* configure.tgt: Add back sparc-*-vxworks*.
[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
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c906108c
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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
f2c06f52
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4*** Changes since GDB 6.0:
5
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6* New C++ demangler
7
8GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
9names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
10with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
11programs.
12
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13* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
14
15GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
16arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
17encountered these.
18
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19* New native configurations
20
21NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
22
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23* New debugging protocols
24
25M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
26
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27* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
28
29The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
30and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
31tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
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
40Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
41Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
42Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
43Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
44Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
45AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
46Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
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47decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
48riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
49sonymips mips-sony-*
50sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 51
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52* REMOVED configurations and files
53
54SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
55SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
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56Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
57Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
58H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
59HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
60HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
61HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
62PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
63Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
64 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
65 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
66Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
67Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 68
c7f1390e
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69*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
70
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71* Objective-C
72
73Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
74integrated into GDB.
75
e6beb428
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76* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
77
78DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
79information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
80By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
81backtraces.
82
83The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
84have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
85DWARF 2 CFI support.
86
87* Hosted file I/O.
88
89GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
90file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
91remote protocol documentation for details.
92
93* All targets using the new architecture framework.
94
95All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
96architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
97to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
98ppc32 on ppc64).
99
100* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
101
102GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
103per-thread variables.
104
105* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
106
107GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
108GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
109
110* Separate debug info.
111
112GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
113automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
114of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
115system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
116and optional debug files.
117
118* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
119
120DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
121describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
122debugger.
123
124GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
125for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
126
127* Java
128
129A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
130Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
131considered "useable".
132
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133* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
134
135The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
136commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
137kernel.
138
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139* GDB supports logging output to a file
140
141There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
142used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 143
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144* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
145
146The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
147disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
148command.
149
e286caf2 150* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
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151
152The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
153registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
154
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155* Profiling support
156
157A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
158be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
159session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
160"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
161data, for more informative profiling results.
162
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163* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
164
165The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
166option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 167"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
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168
169Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
170removed.
171
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172Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
173Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
174Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
175 in a subsequent -var-update.
176
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177* New native configurations.
178
179FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
180
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181* Multi-arched targets.
182
b4263afa 183HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 184Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 185
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186* OBSOLETE configurations and files
187
188Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
189been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
190configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
191permanently REMOVED.
192
8b0e5691 193Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 194Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 195H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
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196HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
197HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
198HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 199PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
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200Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
201 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
202 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
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203Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
204Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 205
5835abe7
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206* REMOVED configurations and files
207
208V850EA ISA
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209Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
210IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
211i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
212i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
213i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
214HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
215 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
216 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
217Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
218Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
219Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
220OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
221I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 222
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223* MIPS $fp behavior changed
224
225The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
226the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
227context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
228address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
229The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
230
299ffc64 231*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 232
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233* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
234
235When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
236`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
237in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
238library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
239shared libs like mad''.
240
b9d14705 241* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 242
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243Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
244the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
245arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
246powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 247
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248* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
249
250GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
251and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
252they expand.
253
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254The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
255invocations in expression, and shows the result.
256
257The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
258macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
259
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260Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
261information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
262your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
263information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
264
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265* Multi-arched targets.
266
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267DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
268DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 269NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 270National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
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271Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
272Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 273
cd9bfe15 274* New targets.
e33ce519 275
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276Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
277
e33ce519 278
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279* New native configurations
280
281Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 282SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 283MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 284UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 285
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286* OBSOLETE configurations and files
287
288Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
289been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
290configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
291permanently REMOVED.
292
92eb23c5 293Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 294OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 295IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 296Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 297Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 298Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
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299i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
300i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
301i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
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302HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
303 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
304 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 305I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 306
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307* OBSOLETE languages
308
309CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
310
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311* REMOVED configurations and files
312
313AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
314A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
315AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
316AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
317AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
318
319testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
320
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321* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
322
323This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
324commands. The default is 1024.
325
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326* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
327
328Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
329
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330* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
331
332These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
333to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
334from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 335
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336* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
337
338The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
339including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
340of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
341
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342*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
343
344* New targets.
345
346Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
347
348* Bug fixes
349
350gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
351mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
352Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
353
354gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
355dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
356Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
357
358Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
359Surprisingly enough, it works now.
360By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
361
362i386 hardware watchpoint support:
363avoid misses on second run for some targets.
364By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
365
37057839 366*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 367
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368* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
369
370This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
371really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
372In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
373target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
374This can be a significant performance improvement on some
375(notably embedded) targets.
376
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377* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
378
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379This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
380process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
381GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
382hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 383
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384* New command line option
385
386GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
387
388* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
389
390There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
391command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
392a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
393be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
394open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
395issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
396a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
397it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
398GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
399is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
400
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401* Changes in ARM configurations.
402
403Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
404configuration is fully multi-arch.
405
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406* New native configurations
407
fe419ffc 408ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 409x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 410AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 411Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 412
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413* New targets
414
415Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
416
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417* OBSOLETE configurations and files
418
419Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
420been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
421configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
422permanently REMOVED.
423
424AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
425A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
426AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
427AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
428AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
429
b4ceaee6 430testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 431
e2caac18
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432* REMOVED configurations and files
433
434TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 435WDC 65816 w65-*-*
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436PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
437PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
438PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 439Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
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440Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
441 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 442SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 443Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
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444Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
445ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 446Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 447
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448* Changes to command line processing
449
450The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
451for the inferior from gdb's command line.
452
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453* Changes to key bindings
454
455There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
456
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457*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
458
459Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
460
461Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
462corrupted.
463
464Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
465
466Numerous documentation fixes.
467
468Numerous testsuite fixes.
469
34f47bc4 470*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
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471
472* New native configurations
473
474Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
475x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 476MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
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477MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
478ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 479s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 480
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481* New targets
482
def90278 483Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 484CRIS cris-axis
55241689 485UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 486
17e78a56 487* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
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488
489x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 490Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
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491Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
492 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
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493TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
494WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 495Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
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496PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
497PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
498PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 499SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
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500Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
501ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 502Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 503
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504stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
505kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
506
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507Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
508been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
509configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
510permanently REMOVED.
511
a196c81c 512* REMOVED configurations and files
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513
514Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
515Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
516Pyramid pyramid-*-*
517ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
518Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 519ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 520
6d6b80e5 521* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 522
6d6b80e5 523GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
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524sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
525present.
526
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527* Other news:
528
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529* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
530
531* The MI enabled by default.
532
533The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
534revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
535engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
536using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
537which is now deprecated.
538
539* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
540
541GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
542main features are supported:
543
544 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
545
546 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
547 extension;
548
549 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
550
551 - a Pascal expression parser.
552
553However, some important features are not yet supported.
554
555 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
556
557 - there are some problems with boolean types;
558
559 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
560 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
561
562 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
563
564 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
565
566* Changes in completion.
567
568Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
569to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
570users expect at the shell prompt.
571
572Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
573`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
574program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
575files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
576be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
577considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
578name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
579
580`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
581
582* New platform-independent commands:
583
584It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
585hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
586documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
587
588* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
589
d7275149
MK
590Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
591revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
592many threads as your system allows you to have.
593
e23194cb
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594Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
595
d7275149
MK
596Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
597multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
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598
599* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
600
601Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
602
e23194cb
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603GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
604debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
605supported.)
606
607* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
608
609Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
610breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
611implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
612put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
613and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
614registers.
615
616The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
617debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
618watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
619
620* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
621
622New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
623the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
624
625New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
626display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
627IDT.
628
629New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
630from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
631New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
632a given linear address.
633
634GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
635program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
636which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
637
638DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
639
6c56c069
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640It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
641
e23194cb
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642* Changes in documentation.
643
644All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
645Documentation License.
646
647Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
648manual.
649
650TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
651
652Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
653manual.
654
655The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
656documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
657hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
658
5d6640b1
AC
659* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
660
661The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
662``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
663contents of this file.
664
1a1d8446
AC
665* gdba.el deleted
666
667GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 668
9debab2f 669*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 670
c63ce875
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671* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
672
673Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
674programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
675displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
676greater level of detail.
677
678* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
679
680It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
681bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
682on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
683written.
684
685* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
686
687The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
688necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
689machines ``out of the box''.
690
691The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
692possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
693signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
694would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
695interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
696
697It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
698standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
699even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
700and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
701terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
702
703The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
704enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
705also works.
706
707DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
708GDB.
709
710It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
711directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
712times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
713breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
714
ed9a39eb
JM
715* New native configurations
716
717ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 718PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 719
7a292a7a
SS
720* New targets
721
96baa820 722Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
723x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
724PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
725TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
726
085dd6e6
JM
727* OBSOLETE configurations
728
729Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
730Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 731Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 732ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 733Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 734
9debab2f
AC
735Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
736but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
737these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
738be permanently REMOVED.
739
5330533d
SS
740* Gould support removed
741
742Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
743
bc9e5bbf
AC
744* New features for SVR4
745
746On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
747without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
748load symbols from the running process's executable file.
749
750* Many C++ enhancements
751
752C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
753in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
754
adf40b2e
JM
755* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
756
757A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
758sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
759with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
760``|<program> <args>'' vis:
761
762 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
763 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
764
43e526b9
JM
765* MIPS 64 remote protocol
766
767A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
768expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
769instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
770
771The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
772added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
773
96baa820
JM
774* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
775
776The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
777``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
778include ``set remote P-packet''.
779
11cf8741
JM
780* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
781
782The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
783accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
784``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
785
7876dd43
DB
786* ``apropos'' command added.
787
788The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
789documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
790try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
791
bc9e5bbf
AC
792* New MI interface
793
794A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
795interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
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796process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
797"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
798enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
799
800 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
801
c906108c
SS
802*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
803
804* New native configurations
805
806HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
807HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 808M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
809
810* New targets
811
812Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
813Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
814Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
815
816* OBSOLETE configurations
817
818Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
819
820Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
821but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
822these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
823be permanently REMOVED.
824
825* ANSI/ISO C
826
827As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
828buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
829containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
830use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
831available. If this is not true, please report the affected
832configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
833information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
834already.
835
836* Readline 2.2
837
838GDB now uses readline 2.2.
839
840* set extension-language
841
842You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
843languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
844you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
845 set extension-language .c c++
846The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
847and their associated languages.
848
849* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
850
851When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
852you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
853PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
854
855 set processor NAME
856
857sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
858following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
859
860 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
861 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
862 403 IBM PowerPC 403
863 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
864 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
865 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
866 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
867 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
868 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
869 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
870 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
871
872At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
873special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
874registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
875only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
876
877* HP-UX support
878
879Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
880more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
881library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
882support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
883for xdb and dbx commands.
884
885* Catchpoints
886
887HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
888generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
889to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
890
891This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
892argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
893output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
894
895* Debugging across forks
896
897On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
898in the inferior.
899
900* TUI
901
902HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
903it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
904configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
905
906* GDB remote protocol additions
907
908A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
909Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
910fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
911allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
912
913For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
914full 64-bit address. The command
915
916 set remoteaddresssize 32
917
918can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
919the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
920will be discarded.
921
922In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
923command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
924
925 maint packet heythere
926
927sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
928disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
929time.
930
931The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
932target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
933downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
934
935* Tracing can collect general expressions
936
937You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
938further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
939doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
940
941* mask-address variable for Mips
942
943For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
944a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
945of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
946
947* Higher serial baud rates
948
949GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
950230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
951to achieve all of these rates.)
952
953* i960 simulator
954
955The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
956builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
957
958
959*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
960
961* New native configurations
962
963Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
964Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
965Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
966PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
967PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
968Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
969Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
970
971* New targets
972
973Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
974Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
975Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
976Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
977MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
978MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
979MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
980Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
981Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
982Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
983NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
984
985* New debugging protocols
986
987ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
988M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
989DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
990PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
991PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
992Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
993
994* DWARF 2
995
996All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
997format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
998information.
999
1000* Java frontend
1001
1002GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
1003only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
1004
1005* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
1006
1007For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
1008loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
1009locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
1010
1011* Live range splitting
1012
1013GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
1014range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
1015more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
1016
1017* Hurd support
1018
1019GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
1020updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
1021
1022* ARM Thumb support
1023
1024GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
1025instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
1026instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
1027accordingly.
1028
1029* MIPS16 support
1030
1031GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
1032instruction set.
1033
1034* Overlay support
1035
1036GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
1037linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
1038will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
1039control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
1040additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
1041in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
1042
1043* info symbol
1044
1045The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
1046the symbol at the specified address.
1047
1048* Trace support
1049
1050The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
1051asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
1052extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
1053includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
1054file tracepoint.c for more details.
1055
1056* MIPS simulator
1057
1058Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
1059by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
1060of most MIPS variants.
1061
1062* Sparc simulator
1063
1064Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
1065by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
1066Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
1067
1068* set architecture
1069
1070For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
1071basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
1072architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
1073the possible architectures.
1074
1075*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
1076
1077* New native configurations
1078
1079Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
1080M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
1081PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
1082PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
1083PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1084RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
1085
1086* New targets
1087
1088ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
1089I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1090MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
1091MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
1092PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
1093Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
1094Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1095
1096* PowerPC simulator
1097
1098The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
1099contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
1100PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
1101basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
1102performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
1103
1104* Solaris 2.5
1105
1106GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
1107
1108* Windows 95/NT native
1109
1110GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
1111To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
1112which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
1113Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
1114ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
1115
1116* dont-repeat command
1117
1118If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
1119command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
1120useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
1121extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
1122
1123* Send break instead of ^C
1124
1125The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
1126rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
1127GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
1128
1129* Remote protocol timeout
1130
1131The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
1132that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
1133to read from the target. The default value is 2.
1134
1135* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
1136
1137By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
1138loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
1139stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
1140when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
1141in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
1142
1143Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
1144/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
1145automatically on hpux10.
1146
1147* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
1148
1149Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
1150
1151* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
1152
1153When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
1154may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
1155the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
1156every character. The default value is 1050.
1157
1158* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
1159
1160If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
1161a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
1162replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
1163details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
1164remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
1165to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
1166
1167* Speedups for remote debugging
1168
1169GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
1170the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
1171and more efficient S-record downloading.
1172
1173* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
1174
1175GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
1176Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
1177
1178*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
1179
1180* Psymtabs for XCOFF
1181
1182The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
1183can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
1184
1185* Remote targets use caching
1186
1187Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
1188remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
1189it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
1190debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
1191off' turns the the data cache off.
1192
1193* Remote targets may have threads
1194
1195The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
1196in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
1197gdb/remote.c for details.
1198
1199* NetROM support
1200
1201If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
1202support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
1203acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
1204write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
1205support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
1206another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
1207sequence is something like
1208
1209 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
1210 load <prog>
1211 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
1212
1213* Macintosh host
1214
1215GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
1216may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
1217it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
1218available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
1219device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
1220directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
1221scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
1222mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
1223
1224* Autoconf
1225
1226GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
1227but does simplify configuration and building.
1228
1229* hpux10
1230
1231GDB now supports hpux10.
1232
1233*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
1234
1235* New native configurations
1236
1237x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
1238x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
1239NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
1240Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
1241
1242* New targets
1243
1244A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1245HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
1246CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
1247PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
1248WDC 65816 w65-*-*
1249
1250* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
1251
1252GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
1253possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
1254filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
1255the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
1256if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
1257
1258* Arguments to user-defined commands
1259
1260User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
1261Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
1262trivial example:
1263define adder
1264 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
1265
1266To execute the command use:
1267adder 1 2 3
1268
1269Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
1270Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
1271use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
1272
1273* New `if' and `while' commands
1274
1275This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
1276commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
1277expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
1278execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
1279terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
1280`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
1281if the expression is zero.
1282
1283* Fortran source language mode
1284
1285GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
1286Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
1287variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
1288with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
1289Fortran compilers.
1290
1291* Better HPUX support
1292
1293Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
1294running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
1295processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
1296for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
1297that behavior do the following before running the program:
1298
1299 adb -w a.out
1300 __dld_flags?W 0x5
1301 control-d
1302
1303This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
1304To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
1305
1306 adb -w a.out
1307 __dld_flags?W 0x4
1308 control-d
1309
1310You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
1311the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
1312external linkage.
1313
1314GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
1315HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
1316
1317* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
1318
1319You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
1320commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
1321current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
1322"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
1323associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
1324configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
1325
1326* New DOS host serial code
1327
1328This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
1329no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
1330a PC's serial port.
1331
1332*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
1333
1334* New "complete" command
1335
1336This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
1337were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
1338
1339* Trailing space optional in prompt
1340
1341"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
1342allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
1343
1344* Breakpoint hit counts
1345
1346"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
1347has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
1348can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
1349to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
1350less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
1351that breakpoint.
1352
1353* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
1354
1355"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
1356an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
1357arrays actually contain only short strings.
1358
1359* Shared library breakpoints
1360
1361In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
1362breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
1363
1364* Hardware watchpoints
1365
1366There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
1367targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
1368
55241689 1369Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
1370
1371* Annotations
1372
1373Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
1374and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
1375
1376* Improved Irix 5 support
1377
1378GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
1379
1380* Improved HPPA support
1381
1382GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
1383
1384* New native configurations
1385
1386Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
1387HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1388Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
1389RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
1390
1391* New targets
1392
1393OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1394MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
1395Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
1396
1397* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
1398
1399There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
1400This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
1401
1402* Fixes
1403
1404As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
1405and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
1406
1407*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
1408
1409* Irix 5 is now supported
1410
1411* HPPA support
1412
1413GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
1414to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
1415GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
1416of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
1417can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
1418
1419
1420*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
1421
1422* User visible changes:
1423
1424* Remote Debugging
1425
1426The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
1427target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
1428debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
1429integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
1430debugging info for the mips target).
1431
1432* DEC Alpha native support
1433
1434GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
1435debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
1436work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
1437Alpha-specific notes.
1438
1439* Preliminary thread implementation
1440
1441GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
1442
1443* LynxOS native and target support for 386
1444
1445This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
1446to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
1447for details).
1448
1449* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
1450
1451This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
1452mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
1453call methods, ...etc.
1454
1455*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
1456
1457 * User visible changes:
1458
1459Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
1460supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
1461other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
1462somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
1463
1464Filename completion now works.
1465
1466When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
1467arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
1468addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
1469
1470All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
1471vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
1472should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
1473your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
1474to be on the far side of a thin network line.
1475
1476 * DEC alpha support
1477
1478This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
1479cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
1480
1481
1482*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
1483
1484 * Testsuite
1485
1486This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
1487The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
1488via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
1489
1490 * C++ demangling
1491
1492'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
1493emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
1494Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
1495disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
1496use gdb with AT&T cfront.
1497
1498 * Simulators
1499
1500GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
1501So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
1502Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
1503
1504 * New targets supported
1505
1506H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1507H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1508SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
1509Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1510IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
1511
1512Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
1513version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
1514GO32 memory extender.
1515
1516 * New remote protocols
1517
1518MIPS remote debugging protocol.
1519
1520 * New source languages supported
1521
1522This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
1523used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
1524into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
1525
1526
1527*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
1528
1529 * HP Precision Architecture supported
1530
1531GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
1532version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
1533University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
1534compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
1535format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
1536(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
1537
1538Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
1539
1540 * Faster and better demangling
1541
1542We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
1543demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
1544character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
1545only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
1546This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
1547increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
1548symbol lookups.
1549
1550`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
1551from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
1552compiler does not actually implement.
1553
1554 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
1555
1556In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
1557inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
1558recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
1559very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
1560The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
1561circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
1562fix.
1563
1564The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
1565release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
1566
1567 * Improved configure script
1568
1569The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
1570you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
1571host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
1572done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
1573
1574We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
1575version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
1576`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
1577The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
1578only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
1579We hope to make this the default in a future release.
1580
1581 * Documentation improvements
1582
1583There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
1584produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
1585before submitting changes.
1586
1587The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
1588M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
1589`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
1590you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
1591a future texinfo-X.Y release.
1592
1593*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
1594We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
1595been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
1596or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
1597`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
1598around this problem.
1599
1600 * New features
1601
1602GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
1603the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
1604`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
1605the target program.
1606
1607The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
1608how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
1609
1610 * New native hosts supported
1611
1612HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
1613386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
1614
1615 * New targets supported
1616
1617AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
1618
1619 * New file formats supported
1620
1621BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
1622HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
1623
1624 * Major bug fixes
1625
1626Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
1627
1628We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
1629printf_filtered("%s") problems.
1630
1631We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
1632for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
1633release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
1634
1635You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
1636will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
1637
1638We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
1639for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
1640especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
1641libraries.
1642
1643The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
1644information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
1645command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
1646any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
1647when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
1648
1649 * Internal improvements
1650
1651GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
1652debugging of multiple languages in the future.
1653
1654GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
1655Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
1656symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
1657contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
1658shared code that handles any of them.
1659
1660 * New command line options
1661
1662We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
1663
1664 * Mmalloc licensing
1665
1666The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
1667General Public License.
1668
1669*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
1670
1671 * Host/native/target split
1672
1673GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
1674hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
1675target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
1676local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
1677ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
1678
1679The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
1680GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
1681is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
1682code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
1683any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
1684built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
1685handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
1686
1687GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
1688It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
1689plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
1690
1691 * New hosts supported
1692
1693HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
1694386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1695386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
1696
1697 * New targets supported
1698
1699Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
170068030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
1701
1702 * New native hosts supported
1703
1704386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1705 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
1706386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
1707
1708 * New file formats supported
1709
1710BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
1711supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
1712format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
1713
1714 * New commands
1715
1716`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
1717`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
1718These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
1719
1720`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
1721
1722You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
1723scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
1724prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
1725executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
1726
1727 * C++ improvements
1728
1729We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
1730info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
1731symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
1732
1733Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
1734
1735 * Major bug fixes
1736
1737The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
1738fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
1739by the compiler.
1740
1741We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
1742support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
1743
1744John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
1745slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
1746that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
1747purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
1748the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
1749mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
1750
1751Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
1752about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
1753completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
1754we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
1755
1756 * AMD 29k support
1757
1758A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
1759specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
1760calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
1761usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
1762in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
1763
1764We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
1765Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
1766of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
1767resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
1768
1769 * Remote interfaces
1770
1771We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
1772with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
1773message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
1774This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
1775needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
1776breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
1777each instruction being stepped through.
1778
1779The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
1780registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
1781
1782There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
1783find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
1784Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
1785processor with a serial port.
1786
1787 * Configuration
1788
1789Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
1790`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
1791supported, and what files each one uses.
1792
1793 * Library changes
1794
1795There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
1796disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
1797Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
1798disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
1799
1800The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
1801Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
1802can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
1803grants all the rights from the General Public License.
1804
1805 * Documentation
1806
1807The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
1808reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
1809as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
1810encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
1811system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
1812bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
1813
1814And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
1815
1816
1817*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
1818
1819 * Better support for C++ function names
1820
1821GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
1822names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
1823(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
1824single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
1825Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
1826
1827GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
1828the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
1829You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
1830lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
1831for the list of formats.
1832
1833 * G++ symbol mangling problem
1834
1835Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
1836C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
1837directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
1838can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
1839usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
1840about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
1841this problem.)
1842
1843 * New 'maintenance' command
1844
1845All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
1846the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
1847can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
1848
1849 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
1850 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
1851 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
1852 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
1853 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
1854 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
1855
1856The following commands are new:
1857
1858 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
1859 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
1860 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
1861
1862 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
1863
1864We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
1865(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
1866be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
1867read after argv processing.
1868
1869 * New hosts supported
1870
1871Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
1872
55241689 1873GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
1874
1875We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
1876is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
1877for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
1878masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
1879fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
1880It costs extra.
1881
1882 * New targets supported
1883
1884Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1885
1886 * More smarts about finding #include files
1887
1888GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
1889all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
1890greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
1891especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
1892the one that contains your sources.
1893
1894We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
1895breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
1896try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
1897
1898 * Interesting infernals change
1899
1900GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
1901section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
1902target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
1903stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
1904
1905 * Bug fixes (of course!)
1906
1907There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
1908 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
1909 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
1910
1911See the ChangeLog for details.
1912
1913*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
1914
1915 * New machines supported (host and target)
1916
1917IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
1918
1919SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1920
1921 * New malloc package
1922
1923GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
1924Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
1925capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
1926This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
1927pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
1928more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
1929
1930 * info proc
1931
1932The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
1933'help info proc' for details.
1934
1935 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
1936
1937The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
1938Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
1939possible.
1940
1941 * File name changes for MS-DOS
1942
1943Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
1944support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
1945conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
1946environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
1947that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
1948in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
1949
1950 * Cross byte order fixes
1951
1952Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
1953targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
1954
1955 * New -mapped and -readnow options
1956
1957If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
1958system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
1959`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
1960program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
1961called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
1962Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
1963and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
1964the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
1965option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
1966starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
1967
1968You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
1969the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
1970information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
1971slower, but makes future operations faster.
1972
1973The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
1974build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
1975A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
1976use is:
1977
1978 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
1979
1980The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
1981It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
1982shared across multiple host platforms.
1983
1984 * longjmp() handling
1985
1986GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
1987siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
1988all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
1989platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
1990
1991 * Solaris 2.0
1992
1993Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
1994this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
1995reading symbols.
1996
1997 * Bug fixes
1998
1999As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
2000People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
2001crashes and trashed symbol tables.
2002
2003*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
2004
2005 * New machines supported (host and target)
2006
2007SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2008 (except core files)
2009BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
2010Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
2011
2012 * New machines supported (target)
2013
2014AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2015
2016 * C++ support
2017
2018GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
2019The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
2020per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
2021
2022GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
2023`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
2024extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
2025good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
2026will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
2027released.
2028
2029 * New features for SVR4
2030
2031GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
2032shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
2033only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
2034
2035The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
2036on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
2037it prints the address mappings of the process.
2038
2039If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
2040bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
2041
2042 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
2043
2044Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
2045now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
2046skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
2047make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
2048same code linked statically.
2049
2050 * New Getopt
2051
2052GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
2053version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
2054continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
2055Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
2056added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
2057future by other options that begin with the same letter.
2058
2059 * Bugs fixed
2060
2061The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2062Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2063See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2064
2065
2066*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
2067
2068 * New machines supported (host and target)
2069
2070Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
2071NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
2072Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2073
2074 * Almost SCO Unix support
2075
2076We had hoped to support:
2077SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2078(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
2079that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
2080about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
2081
2082 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
2083
2084GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
2085debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
2086is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
2087send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
2088reqired (if any).
2089
2090 * New Readline
2091
2092GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
2093is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
2094required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
2095
2096 * Bugs fixed
2097
2098The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2099Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2100See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2101
2102 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
2103
2104GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
2105supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
2106symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
2107
2108Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
2109mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
2110debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
2111mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
2112version 2.
2113
2114Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
2115really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
2116line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
2117variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
2118situation somewhat.
2119
2120When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
2121However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
2122methods.
2123
2124We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
2125DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
2126encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
2127
2128
2129*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
2130
2131 * Improved configuration
2132
2133Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
2134Porting BFD is simpler.
2135
2136 * Stepping improved
2137
2138The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
2139of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
2140in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
2141function that has debugging information is called within the line.
2142
2143 * Bug fixing
2144
2145Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
2146
2147 * New host supported (not target)
2148
2149Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
2150
2151
2152*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
2153
2154 * Multiple source language support
2155
2156GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
2157It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
2158and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
2159language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
2160You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
2161`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
2162
2163 * GDB and Modula-2
2164
2165GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
2166currently under development at the State University of New York at
2167Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
2168continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
2169
2170Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
2171debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
2172symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
2173
2174There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
2175in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
2176
2177 * set write on/off
2178
2179GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
2180a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
2181the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
2182by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
2183effect immediately.
2184
2185 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
2186
2187When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
2188shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
2189The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
2190examining core files.
2191
2192 * set listsize
2193
2194You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
2195The default is 10.
2196
2197 * New machines supported (host and target)
2198
2199SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2200Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
2201Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
2202
2203 * New hosts supported (not targets)
2204
2205IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
2206
2207 * New targets supported (not hosts)
2208
2209AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2210AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2211Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
2212
2213 * New remote interfaces
2214
2215AMD 29000 Adapt
2216AMD 29000 Minimon
2217
2218
2219*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
2220
2221 * New Facilities
2222
2223Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
2224
2225Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
2226target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
2227is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
2228remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
2229remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
2230also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
2231using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
2232stub on the target system.
2233
2234New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
2235
2236GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
2237library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
2238object file types such as a.out and coff.
2239
2240There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
2241refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
2242
2243
2244 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
2245
2246All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
2247by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
2248
2249For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
2250``Show prompt'' produces the response:
2251Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
2252
2253What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
2254print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
2255will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
2256all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
2257
2258confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
2259 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
2260 it is already running. Default is ON.
2261
2262editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
2263 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
2264 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
2265 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
2266 Default is ON.
2267
2268history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
2269 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
2270 or the value of the environment variable
2271 GDBHISTFILE.
2272
2273history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
2274 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
2275 HISTSIZE.
2276
2277history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
2278 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
2279 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
2280
2281history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
2282 history expansion will be performed on
2283 command line input. The default is OFF.
2284
2285radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
2286 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
2287 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
2288
2289height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
2290 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
2291 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2292 variable TERM.
2293
2294width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
2295 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
2296 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2297 variable TERM.
2298
2299Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
2300``set width'' instead.
2301
2302print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
2303 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
2304 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
2305 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
2306
2307print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
2308 is OFF.
2309
2310print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
2311 "raw" form if off.
2312
2313print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
2314 like instructions.
2315
2316print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
2317
2318
2319 * Support for Epoch Environment.
2320
2321The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
2322new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
2323are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
2324window.
2325
2326
2327 * Support for Shared Libraries
2328
2329GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
2330Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
2331before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
2332happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
2333At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
2334from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
2335shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
2336It can be abbreviated ``share''.
2337
2338sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
2339 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
2340 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
2341
2342info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
2343
2344
2345 * Watchpoints
2346
2347A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
2348expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
2349tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
2350quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
2351problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
2352more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
2353
2354watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
2355
2356info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
2357
2358delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2359disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2360enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2361
2362
2363 * C++ multiple inheritance
2364
2365When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
2366for C++ programs.
2367
2368 * C++ exception handling
2369
2370Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
2371ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
2372the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
2373handler's context).
2374
2375catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
2376 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
2377 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
2378
2379info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
2380 current stack frame.
2381
2382
2383 * Minor command changes
2384
2385The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
2386command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
2387is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
2388
2389The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
2390at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
2391frames without printing.
2392
2393 * New directory command
2394
2395'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
2396The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
2397about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
2398with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
2399find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
2400
2401 * Configuring GDB for compilation
2402
2403For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
2404for more details.
2405
2406GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
2407two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
2408Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
2409where the program that you are debugging will run.
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