (host and target)
2035
2036SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2037Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
2038Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
2039
2040 * New hosts supported (not targets)
2041
2042IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
2043
2044 * New targets supported (not hosts)
2045
2046AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2047AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2048Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
2049
2050 * New remote interfaces
2051
2052AMD 29000 Adapt
2053AMD 29000 Minimon
2054
2055
2056*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
2057
2058 * New Facilities
2059
2060Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
2061
2062Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
2063target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
2064is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
2065remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
2066remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
2067also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
2068using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
2069stub on the target system.
2070
2071New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
2072
2073GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
2074library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
2075object file types such as a.out and coff.
2076
2077There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
2078refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
2079
2080
2081 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
2082
2083All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
2084by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
2085
2086For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
2087``Show prompt'' produces the response:
2088Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
2089
2090What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
2091print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
2092will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
2093all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
2094
2095confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
2096 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
2097 it is already running. Default is ON.
2098
2099editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
2100 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
2101 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
2102 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
2103 Default is ON.
2104
2105history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
2106 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
2107 or the value of the environment variable
2108 GDBHISTFILE.
2109
2110history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
2111 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
2112 HISTSIZE.
2113
2114history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
2115 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
2116 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
2117
2118history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
2119 history expansion will be performed on
2120 command line input. The default is OFF.
2121
2122radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
2123 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
2124 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
2125
2126height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
2127 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
2128 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2129 variable TERM.
2130
2131width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
2132 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
2133 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2134 variable TERM.
2135
2136Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
2137``set width'' instead.
2138
2139print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
2140 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
2141 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
2142 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
2143
2144print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
2145 is OFF.
2146
2147print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
2148 "raw" form if off.
2149
2150print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
2151 like instructions.
2152
2153print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
2154
2155
2156 * Support for Epoch Environment.
2157
2158The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
2159new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
2160are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
2161window.
2162
2163
2164 * Support for Shared Libraries
2165
2166GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
2167Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
2168before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
2169happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
2170At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
2171from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
2172shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
2173It can be abbreviated ``share''.
2174
2175sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
2176 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
2177 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
2178
2179info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
2180
2181
2182 * Watchpoints
2183
2184A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
2185expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
2186tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
2187quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
2188problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
2189more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
2190
2191watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
2192
2193info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
2194
2195delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2196disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2197enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2198
2199
2200 * C++ multiple inheritance
2201
2202When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
2203for C++ programs.
2204
2205 * C++ exception handling
2206
2207Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
2208ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
2209the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
2210handler's context).
2211
2212catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
2213 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
2214 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
2215
2216info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
2217 current stack frame.
2218
2219
2220 * Minor command changes
2221
2222The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
2223command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
2224is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
2225
2226The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
2227at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
2228frames without printing.
2229
2230 * New directory command
2231
2232'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
2233The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
2234about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
2235with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
2236find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
2237
2238 * Configuring GDB for compilation
2239
2240For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
2241for more details.
2242
2243GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
2244two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
2245Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
2246where the program that you are debugging will run.
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