Extended-remote fork catch
[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
3b2f13ff 4*** Changes since GDB 7.9
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5
6* GDB now honors the content of the file /proc/PID/coredump_filter
7 (PID is the process ID) on GNU/Linux systems. This file can be used
8 to specify the types of memory mappings that will be included in a
9 corefile. For more information, please refer to the manual page of
10 "core(5)". GDB also has a new command: "set use-coredump-filter
11 on|off". It allows to set whether GDB will read the content of the
12 /proc/PID/coredump_filter file when generating a corefile.
3b2f13ff 13
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14* The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
15 cpu information :
16 "info os cpus" Listing of all cpus/cores on the system
17
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18* GDB has two new commands: "set serial parity odd|even|none" and
19 "show serial parity". These allows to set or show parity for the
20 remote serial I/O.
21
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22* The "info source" command now displays the producer string if it was
23 present in the debug info. This typically includes the compiler version
24 and may include things like its command line arguments.
25
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26* The "info dll", an alias of the "info sharedlibrary" command,
27 is now available on all platforms.
28
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29* Directory names supplied to the "set sysroot" commands may be
30 prefixed with "target:" to tell GDB to access shared libraries from
31 the target system, be it local or remote. This replaces the prefix
32 "remote:". The default sysroot has been changed from "" to
33 "target:". "remote:" is automatically converted to "target:" for
34 backward compatibility.
35
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36* The system root specified by "set sysroot" will be prepended to the
37 filename of the main executable (if reported to GDB as absolute by
38 the operating system) when starting processes remotely, and when
39 attaching to already-running local or remote processes.
40
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41* GDB now supports automatic location and retrieval of executable
42 files from remote targets. Remote debugging can now be initiated
43 using only a "target remote" or "target extended-remote" command
44 (no "set sysroot" or "file" commands are required). See "New remote
45 packets" below.
46
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47* The "dump" command now supports verilog hex format.
48
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49* GDB now supports the vector ABI on S/390 GNU/Linux targets.
50
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51* Python Scripting
52
53 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "username",
54 which is the name of the objfile as specified by the user,
55 without, for example, resolving symlinks.
d11916aa 56 ** You can now write frame unwinders in Python.
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57 ** gdb.Type objects have a new method "optimized_out",
58 returning optimized out gdb.Value instance of this type.
2ce1cdbf 59 ** Xmethods can now specify a result type.
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60 ** gdb.Value objects have new methods "reference_value" and
61 "const_value" which return a reference to the value and a
62 "const" version of the value respectively.
3a8b707a 63
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64* New commands
65
66maint print symbol-cache
67 Print the contents of the symbol cache.
68
69maint print symbol-cache-statistics
70 Print statistics of symbol cache usage.
71
72maint flush-symbol-cache
73 Flush the contents of the symbol cache.
74
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75record btrace bts
76record bts
77 Start branch trace recording using Branch Trace Store (BTS) format.
78
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79* New options
80
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81set max-completions
82show max-completions
83 Set the maximum number of candidates to be considered during
84 completion. The default value is 200. This limit allows GDB
85 to avoid generating large completion lists, the computation of
86 which can cause the debugger to become temporarily unresponsive.
87
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88maint set symbol-cache-size
89maint show symbol-cache-size
90 Control the size of the symbol cache.
91
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92set|show record btrace bts buffer-size
93 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
94 BTS format.
95 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
96 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
97
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98* The command 'thread apply all' can now support new option '-ascending'
99 to call its specified command for all threads in ascending order.
100
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101* Python/Guile scripting
102
103 ** GDB now supports auto-loading of Python/Guile scripts contained in the
104 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts'.
105
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106* New remote packets
107
108qXfer:btrace-conf:read
109 Return the branch trace configuration for the current thread.
110
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111Qbtrace-conf:bts:size
112 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in BTS format.
113
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114swbreak stop reason
115 Indicates a memory breakpoint instruction was executed, irrespective
116 of whether it was GDB that planted the breakpoint or the breakpoint
117 is hardcoded in the program. This is required for correct non-stop
118 mode operation.
119
120hwbreak stop reason
121 Indicates the target stopped for a hardware breakpoint. This is
122 required for correct non-stop mode operation.
123
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124vFile:fstat:
125 Return information about files on the remote system.
126
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127qXfer:exec-file:read
128 Return the full absolute name of the file that was executed to
129 create a process running on the remote system.
130
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131* The info record command now shows the recording format and the
132 branch tracing configuration for the current thread when using
133 the btrace record target.
134 For the BTS format, it shows the ring buffer size.
135
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136* GDB now has support for DTrace USDT (Userland Static Defined
137 Tracing) probes. The supported targets are x86_64-*-linux-gnu.
138
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139* GDB now supports access to vector registers on S/390 GNU/Linux
140 targets.
141
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142* Removed command line options
143
144-xdb HP-UX XDB compatibility mode.
145
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146* Removed targets and native configurations
147
148HP/PA running HP-UX hppa*-*-hpux*
149Itanium running HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
150
3b2f13ff 151*** Changes in GDB 7.9
919b9a93 152
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153* GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on x86 GNU Hurd.
154
5f3b99cf 155* Python Scripting
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156
157 ** You can now access frame registers from Python scripts.
158 ** New attribute 'producer' for gdb.Symtab objects.
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159 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "progspace",
160 which is the gdb.Progspace object of the containing program space.
a0be3e44 161 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "owner".
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162 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "build_id",
163 which is the build ID generated when the file was built.
86e4ed39 164 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new method "add_separate_debug_file".
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165 ** A new event "gdb.clear_objfiles" has been added, triggered when
166 selecting a new file to debug.
02be9a71 167 ** You can now add attributes to gdb.Objfile and gdb.Progspace objects.
6dddd6a5 168 ** New function gdb.lookup_objfile.
5f3b99cf 169
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170 New events which are triggered when GDB modifies the state of the
171 inferior.
172
173 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_pre: Function call is about to be made.
174 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_post: Function call has just been made.
175 ** gdb.events.memory_changed: A memory location has been altered.
176 ** gdb.events.register_changed: A register has been altered.
177
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178* New Python-based convenience functions:
179
180 ** $_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
181 ** $_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
182 ** $_any_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
183 ** $_any_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
184
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185* GDB now supports the compilation and injection of source code into
186 the inferior. GDB will use GCC 5.0 or higher built with libcc1.so
187 to compile the source code to object code, and if successful, inject
188 and execute that code within the current context of the inferior.
189 Currently the C language is supported. The commands used to
190 interface with this new feature are:
191
192 compile code [-raw|-r] [--] [source code]
193 compile file [-raw|-r] filename
194
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195* New commands
196
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197demangle [-l language] [--] name
198 Demangle "name" in the specified language, or the current language
199 if elided. This command is renamed from the "maint demangle" command.
200 The latter is kept as a no-op to avoid "maint demangle" being interpreted
201 as "maint demangler-warning".
202
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203queue-signal signal-name-or-number
204 Queue a signal to be delivered to the thread when it is resumed.
205
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206add-auto-load-scripts-directory directory
207 Add entries to the list of directories from which to load auto-loaded
208 scripts.
209
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210maint print user-registers
211 List all currently available "user" registers.
212
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213compile code [-r|-raw] [--] [source code]
214 Compile, inject, and execute in the inferior the executable object
215 code produced by compiling the provided source code.
216
217compile file [-r|-raw] filename
218 Compile and inject into the inferior the executable object code
219 produced by compiling the source code stored in the filename
220 provided.
221
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222* On resume, GDB now always passes the signal the program had stopped
223 for to the thread the signal was sent to, even if the user changed
224 threads before resuming. Previously GDB would often (but not
225 always) deliver the signal to the thread that happens to be current
226 at resume time.
227
228* Conversely, the "signal" command now consistently delivers the
229 requested signal to the current thread. GDB now asks for
230 confirmation if the program had stopped for a signal and the user
231 switched threads meanwhile.
232
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233* "breakpoint always-inserted" modes "off" and "auto" merged.
234
235 Now, when 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' is set to "off", GDB
236 won't remove breakpoints from the target until all threads stop,
237 even in non-stop mode. The "auto" mode has been removed, and "off"
238 is now the default mode.
239
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240* New options
241
242set debug symbol-lookup
243show debug symbol-lookup
244 Control display of debugging info regarding symbol lookup.
245
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246* MI changes
247
248 ** The -list-thread-groups command outputs an exit-code field for
249 inferiors that have exited.
250
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251* New targets
252
253MIPS SDE mips*-sde*-elf*
254
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255* Removed targets
256
257Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
258
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259Alpha running OSF/1 (or Tru64) alpha*-*-osf*
260SGI Irix-5.x mips-*-irix5*
261SGI Irix-6.x mips-*-irix6*
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262VAX running (4.2 - 4.3 Reno) BSD vax-*-bsd*
263VAX running Ultrix vax-*-ultrix*
3831839c 264
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265* The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
266 and "assf"), have been removed. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
267 its alias "share", instead.
268
919b9a93 269*** Changes in GDB 7.8
e9475ead 270
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271* New command line options
272
273-D data-directory
274 This is an alias for the --data-directory option.
275
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276* GDB supports printing and modifying of variable length automatic arrays
277 as specified in ISO C99.
278
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279* The ARM simulator now supports instruction level tracing
280 with or without disassembly.
b7bba001 281
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282* Guile scripting
283
284 GDB now has support for scripting using Guile. Whether this is
285 available is determined at configure time.
286 Guile version 2.0 or greater is required.
287 Guile version 2.0.9 is well tested, earlier 2.0 versions are not.
288
289* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
290
291guile [code]
292gu [code]
293 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Guile interpreter.
294
295guile-repl
296gr
297 Start a Guile interactive prompt (or "repl" for "read-eval-print loop").
298
299info auto-load guile-scripts [regexp]
300 Print the list of automatically loaded Guile scripts.
301
302* The source command is now capable of sourcing Guile scripts.
303 This feature is dependent on the debugger being built with Guile support.
304
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305* New options
306
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307set print symbol-loading (off|brief|full)
308show print symbol-loading
309 Control whether to print informational messages when loading symbol
310 information for a file. The default is "full", but when debugging
311 programs with large numbers of shared libraries the amount of output
312 becomes less useful.
313
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314set guile print-stack (none|message|full)
315show guile print-stack
316 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Guile script.
317
318set auto-load guile-scripts (on|off)
319show auto-load guile-scripts
320 Control auto-loading of Guile script files.
321
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322maint ada set ignore-descriptive-types (on|off)
323maint ada show ignore-descriptive-types
324 Control whether the debugger should ignore descriptive types in Ada
325 programs. The default is not to ignore the descriptive types. See
326 the user manual for more details on descriptive types and the intended
327 usage of this option.
328
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329set auto-connect-native-target
330
331 Control whether GDB is allowed to automatically connect to the
332 native target for the run, attach, etc. commands when not connected
333 to any target yet. See also "target native" below.
334
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335set record btrace replay-memory-access (read-only|read-write)
336show record btrace replay-memory-access
337 Control what memory accesses are allowed during replay.
338
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339maint set target-async (on|off)
340maint show target-async
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341 This controls whether GDB targets operate in synchronous or
342 asynchronous mode. Normally the default is asynchronous, if it is
329ea579 343 available; but this can be changed to more easily debug problems
5784b3ca 344 occurring only in synchronous mode.
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345
346set mi-async (on|off)
347show mi-async
348 Control whether MI asynchronous mode is preferred. This supersedes
349 "set target-async" of previous GDB versions.
350
351* "set target-async" is deprecated as a CLI option and is now an alias
352 for "set mi-async" (only puts MI into async mode).
353
354* Background execution commands (e.g., "c&", "s&", etc.) are now
355 possible ``out of the box'' if the target supports them. Previously
356 the user would need to explicitly enable the possibility with the
357 "set target-async on" command.
358
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359* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
360
361 ** New option --debug-format=option1[,option2,...] allows one to add
362 additional text to each output. At present only timestamps
363 are supported: --debug-format=timestamps.
364 Timestamps can also be turned on with the
365 "monitor set debug-format timestamps" command from GDB.
366
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367* The 'record instruction-history' command now starts counting instructions
368 at one. This also affects the instruction ranges reported by the
369 'record function-call-history' command when given the /i modifier.
370
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371* The command 'record function-call-history' supports a new modifier '/c' to
372 indent the function names based on their call stack depth.
373 The fields for the '/i' and '/l' modifier have been reordered.
374 The source line range is now prefixed with 'at'.
375 The instruction range is now prefixed with 'inst'.
376 Both ranges are now printed as '<from>, <to>' to allow copy&paste to the
377 "record instruction-history" and "list" commands.
378
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379* The ranges given as arguments to the 'record function-call-history' and
380 'record instruction-history' commands are now inclusive.
381
066ce621 382* The btrace record target now supports the 'record goto' command.
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383 For locations inside the execution trace, the back trace is computed
384 based on the information stored in the execution trace.
066ce621 385
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386* The btrace record target supports limited reverse execution and replay.
387 The target does not record data and therefore does not allow reading
388 memory or registers.
389
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390* The "catch syscall" command now works on s390*-linux* targets.
391
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392* The "compare-sections" command is no longer specific to target
393 remote. It now works with all targets.
394
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395* All native targets are now consistently called "native".
396 Consequently, the "target child", "target GNU", "target djgpp",
397 "target procfs" (Solaris/Irix/OSF/AIX) and "target darwin-child"
398 commands have been replaced with "target native". The QNX/NTO port
399 leaves the "procfs" target in place and adds a "native" target for
400 consistency with other ports. The impact on users should be minimal
401 as these commands previously either throwed an error, or were
402 no-ops. The target's name is visible in the output of the following
403 commands: "help target", "info target", "info files", "maint print
404 target-stack".
405
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406* The "target native" command now connects to the native target. This
407 can be used to launch native programs even when "set
408 auto-connect-native-target" is set to off.
409
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410* GDB now supports access to Intel(R) MPX registers on GNU/Linux.
411
412* Support for Intel(R) AVX-512 registers on GNU/Linux.
413 Support displaying and modifying Intel(R) AVX-512 registers
414 $zmm0 - $zmm31 and $k0 - $k7 on GNU/Linux.
415
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416* New remote packets
417
418qXfer:btrace:read's annex
419 The qXfer:btrace:read packet supports a new annex 'delta' to read
420 branch trace incrementally.
421
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422* Python Scripting
423
424 ** Valid Python operations on gdb.Value objects representing
425 structs/classes invoke the corresponding overloaded operators if
426 available.
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427 ** New `Xmethods' feature in the Python API. Xmethods are
428 additional methods or replacements for existing methods of a C++
429 class. This feature is useful for those cases where a method
430 defined in C++ source code could be inlined or optimized out by
431 the compiler, making it unavailable to GDB.
f7bd0f78 432
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433* New targets
434PowerPC64 GNU/Linux little-endian powerpc64le-*-linux*
435
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436* The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
437 and "assf"), have been deprecated. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
438 its alias "share", instead.
439
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440* The commands "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" are no longer
441 supported. Use "set serial baud" and "show serial baud" (respectively)
442 instead.
443
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444* MI changes
445
446 ** A new option "-gdb-set mi-async" replaces "-gdb-set
447 target-async". The latter is left as a deprecated alias of the
448 former for backward compatibility. If the target supports it,
449 CLI background execution commands are now always possible by
450 default, independently of whether the frontend stated a
451 preference for asynchronous execution with "-gdb-set mi-async".
452 Previously "-gdb-set target-async off" affected both MI execution
453 commands and CLI execution commands.
454
b7bba001 455*** Changes in GDB 7.7
2d450646 456
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457* Improved support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on
458 arm*-linux* targets. Support for thumb32 and syscall instruction
459 recording has been added.
460
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461* GDB now supports SystemTap SDT probes on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
462
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463* GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
464 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
465
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466* New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
467 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
468 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
469 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
470 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
471 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
472 "void".
473
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474* The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
475
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476* The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
477
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478* GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
479 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
480 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
481 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
482
483 (gdb) p $rax
484 $1 = <not saved>
485
486 (gdb) info registers rax
487 rax <not saved>
488
489 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
490 "*value not available*".
491
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492* New script contrib/gdb-add-index.sh for adding .gdb_index sections
493 to binaries.
494
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495* Python scripting
496
497 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
f76c27b5 498 ** Temporary breakpoints are now supported.
bc79de95 499 ** Line tables representation has been added.
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500 ** New attribute 'parent_type' for gdb.Field objects.
501 ** gdb.Field objects can be used as subscripts on gdb.Value objects.
c0d48811 502 ** New attribute 'name' for gdb.Type objects.
1e611234 503
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504* New targets
505
506Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
507Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
42059f0e 508Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
a1217d97 509
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510* Removed native configurations
511
512Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
513been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
514
515arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
516i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
517i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
518i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
519m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
520sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
521vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
522
bd712aed 523* New commands:
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524catch rethrow
525 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
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526maint check-psymtabs
527 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
528maint check-symtabs
529 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
530maint expand-symtabs
531 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
b340913d 532
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533show configuration
534 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
535
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536maint set|show per-command
537maint set|show per-command space
538maint set|show per-command time
539maint set|show per-command symtab
540 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
541
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542remove-symbol-file FILENAME
543remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
544 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
545 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
546 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
547
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548info exceptions
549info exceptions REGEXP
550 Display the list of Ada exceptions defined in the program being
551 debugged. If provided, only the exceptions whose names match REGEXP
552 are listed.
553
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554* New options
555
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556set debug symfile off|on
557show debug symfile
558 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
559 symbol tables within those files
560
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561set print raw frame-arguments
562show print raw frame-arguments
563 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
564 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
565
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566set remote trace-status-packet
567show remote trace-status-packet
568 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
569
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570set debug nios2
571show debug nios2
572 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
573
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574set range-stepping
575show range-stepping
576 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
577
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578set startup-with-shell
579show startup-with-shell
580 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
581 directly.
582
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583set code-cache
584show code-cache
585 Use the target memory cache for accesses to the code segment. This
586 improves performance of remote debugging (particularly disassembly).
587
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588* You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
589 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
590 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
591 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
592 "set height 0".
593
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594* The "set debug symtab-create" debugging option of GDB has been changed to
595 accept a verbosity level. 0 means "off", 1 provides basic debugging
596 output, and values of 2 or greater provides more verbose output.
597
dccca75d
EZ
598* New command-line options
599--configuration
600 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
601
d0353e76
YQ
602* The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
603 buffer in Common Trace Format.
604
b292c783
JK
605* Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
606 GDB command gcore.
607
6e72ca20
TT
608* GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
609
b340913d
TT
610* The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
611 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
612
613* The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
614 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
615
0c557179
SDJ
616* The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
617 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
618 due to an uncaught signal.
619
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620* MI changes
621
403cb6b1 622 ** All MI commands now accept an optional "--language" option.
4e35e808
JB
623 Support for this feature can be verified by using the "-list-features"
624 command, which should contain "language-option".
403cb6b1 625
6b7cbff1
JB
626 ** The new command -info-gdb-mi-command allows the user to determine
627 whether a GDB/MI command is supported or not.
628
2ea126fa
JB
629 ** The "^error" result record returned when trying to execute an undefined
630 GDB/MI command now provides a variable named "code" whose content is the
631 "undefined-command" error code. Support for this feature can be verified
632 by using the "-list-features" command, which should contain
633 "undefined-command-error-code".
634
d0353e76
YQ
635 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
636 Trace Format now.
637
c5867ab6
HZ
638 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
639
c898adb7
YQ
640 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
641 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
642 are displayed.
643
dc673c81
YQ
644 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
645 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
646
6211c335
YQ
647 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
648 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
649 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
650
5713b9b5
JB
651 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
652 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
653 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
72bfa06c
JB
654 main subprogram. Support for this feature can be verified using
655 the "-list-features" command, which should contain
656 "exec-run-start-option".
5713b9b5 657
40555925
JB
658 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
659 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
660
58d06528
JB
661 ** The new command -info-ada-exceptions provides the equivalent of
662 the new "info exceptions" command.
663
0201faac
JB
664* New system-wide configuration scripts
665 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
666 configuration scripts for the following systems:
667 ** ElinOS
668 ** Wind River Linux
669
c1e36e3e
PA
670* GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
671 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
672 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
673 below.
674
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YQ
675* GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
676 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
677
4ac33720
UW
678* On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
679 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
680 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
681
c1e36e3e
PA
682* New remote packets
683
684vCont;r
685
686 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
687 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
688 involvemement at each single-step.
689
7f91dbec
GB
690qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
691 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
692 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
693 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
694 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
695 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
696 speedup.
697
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PA
698* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
699
700 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
701 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
702
28a93511
YQ
703 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
704 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
705 trace state variables.
706
7a60ad40
YQ
707 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
708 target.
709
6fbe845e
AB
710* New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
711 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
712
9058cc3a
TG
713* GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
714
0d12017b
JB
715* The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
716 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
717 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
718 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
719
2d450646 720*** Changes in GDB 7.6
80c8d323 721
59ea5688
MM
722* Target record has been renamed to record-full.
723 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
724 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
725 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
726
727set|show record full insn-number-max
728set|show record full stop-at-limit
729set|show record full memory-query
730
731* A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
732 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
733 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
734 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
735 This new recording method can be enabled using:
736
737record btrace
738
739 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
740 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
741
742* Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
743 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
744 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
745
746record instruction-history prints the execution history at
747 instruction granularity
748
749record function-call-history prints the execution history at
750 function granularity
751
543bf33d
AT
752* New native configurations
753
51d66578 754ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
543bf33d 755FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
4f4352f7 756x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
ea5f3910 757Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
543bf33d 758
249729c4
JB
759* New targets
760
51d66578
MS
761ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
762ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
249729c4 763Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
3c095f49 764x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
ea5f3910 765Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
249729c4 766
e64e0392
DE
767* If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
768 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
769 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
770 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
771 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
772 --data-directory command-line option.
773
07540c15
DE
774* New command line options:
775
776-nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
777 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
778
e93a8774
TT
779* Removed command line options
780
781-epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
782 Emacs.
783
53342f27
TT
784* The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
785 type formatting.
786
451b7c33
TT
787* 'info proc' now works on some core files.
788
a72c3253
DE
789* Python scripting
790
791 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
792
d7de8e3c
TT
793 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
794
18a9fc12
TT
795 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
796
9a27f2c6
PK
797 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
798
bea883fd
SCR
799 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
800 of architecture in the Python API.
801
802 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
803 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
804
a72c3253
DE
805* New Python-based convenience functions:
806
807 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
808 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
809 ** $_strlen(str)
810 ** $_regex(str, regex)
811
f3c8a52a
JK
812* The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
813 given an argument.
814
1605ef26
TT
815* The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
816 default for GCC since November 2000.
817
504b36fd
YQ
818* The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
819
f2a8bc8a
YQ
820* The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
821 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
822
23a80689
JB
823* New configure options
824
825--enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
826 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
827 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
828 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
829 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
830 options allow the user to override that default.
393fd4c3
YQ
831--with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
832 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
833 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
23a80689 834
d6b28940
TT
835* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
836
ab04a2af
TT
837catch signal
838 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
839 conditions to be attached.
840
d6b28940
TT
841maint info bfds
842 List the BFDs known to GDB.
843
8315665e
YPK
844python-interactive [command]
845pi [command]
846 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
847 and print the result of expressions.
848
849py [command]
850 "py" is a new alias for "python".
851
18a9fc12
TT
852enable type-printer [name]...
853disable type-printer [name]...
854 Enable or disable type printers.
855
aa9259cc
TS
856* Removed commands
857
858 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
859 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
860 instead.
861
53342f27
TT
862* New options
863
864set print type methods (on|off)
865show print type methods
866 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
867 The default is to show them.
868
869set print type typedefs (on|off)
870show print type typedefs
871 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
872 The default is to show them.
873
1b56eb55
JK
874set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
875show filename-display
876 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
877 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
878
e9f1758d
PA
879set trace-buffer-size
880show trace-buffer-size
881 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
882
a46c1e42
PA
883set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
884show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
885 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
886
be9a8770
PA
887set debug aarch64
888show debug aarch64
889 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
890 The default is off.
891
892set debug coff-pe-read
893show debug coff-pe-read
894 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
895 exported symbols.
896
897set debug mach-o
898show debug mach-o
899 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
900 processing.
901
902set debug notification
903show debug notification
904 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
905
5b9afe8a
YQ
906* MI changes
907
908 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
909 "=cmd-param-changed".
201b4506
YQ
910 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
911 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
134a2066
YQ
912 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
913 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
914 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
82a90ccf
YQ
915 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
916 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
8de0566d
YQ
917 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
918 "=memory-changed".
ed8a1c2d 919 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
ec83d211 920 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
62747a60
TT
921 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
922 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
3fa7bf06
MG
923 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
924 library load/unload events.
f2a8bc8a
YQ
925 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
926 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
927 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
f5911ea1
HAQ
928 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
929 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
930 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
ec83d211
JK
931 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
932 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
5b9afe8a 933
608e2dbb
TT
934* GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
935 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
936 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
937 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
938
f6f899bf
HAQ
939* New remote packets
940
941QTBuffer:size
942 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
943 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
944
10782d74
MM
945Qbtrace:bts
946 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
947 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
948 qSupported query.
949
950Qbtrace:off
951 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
952 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
953
954qXfer:btrace:read
955 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
956 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
957
80c8d323 958*** Changes in GDB 7.5
d6e00af6 959
1b3371b1
L
960* GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
961 for more x32 ABI info.
962
d0e64392
MR
963* GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
964
4cc0665f
MR
965* GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
966
85d4a676
SS
967* The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
968 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
969 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
970 "info os files" lists file descriptors
971 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
972 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
973 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
974 "info os msg" lists message queues
975 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
976
55aa24fb
SDJ
977* GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
978 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
979 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
980 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
981 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
982 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
983
72508ac0
PO
984* GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
985 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
986 record/replay support.
987
16899756
DE
988* The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
989
4795f398
DE
990* Python scripting
991
7d74f244
DE
992 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
993 "gdb.COMMAND_USER".
994
4795f398
DE
995 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
996
50897289
TT
997 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
998 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
999
64e7d9dd
TT
1000 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
1001
1002 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
1003 the source at which the symbol was defined.
1004
f0823d2c
TT
1005 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
1006 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
1007 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
1008 symbol's value.
1009
7b282c5a
SCR
1010 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
1011 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
1012
a20ee7a4
SCR
1013 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
1014 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
1015 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
1016
7efc75aa
SCR
1017 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
1018 object associated with a PC value.
1019
ee0bf529
SCR
1020 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
1021 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
1022
a766d390
DE
1023* Go language support.
1024 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
1025 language.
1026
e0f9f062
DE
1027* GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
1028 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
1029
217bff3e
JK
1030* The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
1031 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
1032
cafec441
TT
1033* GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
1034 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
1035 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
1036 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
1037 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
1038 $1 = (ONE | TWO)
1039
4aac40c8
TT
1040* The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
1041 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
1042 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
1043 build/libcpp/expr.c.
1044
d99bd577
UW
1045* The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
1046 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
1047
53fe1783
GB
1048* The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
1049 since December 2007.
1050
e41eec66
JB
1051* The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
1052 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
1053 command does. For instance:
1054
1055 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
1056
1057 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
1058 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
1059 created, using the "condition" command.
1060
5808517f
YQ
1061* The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
1062 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
1063
481860b3
GB
1064* GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
1065
1066* The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
1067 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
1068 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
e615022a
DE
1069 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
1070 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
1071 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
1072 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
1073 files with older .gdb_index sections.
481860b3 1074
156942c7
DE
1075 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
1076 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
1077 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
1078 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
1079 the .gdb_index section.
1080
927fbba6
JB
1081* Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
1082
20388dd6
YQ
1083* GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
1084 target.
1085
f3e0e960
SS
1086* MI changes
1087
1088 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
1089
37ce89eb
SS
1090 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
1091
edcc5120
TT
1092* New commands
1093
e615022a
DE
1094 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
1095 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
1096 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
1097
edcc5120
TT
1098 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
1099 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
1100
816338b5
SS
1101 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
1102 several hits.
1103
57651221 1104 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
c4aeac85
TT
1105 C++ and Java objects.
1106
06fc020f 1107 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
6ea71545 1108 can be used to recursively explore values and types of
06fc020f
SCR
1109 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
1110 configured with '--with-python'.
1111
bf88dd68
JK
1112 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
1113 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
1114 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
1115 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
1116 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
1117 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
1118 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
1119
1120 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
1121 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
1122 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
1123 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
1124
e7e0cddf
SS
1125 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
1126 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
1127 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
1128 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
1129
9cb709b6
TT
1130 ** "set print symbol"
1131 "show print symbol"
1132 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
1133 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
1134 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
1135
2d4c29c5
TS
1136* Deprecated commands
1137
1138 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
1139 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
1140
a58b110a
KB
1141* New targets
1142
1143Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
60c9a3c0 1144HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
a58b110a 1145
72895ff6
LM
1146* GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
1147 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
1148 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
1149 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
1150 evaluates to true.
1151
1152* New options
1153
4cc0665f
MR
1154set mips compression
1155show mips compression
1156 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
1157 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
1158 mips16
1159 micromips
1160 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
1161
72895ff6
LM
1162set breakpoint condition-evaluation
1163show breakpoint condition-evaluation
cf65ecd3 1164 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
5b43fab2
JK
1165 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
1166 available mode.
72895ff6
LM
1167 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
1168 target.
1169
bf88dd68
JK
1170set auto-load off
1171 Disable auto-loading globally.
1172
1173show auto-load
1174 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
1175
1176set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
1177show auto-load gdb-scripts
1178 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
1179
1180set auto-load python-scripts on|off
1181show auto-load python-scripts
1182 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
1183
1184set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
1185show auto-load local-gdbinit
1186 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
1187
1188set auto-load libthread-db on|off
1189show auto-load libthread-db
1190 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
1191
7349ff92 1192set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
9cc815f5 1193show auto-load scripts-directory
7349ff92
JK
1194 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
1195 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
1196 of the directories listed by this option.
1197 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
1198
bccbefd2
JK
1199set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
1200show auto-load safe-path
1201 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
1202 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
1203
4dc84fd1
JK
1204set debug auto-load on|off
1205show debug auto-load
1206 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
1207
d3ce09f5 1208set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
e7e0cddf 1209show dprintf-style
d3ce09f5
SS
1210 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
1211 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
1212 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
1213 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
e7e0cddf
SS
1214
1215set dprintf-function <expr>
1216show dprintf-function
1217set dprintf-channel <expr>
1218show dprintf-channel
1219 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
1220 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
1221
d3ce09f5
SS
1222set disconnected-dprintf on|off
1223show disconnected-dprintf
1224 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
1225 after GDB disconnects.
1226
6dea1fbd
JK
1227* New configure options
1228
7349ff92
JK
1229--with-auto-load-dir
1230 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
1564a261
JK
1231 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
1232 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
1233 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
1234 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
7349ff92 1235
6dea1fbd
JK
1236--with-auto-load-safe-path
1237 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
7349ff92 1238 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
6dea1fbd
JK
1239
1240--without-auto-load-safe-path
1241 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
1242 security feature.
1243
72895ff6
LM
1244* New remote packets
1245
74c48cbb
PA
1246z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
1247
72895ff6
LM
1248 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
1249 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
1250 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
1251 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
1252
9b224c5e
PA
1253QProgramSignals:
1254
1255 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
1256 program without GDB involvement.
1257
8320cc4f
JK
1258* New command line options
1259
1260--init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
1261 before loading inferior.
1262--init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
1263 execute it before loading inferior.
1264
8837a20f
JB
1265*** Changes in GDB 7.4
1266
f8eba3c6
TT
1267* GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
1268 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
1269 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
1270 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
1271 inferior changes.
1272
1bfeeb0f
JL
1273* GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
1274 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
1275
480a3f21
PW
1276* GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
1277 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
1278 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
1279 target hardware watchpoint.
1280
1281 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
1282 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
1283 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
1284 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
1285
3a7bf607
PM
1286* Python scripting
1287
32d1c362 1288 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
7d0aff21 1289 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
32d1c362
DE
1290 existing one.
1291
3a7bf607 1292 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
4795f398
DE
1293 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
1294 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
1295 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
1296 now "message", which just prints the error message without
1297 the stack trace.
3a7bf607 1298
baacfb07 1299 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
3a7bf607 1300 Python API.
713389e0 1301
fa3a4f15
PM
1302 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
1303 modules library. This module provides functionality for
baacfb07 1304 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
fa3a4f15
PM
1305 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
1306 corresponding value.
1307
5e239b84
PM
1308 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
1309 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
1310 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
1311 on GDB start-up.
1312
9df2fbc4
PM
1313 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
1314 static_block will return the global and static blocks
1315 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
1316 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
1317
457e09f0
DE
1318 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
1319
6839b47f
KP
1320 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
1321 "gdb.breakpoints".
1322
cc72b2a2
KP
1323 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
1324 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
1325 available in the CLI.
1326
84ad80e6
PK
1327 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
1328 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
1329 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
1330 "some_type.items()".
1331
20c168b5
KP
1332 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
1333 new object file.
1334
03c3051a
PK
1335 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
1336 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
1337 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
1338 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
1339 any anonymous fields.
1340
7376e450
TT
1341* MI changes
1342
1343 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
1344 "solib-event".
1345
1346 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
1347 "=breakpoint-modified".
1348
1349 ** New command -ada-task-info.
1350
98a5dd13
DE
1351* libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
1352 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
1353 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
1354 lives.
1355
1356 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
1357 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
1358 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
1359 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
1360 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
1361
1362 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
1363 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
1364
478aac75
DE
1365* New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
1366 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
1367 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
1368 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
1369 use this option to specify where to find it.
1370
9c06b0b4
TJB
1371* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
1372 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
1373 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
1374 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
1375 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
1376 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
1377 section in the user manual for more details.
1378
03f2bd59
JK
1379* The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
1380 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
1381 become available after that.
1382
71eba9c2 1383* New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
edc84990 1384
2bda9cc5
JK
1385* New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
1386 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
1387 gcc version 4.7.
1388
ed59ded5
DE
1389* New commands
1390
1391!SHELL COMMAND
1392 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
1393 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
1394
9c06b0b4
TJB
1395* Changed commands
1396
1397watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
1398 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
1399 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
1400
dbaefcf7
DE
1401info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
1402 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
1403 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
1404
71eba9c2 1405info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
1406 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
1407 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
1408 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
1409 name starts with a hyphen.
1410
3065dfb6
SS
1411collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
1412 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
1413 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
1414 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
1415 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
1416 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
1417 number of bytes that will be collected.
1418
f196051f
SS
1419tstart [NOTES]
1420 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
1421 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
1422 setting the variable trace-notes.
1423
1424tstop [NOTES]
1425 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
1426 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
1427 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
1428 trace-stop-notes.
1429
d248b706
KY
1430* Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
1431 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
1432 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
1433 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
1434 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
1435 is running.
1436
405f8e94
SS
1437* Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
1438 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
1439 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
1440
2bda9cc5
JK
1441* New options
1442
45cfd468
DE
1443set debug dwarf2-read
1444show debug dwarf2-read
1445 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
1446 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
1447
1448set debug symtab-create
1449show debug symtab-create
1450 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
1451 creation. The default is off.
1452
baacfb07
PM
1453set extended-prompt
1454show extended-prompt
1455 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
1456 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
1457 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
1458 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
1459 prompt is displayed.
1460
2bda9cc5
JK
1461set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
1462show print entry-values
1463 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
1464 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
1465 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
1466
1467set debug entry-values
1468show debug entry-values
1469 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
1470 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
1471
c011a4f4
DE
1472set basenames-may-differ
1473show basenames-may-differ
1474 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
1475 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
1476 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
1477 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
1478 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
1479 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
1480 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
1481 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
1482
f196051f
SS
1483set trace-user
1484show trace-user
1485set trace-notes
1486show trace-notes
1487 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
1488 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
1489 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
1490 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
1491
1492set trace-stop-notes
1493show trace-stop-notes
1494 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
1495 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
1496 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
1497 started by someone else.
1498
d248b706
KY
1499* New remote packets
1500
1501QTEnable
1502
1503 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1504
1505QTDisable
1506
1507 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1508
f196051f
SS
1509QTNotes
1510
1511 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
1512
1513qTP
1514
1515 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
1516
405f8e94
SS
1517qTMinFTPILen
1518
1519 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
1520 be placed.
1521
1a532630
PP
1522* Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
1523 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
1524
11315641
YQ
1525* New targets
1526
1527Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
1528
87326c78
DD
1529* New Simulators
1530
1531Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
1532
e8d56f18
JB
1533*** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
1534
1535* The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
1536
d6e00af6 1537*** Changes in GDB 7.3
797054e6 1538
60f98dde
MS
1539* GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
1540 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
1541 matches the given regular expression.
1542
eee5b35e
DD
1543* The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
1544
b716877b
AB
1545* The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
1546 dumping the instruction opcodes.
1547
aae1c79a
DE
1548* New command line options
1549
1550-data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
1551 This is mostly for testing purposes.
1552
a86caf66
DE
1553* The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
1554 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
1555
99e7ae30
DE
1556* GDB has a new command: "set directories".
1557 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
1558 source path list instead of augmenting it.
1559
4694da01
TT
1560* GDB now understands thread names.
1561
1562 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
1563 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
1564
1565 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
1566 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
1567
f4b8a18d
KW
1568* OpenCL C
1569 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
1570 has been integrated into GDB.
1571
585d1eb8
PM
1572* Python scripting
1573
da5d4055
PM
1574 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
1575 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
1576 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
1577
9a6f1302
PM
1578 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1579 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
1580 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
1581 and allows for more dynamic content.
1582
29703da4
PM
1583 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
1584 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
1585 have an is_valid method.
1586
350c6c65
PM
1587 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1588 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
1589 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
1590
6e6fbe60
DE
1591 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
1592
585d1eb8
PM
1593 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
1594 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
1595 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
1596 that function like so:
1597
1598 result = some_value (10,20)
1599
0e3509db
DE
1600 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
1601 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
1602 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
1603
7b51bc51
DE
1604 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
1605 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
1606 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
1607 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
1608 New function: register_pretty_printer.
1609
1610 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
1611 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
1612
99e7ae30
DE
1613 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
1614
d8e22779
TT
1615 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
1616 selected thread.
1617
4694da01
TT
1618 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
1619 holds the thread's name.
1620
505500db
SW
1621 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
1622 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
824446ad 1623 occurring in the process being debugged.
c17a9e46
HZ
1624 The following events are currently supported:
1625 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
1626 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
1627 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
1628
def98928
TT
1629* C++ Improvements:
1630
1631 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
1632 instantiation. For example, if you have:
1633
1634 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
1635
1636 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
1637 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
1638 was added to GCC 4.5.
1639
66cb8159
TT
1640 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
1641 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
1642 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
1643 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
1644 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
1645 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
1646
4aac0db7
UW
1647* GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
1648 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
1649 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
1650 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
1651 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
1652
283e6a52
TT
1653* GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
1654 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
1655 execution to a label.
1656
1657* GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
1658 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
1659 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
1660 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
1661
b56df873 1662* The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
14c0d4e1 1663 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
b56df873
TT
1664 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
1665 of scope.
1666
ae53ffa4
PA
1667* GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
1668
1669 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
1670 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
1671 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
1672 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
1673 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
1674 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
1675
1676 (gdb) info threads
1677 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
1678
1679 While now you see this:
1680
1681 (gdb) info threads
1682 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
1683
1684 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
1685 dumps.
1686
1687 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
1688 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
1689 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
1690 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
1691
f1310107
TJB
1692* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
1693 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
1694 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
1695 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
1696 section in the user manual for more details.
1697
248c9dbc
JB
1698* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1699
1aee7009
JB
1700 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
1701 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
248c9dbc 1702
eb826dc6
MF
1703 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
1704
44603653
JB
1705* New native configurations
1706
1707ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
1708
91021223
MF
1709* New targets:
1710
1711Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
1712
6e1bb179
JB
1713* Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
1714 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
1715 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
1716 in the GDB user manual.
1717
50c97f38
TT
1718* Guile support was removed.
1719
448a92bf
MF
1720* New features in the GNU simulator
1721
1722 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
1723
66ee2731
MF
1724 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
1725
76b8507d 1726*** Changes in GDB 7.2
bfbf3774 1727
ba25b921
PA
1728* Shared library support for remote targets by default
1729
1730 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
1731 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
1732 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
1733 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
1734 was always disabled for such configurations.
1735
4656f5c6
SW
1736* C++ Improvements:
1737
1738 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
1739
1740 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
1741 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
1742 For example:
1743 namespace A
1744 {
1745 class B { };
1746 void foo (B) { }
1747 }
1748 ...
1749 A::B b
1750 foo(b)
1751 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
1752 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
1753 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
1754
1755 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
1756
1757 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
1758 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
1759 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
1760 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
1761 entry.
1762 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
1763 mentioned flavors of operators.
1764
254e6b9e
DE
1765 ** static const class members
1766
1767 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
1768 class definition has been fixed.
1769
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PM
1770* Windows Thread Information Block access.
1771
1772 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
1773 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
1774 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
1775 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
1776 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
1777 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
1778
0fb4aa4b
PA
1779* Static tracepoints
1780
1781 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
1782 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
1783 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
1784 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
1785 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
1786 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
1787 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
1788 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
1789 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
1790 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
1791 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
1792 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
1793 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
1794 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
1795 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
1796 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
1797 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
1798 the "New remote packets" section below.
1799
ca11e899
SS
1800* Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
1801
1802 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
1803 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
1804 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
1805 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
1806
1807* Observer mode
1808
1809 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
1810 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
1811 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
1812 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
1813 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
1814 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
1815 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
1816
1817* The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
1818 current thread.
1819
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PM
1820* New remote packets
1821
1822qGetTIBAddr
1823
1824 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
1825
dde08ee1
PA
1826qRelocInsn
1827
1828 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
1829 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
1830 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
1831 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
1832 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
1833 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
1834
0fb4aa4b
PA
1835qTfSTM, qTsSTM
1836
1837 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
1838
1839qTSTMat
1840
1841 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
1842 program.
1843
1844qXfer:statictrace:read
1845
1846 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
1847 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
1848 to gdb's qSupported query.
1849
ca11e899
SS
1850QAllow
1851
1852 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
1853
1854QTDPsrc
1855
1856 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
1857 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
1858
3f7b2faa
DE
1859* The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
1860 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
1861 a directory.
1862
d337e9f0
PA
1863* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1864
0fb4aa4b
PA
1865 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
1866 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
1867 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
1868 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
1869
1870 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
1871 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
1872 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
1873 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
1874 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
1875 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
1876 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
1877
1878 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
1879 for static tracepoints support.
d337e9f0 1880
c24d0242
PM
1881 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
1882
c8d5aac9
L
1883* GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
1884 it understands register description.
1885
7c953934
TT
1886* The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
1887
8685c86f
L
1888* X86 general purpose registers
1889
1890 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
1891 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
1892 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
1893 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
1894 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
1895
95a42b64 1896* The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
86b17b60
PA
1897 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
1898 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
1899 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
1900 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
1901 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
95a42b64 1902
8bd10a10
CM
1903* The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
1904 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
1905 in the specified file.
1906
ab38a727
PA
1907* Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
1908 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
1909 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
1910 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
1911 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
1912 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
1913 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
1914 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
1915 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
1916 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
1917
6149aea9
PA
1918* New commands
1919
f1421989
HZ
1920eval template, expressions...
1921 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
1922 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
1923
ab38a727
PA
1924set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
1925show target-file-system-kind
1926 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
1927 names.
1928
6149aea9
PA
1929save breakpoints <filename>
1930 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
1931 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
1932 definitions, use the `source' command.
1933
1934`save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
1935is now deprecated.
1936
0fb4aa4b
PA
1937info static-tracepoint-markers
1938 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
1939
1940strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
1941 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
1942 function, line, address, or marker ID.
1943
ca11e899
SS
1944set observer on|off
1945show observer
1946 Enable and disable observer mode.
1947
1948set may-write-registers on|off
1949set may-write-memory on|off
1950set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
1951set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
1952set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
1953set may-interrupt on|off
1954 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
1955 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
1956 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
1957 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
1958 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
1959 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
1960 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
1961
1962set record memory-query on|off
1963show record memory-query
1964 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
1965 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
1966
53a71c06
CR
1967* Changed commands
1968
1969disassemble
1970 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
1971
f3e9a817
PM
1972* Python scripting
1973
9279c692
JB
1974** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
1975 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
1976 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
1977 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
1978 GDB using Python' in the manual.
1979
adc36818 1980** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
595939de
PM
1981 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
1982 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
1983 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
f870a310 1984
fa33c3cd 1985** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
07ca107c
DE
1986 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
1987
1988** New exception gdb.GdbError.
fa33c3cd
DE
1989
1990** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
f3e9a817 1991
967cf477
DE
1992** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
1993
8a1ea21f
DE
1994** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
1995 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
1996 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
1997
a7bdde9e
VP
1998* Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
1999there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
2000tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
2001regular breakpoints.
2002
05071a4d
PA
2003* New targets
2004
2005ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
2006
6aecb9c2
JB
2007* D language support.
2008 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
2009 language.
2010
431e49aa
TJB
2011* GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
2012 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
2013 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
2014 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
2015 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
2016
2017* GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
2018 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
2019 conditions of the form:
2020
2021 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
2022
2023 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
2024 interface mentioned above.
2025
bfbf3774 2026*** Changes in GDB 7.1
abc7453d 2027
4eef138c
TT
2028* C++ Improvements
2029
2030 ** Namespace Support
71dee663
SW
2031
2032 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
2033 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
2034 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
2035 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
2036 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
2037
4eef138c
TT
2038 ** Bug Fixes
2039
2040 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
2041 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
2042 qualified name.
2043
2044 ** Cast Operators
2045
2046 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
2047 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
2048
2d1c1221
ME
2049* New targets
2050
2051Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
34207b9e 2052Renesas RX rx-*-elf
2d1c1221
ME
2053
2054* New Simulators
2055
2056Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
34207b9e 2057Renesas RX rx
2d1c1221 2058
6c95b8df
PA
2059* Multi-program debugging.
2060
2061 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
2062 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
2063 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
2064 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
2065 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
2066 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
2067 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
2068 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
2069
d5551862
SS
2070* New tracing features
2071
2072 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
2073
2074 ** Trace state variables
f61e138d
SS
2075
2076 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
2077 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
2078 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
2079 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
2080 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
2081 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
2082 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
2083 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
2084 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
2085 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
7a697b8d 2086
d5551862 2087 ** Fast tracepoints
7a697b8d
SS
2088
2089 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
2090 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
2091 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
2092 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
2093 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
2094 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
2095 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
2096 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
2097 the regular trace command.
2098
d5551862
SS
2099 ** Disconnected tracing
2100
2101 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
2102 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
2103 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
2104 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
2105 connection is lost unexpectedly.
2106
00bf0b85
SS
2107 ** Trace files
2108
2109 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
2110 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
2111 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
2112 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
2113 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
2114 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
2115 <name>".
4daf5ac0
SS
2116
2117 ** Circular trace buffer
2118
2119 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
2120 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
2121 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
2122 not be available for all target agents.
2123
21a0512e
PP
2124* Changed commands
2125
2126disassemble
2127 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
2128 the arguments to be comma-separated.
2129
0fe7935b
DJ
2130info variables
2131 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
2132 which only declare a variable are not shown.
2133
fb2e7cb4
JB
2134source
2135 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
2136 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
2137 support.
2138
2139 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
2140 "set script-extension" (see below).
2141
6c95b8df
PA
2142* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2143
399cd161
MS
2144record save [<FILENAME>]
2145 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
2146 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
2147
2148record restore <FILENAME>
2149 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
2150 earlier time, for replay debugging.
2151
6c95b8df
PA
2152add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
2153 Add a new inferior.
2154
2155clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
2156 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
2157 inferior has loaded.
2158
2159remove-inferior ID
2160 Remove an inferior.
2161
2162maint info program-spaces
2163 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
2164
9a7071a8
JB
2165set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
2166show remote interrupt-sequence
2167 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
2168 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
2169 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
2170 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
2171 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
2172
2173set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
2174show remote interrupt-on-connect
2175 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
2176 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
2177 Linux kernel.
2178
2179set remotebreak [on | off]
2180show remotebreak
2181Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
2182
f61e138d
SS
2183tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
2184 Create or modify a trace state variable.
2185
2186info tvariables
2187 List trace state variables and their values.
2188
2189delete tvariable $NAME ...
2190 Delete one or more trace state variables.
2191
6da95a67
SS
2192teval EXPR, ...
2193 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
2194 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
2195
7a697b8d
SS
2196ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
2197 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
2198
b0f02ee9
JK
2199* New expression syntax
2200
2201 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
2202 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
2203
6c95b8df
PA
2204* New options
2205
2206set follow-exec-mode new|same
2207show follow-exec-mode
2208 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
2209 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
2210 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
2211
236f1d4d
SS
2212set default-collect EXPR, ...
2213show default-collect
2214 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
2215 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
2216 such as registers or a critical global variable.
2217
d5551862
SS
2218set disconnected-tracing
2219show disconnected-tracing
2220 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
2221 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
2222 upon disconnection.
2223
4daf5ac0
SS
2224set circular-trace-buffer
2225show circular-trace-buffer
2226 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
2227 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
2228 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
2229 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
2230
fb2e7cb4
JB
2231set script-extension off|soft|strict
2232show script-extension
2233 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
2234 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
2235 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
2236 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
2237 evaluation failed.
2238 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
2239
2b71fc8e
JB
2240set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
2241show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
2242 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
2243 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
2244 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
2245 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
2246 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
2247 is on.
2248
de2e5182
TT
2249* Python API Improvements
2250
2251 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
2252 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
2253 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
2254
2255 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
2256 `is_base_class' attribute.
2257
2258 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
2259
2260 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
2261 evaluate an expression.
2262
f61e138d
SS
2263* New remote packets
2264
2265QTDV
2266 Define a trace state variable.
2267
2268qTV
2269 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
2270
d5551862
SS
2271QTDisconnected
2272 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
2273
4daf5ac0
SS
2274QTBuffer:circular
2275 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
2276
d5551862
SS
2277qTfP, qTsP
2278 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
2279
2d483d34
MS
2280* Bug fixes
2281
2282Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
2283
6e0e5977
JB
2284Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
2285much more reliable. In particular:
2286 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
2287 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
2288 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
2289 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
2290 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
2291 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
2292 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
2293 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
2294 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
2295 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
2296 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
2297 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
2298 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
2299 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
2300 non-threaded programs.
2301
93c26624
JK
2302PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
2303This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
2304libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
2305executable program.
2306
abc7453d 2307*** Changes in GDB 7.0
75feb17d 2308
4efc6507
DE
2309* GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
2310dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
2311them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
2312for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
2313"JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
2314
782b2b07
SS
2315* Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
2316breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
2317or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
2318the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
2319for tracepoint actions.
2320
53a71c06
CR
2321* The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
2322raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
2323modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
e6158f16 2324
e7a8dbfb
HZ
2325* Process record and replay
2326
2327 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
2328 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
2329 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
2330 execute commands.
2331
64644d9b
MS
2332* Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
2333step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
2334set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
2335reverse execution.
2336
b9412953
DD
2337* GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
2338feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
23392.6.28 or later.
2340
6c7a06a3
TT
2341* GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
2342target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
2343char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
2344literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
2345U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
2346`printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
2347system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
2348the installation instructions for more information.
2349
f1838a98
UW
2350* GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
2351remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
2352with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
2353the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
2354
55333a84
DE
2355* "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
2356and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
2357
7f6a6314
PM
2358* Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
2359now complete on file names.
2360
65d12d83
TT
2361* When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
2362completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
2363For instance, consider:
2364
2365 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
2366 # struct example variable;
2367 (gdb) p variable.
2368
2369If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
2370completions will be "f1" and "f2".
2371
edb3359d
DJ
2372* Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
2373the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
2374
2fae03e8
TT
2375* GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
2376operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
2377macros.
2378
47a3467a 2379* GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
58d6951d
DJ
2380the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
2381implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
2382
2383* GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
2384registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
2385can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
2386and simulator targets may also provide them.
47a3467a 2387
08388c79
DE
2388* New remote packets
2389
2390qSearch:memory:
2391 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
2392
a6f3e723
SL
2393QStartNoAckMode
2394 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
2395 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
2396 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
2397
d7713ae0
EZ
2398vKill
2399 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
2400 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
2401
07e059b5
VP
2402qXfer:osdata:read
2403 Obtains additional operating system information
2404
47a3467a
PA
2405qXfer:siginfo:read
2406qXfer:siginfo:write
2407 Read or write additional signal information.
2408
060871df
PA
2409* Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
2410
2411 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
2412 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
2413 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
2414
c055b101 2415* GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
a0ef4274 2416DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
c055b101
CV
2417
2418* The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
a0ef4274
DJ
2419and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
2420`set/show sh calling-convention'.
c055b101 2421
31fffb02
CS
2422* GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
2423with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
2424
88d8a8e0
JB
2425* 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
2426
7f99b190
JB
2427* Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
2428
ccd213ac
DJ
2429* Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
2430which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
2431
1fddbabb 2432* The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
31fffb02 2433list of section offsets.
1fddbabb 2434
a0ef4274
DJ
2435* On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
2436conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
2437have also been fixed.
2438
bfb8797a 2439* GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
158c7665
PH
2440From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
2441are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
bfb8797a 2442
71c25dea
TT
2443* GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
2444example, given:
2445
2446 template<typename T> class C { };
2447 C<char const *> c;
2448
2449GDB will now correctly handle all of:
2450
2451 ptype C<char const *>
2452 ptype C<char const*>
2453 ptype C<const char *>
2454 ptype C<const char*>
2455
ccd213ac
DJ
2456* New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
2457
2458 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
2459 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
2460
7ae0e2a2
UW
2461 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
2462 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
2463 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
2464
a6f3e723
SL
2465 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
2466 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
2467
da8bd9a3
DJ
2468 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
2469 gdbserver.
2470
d70e31dd
DE
2471 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
2472 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
2473
2474 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
2475 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
2476 as appropriate.
2477
d57a3c85
TJB
2478* Python scripting
2479
2480 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
2481 available is determined at configure time.
2482
d8906c6f
TJB
2483 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
2484
aadc346a
JB
2485* Ada tasking support
2486
2487 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
2488 been introduced:
2489
2490 info tasks
2491 Print the list of Ada tasks.
2492 info task N
2493 Print detailed information about task number N.
2494 task
2495 Print the task number of the current task.
2496 task N
2497 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
2498
adb483fe
DJ
2499* Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
2500add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
2501
2277426b
PA
2502* Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
2503
2504 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
2505 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
2506 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
2507 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
2508 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
2509 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
2510 below.
2511
08d16641
PA
2512* Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
2513"Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
2514information.
2515
e35359c5
UW
2516* Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
2517to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
2518architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
2519See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
2520more information.
2521
85e747d2
UW
2522* Multi-architecture debugging.
2523
2524 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
2525 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
2526 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
2527 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
2528 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
2529
2530* GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
2531use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
2532Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
2533powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
2534--enable-targets configure option.
2535
11ade57a
PA
2536* Non-stop mode debugging.
2537
2538 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
2539 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
2540 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
2541 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
2542 section in the user manual for more information.
2543
2544 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
2545 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
2546 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
2547 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
2548 extensions on linux targets.
2549
d7713ae0 2550* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
75feb17d 2551
a96d9b2e
SDJ
2552catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
2553 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
2554 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
2555 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
2556 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
2557 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
2558 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
2559 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
2560 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
2561
08388c79
DE
2562find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
2563 val1 [, val2, ...]
2564 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
2565
d57a3c85
TJB
2566maint set python print-stack
2567maint show python print-stack
2568 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
2569
2570python [CODE]
2571 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
2572
d7713ae0
EZ
2573macro define
2574macro list
2575macro undef
2576 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
2577 interactively.
2578
2579info os processes
2580 Show operating system information about processes.
2581
2277426b
PA
2582info inferiors
2583 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
2584
2585inferior NUM
2586 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
2587
2588detach inferior NUM
2589 Detach from inferior number NUM.
2590
2591kill inferior NUM
2592 Kill inferior number NUM.
2593
d7713ae0
EZ
2594* New options
2595
3285f3fe
UW
2596set spu stop-on-load
2597show spu stop-on-load
2598 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2599
ff1a52c6
UW
2600set spu auto-flush-cache
2601show spu auto-flush-cache
2602 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
2603 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2604
d7713ae0
EZ
2605set sh calling-convention
2606show sh calling-convention
2607 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
2608
e0a3ce09 2609set debug timestamp
75feb17d 2610show debug timestamp
d7713ae0
EZ
2611 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
2612
2613set disassemble-next-line
2614show disassemble-next-line
2615 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
2616 the debuggee stops.
2617
2618set remote noack-packet
2619show remote noack-packet
2620 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
2621 under "New remote packets."
2622
2623set remote query-attached-packet
2624show remote query-attached-packet
2625 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
2626
2627set remote read-siginfo-object
2628show remote read-siginfo-object
2629 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
2630 packet.
2631
2632set remote write-siginfo-object
2633show remote write-siginfo-object
2634 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
2635 packet.
2636
40ab02ce
MS
2637set remote reverse-continue
2638show remote reverse-continue
2639 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
2640
2641set remote reverse-step
2642show remote reverse-step
2643 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
2644
d7713ae0
EZ
2645set displaced-stepping
2646show displaced-stepping
2647 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
2648 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
2649 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
2650
2651set debug displaced
2652show debug displaced
2653 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
2654
2655maint set internal-error
2656maint show internal-error
2657 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
2658
2659maint set internal-warning
2660maint show internal-warning
2661 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
75feb17d 2662
ccd213ac
DJ
2663set exec-wrapper
2664show exec-wrapper
2665unset exec-wrapper
2666 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
fa4727a6 2667
aad4b048
JB
2668set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
2669show multiple-symbols
2670 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
2671 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
2672 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
2673
74960c60
VP
2674set breakpoint always-inserted
2675show breakpoint always-inserted
2676 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
2677 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
2678 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
2679
0428b8f5
DJ
2680set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2681show arm fallback-mode
2682set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2683show arm force-mode
2684 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
2685 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
2686 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
2687 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
2688
10568435
JK
2689set disable-randomization
2690show disable-randomization
2691 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
2692 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
2693 multiple debugging sessions.
2694
d7713ae0
EZ
2695set non-stop
2696show non-stop
2697 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
2698 a breakpoint.
2699
b3eb342c 2700set target-async
d7713ae0 2701show target-async
b3eb342c
VP
2702 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
2703 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
2704 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
2705 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
2706
6c7a06a3
TT
2707set target-wide-charset
2708show target-wide-charset
2709 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
2710 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
2711
84603566
SL
2712set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
2713show tcp auto-retry
2714set tcp connect-timeout
2715show tcp connect-timeout
2716 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
2717 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
2718 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
2719
17a37d48
PP
2720set libthread-db-search-path
2721show libthread-db-search-path
2722 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
2723 libthread_db.
2724
d4db2f36
PA
2725set schedule-multiple (on|off)
2726show schedule-multiple
2727 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
2728 the current process.
2729
4e5d721f
DE
2730set stack-cache
2731show stack-cache
2732 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
2733 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
2734 affecting correctness.
2735
910c5da8
JB
2736set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
2737show interactive-mode
2738 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
2739 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
2740 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
2741 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
2742 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
2743
2277426b
PA
2744* Removed commands
2745
2746info forks
2747 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
2748 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
2749 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
2750 command.
2751
2752fork NUM
2753 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
2754 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
2755 alias for the `fork' command.
2756
2757process PID
2758 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
2759 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
2760 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
2761
2762delete fork NUM
2763 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
2764 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
2765 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
2766 fork' command.
2767
2768detach fork NUM
2769 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
2770 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
2771 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
2772 fork' command.
2773
a80b95ba
TG
2774* New native configurations
2775
2776x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
2777
b8bfd3ed
JB
2778x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
2779
75a2d5e7
TT
2780* New targets
2781
c28c63d8 2782Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
75a2d5e7 2783x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
4c1d2973 2784x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
5f814c3b 2785S+core 3 score-*-*
75a2d5e7 2786
6de3146c
PA
2787* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
2788 (mingw32ce) debugging.
2789
d5cbbe6e
JB
2790* Removed commands
2791
2792catch load
2793catch unload
2794 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
2795
75feb17d 2796*** Changes in GDB 6.8
f9ed52be 2797
af5ca30d
NH
2798* New native configurations
2799
2800NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
94a0e877 2801Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d
NH
2802
2803* New targets
2804
2805NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
94a0e877 2806Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d 2807
7a404eba
PA
2808* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2809
2810 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
2811 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
2812 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
2813 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
2814
430ebac9
PA
2815* GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
2816(mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
2817
fe6fbf8b 2818* Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
8d5f9c6f 2819is resolved.
fe6fbf8b
VP
2820
2821* GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
8d5f9c6f
DJ
2822including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
2823and in inlined functions.
fe6fbf8b 2824
10665d76
JB
2825* GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
2826accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
2827more than one contiguous range of addresses.
2828
7cc46491
DJ
2829* Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
2830
d71340b8
DJ
2831* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
2832registers on PowerPC targets.
2833
523c4513
DJ
2834* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
2835targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
2836
a6b151f1
DJ
2837* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
2838commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
2839
2d717e4f
DJ
2840* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
2841extended-remote mode.
2842
24a836bd 2843* hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
d001be7a
DJ
2844The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
2845error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
2846The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
24a836bd 2847
d0c678e6
UW
2848* GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
2849building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
2850target architectures.
2851
d64a946d
TJB
2852* GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
2853Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
2854now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
2855stored in two consecutive float registers.
2856
ee163bf5
VP
2857* The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
2858breakpoints now.
2859
b93b6ca7 2860* Improved support for debugging Ada
d001be7a
DJ
2861Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
2862include:
b93b6ca7
JB
2863 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
2864 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
2865 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
2866 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
2867 of an assignment
2868 - Improved command completion in Ada
2869 - Several bug fixes
2870
d001be7a
DJ
2871* GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
2872process.
2873
a6b151f1
DJ
2874* New commands
2875
6d53d0af
JB
2876set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
2877show print frame-arguments
2878 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
2879 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
2880
a6b151f1
DJ
2881remote put
2882remote get
2883remote delete
2884 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2885
2886* New MI commands
2887
2888-target-file-put
2889-target-file-get
2890-target-file-delete
2891 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2892
2893* New remote packets
2894
2895vFile:open:
2896vFile:close:
2897vFile:pread:
2898vFile:pwrite:
2899vFile:unlink:
2900 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
d0c678e6 2901
2d717e4f
DJ
2902vAttach
2903 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
2904 mode.
2905
2906vRun
2907 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
2908
8d5f9c6f 2909*** Changes in GDB 6.7
6dd09645 2910
19d378fc
MS
2911* Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
2912bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
2913Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
2914
3a40aaa0
UW
2915* When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
2916symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
2917-Bsymbolic linker option.
2918
a6ec25f2
BW
2919* When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
2920recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
2921is not supported.
2922
6dd09645
JB
2923* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
2924frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
2925
c9bb8148
DJ
2926* GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
292732-bit or 64-bit register values.
2928
0d5de010
DJ
2929* Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
2930
23181151
DJ
2931* GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
2932target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
2933a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
2934
ea37ba09
DJ
2935* Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
2936automatically displayed as character or string data.
2937
2938* The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
2939arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
2940as strings.
e1f48ead 2941
123dc839
DJ
2942* Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
2943for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
8d5f9c6f 2944only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
123dc839 2945
05a4558a
DJ
2946* GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
2947iWMMXt coprocessor.
fb1e4ffc 2948
7c963485
PA
2949* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
2950ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
2951has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
2952
b18be20d
DJ
2953* GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
2954
0ca420ce
UW
2955* GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
2956
31d99776
DJ
2957* The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
2958layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
2959segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
2960
a4642986
MR
2961* The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
2962immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
2963
cfa9d6d9
DJ
2964* The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
2965"library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
2966packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
2967where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
2968Windows and SymbianOS).
255e7678
DJ
2969
2970* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
2971(DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
f5db8714
JK
2972
2973* GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
2974according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
cfa9d6d9 2975
c9bb8148
DJ
2976* New commands
2977
23776285
MR
2978set remoteflow
2979show remoteflow
2980 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
2981 when debugging using remote targets.
2982
c9bb8148
DJ
2983set mem inaccessible-by-default
2984show mem inaccessible-by-default
2985 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2986 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2987 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
2988 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
2989 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
2990
2991set breakpoint auto-hw
2992show breakpoint auto-hw
2993 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2994 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2995 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
2996 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
2997 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
2998 including "next" and "finish".
2999
0e420bd8
JB
3000catch exception
3001catch exception unhandled
3002 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
3003
3004catch assert
3005 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
3006
f822c95b
DJ
3007set sysroot
3008show sysroot
3009 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
3010 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
3011 an alias to "set sysroot".
3012
83cc5c53
UW
3013info spu
3014 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
3015 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
3016 architecture.
3017
bd372731
MK
3018* New native configurations
3019
3020OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
3021
23181151
DJ
3022set tdesc filename
3023unset tdesc filename
3024show tdesc filename
3025 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
3026 not query the target for its built-in description.
3027
c9bb8148
DJ
3028* New targets
3029
54fe9172 3030OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
c9bb8148 3031MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
c077150c 3032Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
c9bb8148 3033
6dd09645
JB
3034* New remote packets
3035
3036QPassSignals:
3037 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
3038 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
3039
23181151
DJ
3040qXfer:features:read:
3041 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
3042 features.
6dd09645 3043
83cc5c53
UW
3044qXfer:spu:read:
3045qXfer:spu:write:
3046 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
3047 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
3048
cfa9d6d9
DJ
3049qXfer:libraries:read:
3050 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
3051 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
3052 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
3053 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
3054
483367ee
DJ
3055* Removed targets
3056
3057Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
3058
d08950c4
UW
3059alpha*-*-osf1*
3060alpha*-*-osf2*
7ce59000 3061d10v-*-*
483367ee
DJ
3062hppa*-*-hiux*
3063i[34567]86-ncr-*
3064i[34567]86-*-dgux*
3065i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
3066i[34567]86-*-netware*
3067i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
3068i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
3069i[34567]86-*-sco*
3070i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
3071i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
3072i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
3073i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
3074i[34567]86-*-unixware*
3075i[34567]86-*-sysv*
3076i[34567]86-*-isc*
3077m68*-cisco*-*
3078m68*-tandem-*
ad527d2e 3079mips*-*-pe
483367ee 3080rs6000-*-lynxos*
ad527d2e 3081sh*-*-pe
483367ee 3082
7ce59000
DJ
3083* Other removed features
3084
3085target abug
3086target cpu32bug
3087target est
3088target rom68k
3089
3090 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
3091
ea35711c
DJ
3092target hms
3093target e7000
3094target sh3
3095target sh3e
3096
3097 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
3098 H8/300.
3099
3100target ocd
3101
3102 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
3103 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
3104 interfaces.
3105
7ce59000
DJ
3106DWARF 1 support
3107
3108 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
3109 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
3110
54d61198
DJ
3111Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
3112
3113 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
3114 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
3115 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
3116 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
3117
ea35711c
DJ
3118MIPS ".pdr" sections
3119
3120 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
3121 in debugging information.
3122
3123Scheme support
3124
3125 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
3126 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
3127
1a69e1e4
DJ
3128set mips stack-arg-size
3129set mips saved-gpreg-size
3130
3131 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
3132
6dd09645 3133*** Changes in GDB 6.6
e374b601 3134
ca3bf3bd
DJ
3135* New targets
3136
3137Xtensa xtensa-elf
9c309e77 3138Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
ca3bf3bd 3139
6aec2e11
DJ
3140* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
3141(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
3142running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
3143
3144* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
3145Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
3146supported.
3147
17218d91
DJ
3148* The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
3149broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
3150
9ebce043
DJ
3151* The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
3152stub provides the required support.
3153
7d3d3ece
DJ
3154* Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
3155longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
3156
4f8253f3
JB
3157* New commands
3158
3159set substitute-path
3160unset substitute-path
3161show substitute-path
3162 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
3163 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
3164 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
3165 between compilation and debugging.
3166
9fa66fd7
AS
3167set trace-commands
3168show trace-commands
3169 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
3170 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
3171 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
3172
1f5befc1
DJ
3173* REMOVED features
3174
3175The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
3176
2ec3381a
DJ
3177Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
3178an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
3179
3d00d119
DJ
3180The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
3181
be2a5f71
DJ
3182* New remote packets
3183
3184qSupported:
3185 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
3186 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
3187 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
3188 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
3189 target.
3190
0876f84a
DJ
3191qXfer:auxv:read:
3192 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
3193 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
3194
9ebce043
DJ
3195qXfer:memory-map:read:
3196 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
3197 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
3198
3199vFlashErase:
3200vFlashWrite:
3201vFlashDone:
3202 Erase and program a flash memory device.
3203
0876f84a
DJ
3204* Removed remote packets
3205
3206qPart:auxv:read:
3207 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
3208 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
3209
e374b601 3210*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 3211
96309189
MS
3212* New targets
3213
3214Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
3215
3216Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
3217
53e5f3cf
AS
3218* New commands
3219
3220init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
3221 only if it doesn't already have a value.
3222
ac264b3b
MS
3223The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
3224
3225checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
3226
3227restart <n> Return the program state to a
3228 previously saved state.
3229
3230info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
3231
3232delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
3233
3234set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
3235 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
3236
3237info forks List forks of the user program that
3238 are available to be debugged.
3239
3240fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
3241 forks of the user program that are
3242 available to be debugged.
3243
3244delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
3245 that are available to be debugged (and
3246 kill the forked process).
3247
3248detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
3249 that are available to be debugged (and
3250 allow the process to continue).
3251
3950dc3f
NS
3252* New architecture
3253
3254Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
3255
0ea3f30e
DJ
3256* Improved Windows host support
3257
3258GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
3259native console support, and remote communications using either
3260network sockets or serial ports.
3261
f79daebb
GM
3262* Improved Modula-2 language support
3263
3264GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
3265basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
3266pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
3267printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
3268written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
3269GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
3270
acab6ab2
MM
3271* REMOVED features
3272
3273The ARM rdi-share module.
3274
f4267320
DJ
3275The Netware NLM debug server.
3276
53e5f3cf 3277*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 3278
e0ecbda1
MK
3279* New native configurations
3280
02a677ac 3281OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
e0ecbda1
MK
3282OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
3283
d64a6579
KB
3284* New targets
3285
3286Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
3287
b33a6190
AS
3288* New command line options
3289
3290--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
3291--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
3292 the child (debugged) program exited with.
3293--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
3294 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
3295 specified multiple times and in conjunction
3296 with the --command (-x) option.
3297
11dced61
AC
3298* Deprecated commands removed
3299
3300The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
3301removed:
3302
3303 Command Replacement
3304 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
3305 othernames set arm disassembler
3306 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
3307 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
3308 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
3309 regs info registers
3310
6fe85783
MK
3311* New BSD user-level threads support
3312
3313It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
3314library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
3315configurations are:
3316
3317FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3318FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
3319OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
3320
3321Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
3322are not yet supported.
3323
5260ca71
MS
3324* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
3325(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
3326
e84ecc99
AC
3327* REMOVED configurations and files
3328
3329VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 3330Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 3331National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 3332
31e35378
JB
3333* New "set print array-indexes" command
3334
3335After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
3336when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
3337behavior.
3338
e85e5c83
MK
3339* VAX floating point support
3340
3341GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
3342
d91e9901
AS
3343* User-defined command support
3344
3345In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
3346to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
3347section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
3348
f2cb65ca
MC
3349*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
3350
f47b1503
AS
3351* New command line option
3352
3353GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
3354debugging.
3355
f2cb65ca
MC
3356* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
3357
3358GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
3359information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
3360by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
3361proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
3362to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 3363
d08c0230
AC
3364* Internationalization
3365
3366When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
3367internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
3368continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
3369
117ea3cf
PH
3370* Ada
3371
3372Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
3373implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
3374into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
3375
d08c0230
AC
3376* New native configurations
3377
3378GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
3379
3380* Remote 'p' packet
3381
3382GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
3383packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
3384
3385* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
3386
3387GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
3388The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
3389features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
3390i386 application).
3391
3392GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
3393compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
3394continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
3395configurations:
3396
3397hppa-*-hpux
3398ia64-*-aix
3399mips-*-irix*
3400*-*-lynx
3401mips-*-linux-gnu
3402sds protocol
3403xdr protocol
3404powerpc bdm protocol
3405
3406Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
3407made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
3408
3409* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3410
3411Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3412been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3413configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3414permanently REMOVED.
3415
3416h8300-*-*
3417mcore-*-*
3418mn10300-*-*
3419ns32k-*-*
3420sh64-*-*
3421v850-*-*
3422
ebb7c577
AC
3423*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
3424
3425* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
3426
3427When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
3428heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
3429been fixed.
3430
3431* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
3432
3433When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
3434fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
3435IRIX long double values).
3436
3437* VAX and "next"
3438
3439A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
3440command. This problem has been fixed.
3441
860660cb 3442*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 3443
0dea2468
AC
3444* Fix for ``many threads''
3445
3446On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
3447rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
3448error message:
3449
3450 ptrace: No such process.
3451 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
3452
3453This problem has been fixed.
3454
2c07db7a
AC
3455* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
3456
3457Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
3458GDB to dump core).
3459
c23968a2
JB
3460* New ``start'' command.
3461
3462This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
3463
71009278
MK
3464* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
3465
3466Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
3467live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
3468platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
3469
3470FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3471FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
3472NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
3473NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
3474NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
3475OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
3476OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
3477OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
3478OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
3479
3c0b7db2
AC
3480* Signal trampoline code overhauled
3481
3482Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
3483These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
3484of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
3485call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
3486signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
3487
73cc75f3
AC
3488Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
3489features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
3490include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 3491
7243600a
BF
3492* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
3493
6f606e1c
MK
3494* New native configurations
3495
97dc871c 3496GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 3497OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
bf2ca189
MK
3498OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
3499OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 3500OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 3501NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 3502OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 3503
a1b461bf
AC
3504* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
3505
3506GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
3507The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
3508including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
3509migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
3510compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
3511work, was also included.
3512
3513GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
3514module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
3515
3516h8300-*-*
3517mcore-*-*
3518mn10300-*-*
3519ns32k-*-*
3520sh64-*-*
3521v850-*-*
3522xstormy16-*-*
3523
3524Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
3525made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
3526
3c7012f5
AC
3527* REMOVED configurations and files
3528
3529Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3530Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3531Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3532Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3533Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3534AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3535Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
3536decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3537riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3538sonymips mips-sony-*
3539sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
3540
e5fe55f7
AC
3541*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
3542
3543* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
3544
3545The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
3546GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
3547command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
3548program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
3549with GDB".
3550
3551* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
3552
3553Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
3554libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
3555cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
3556GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
3557shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
3558the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
3559are created.
3560
3561Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
3562
3563* Fixed ISO-C build problems
3564
3565The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
3566non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
3567compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
3568
3569* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
3570
3571Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
3572wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
3573
3574* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
3575
3576The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
3577permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
3578systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
3579
3580* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
3581
3582Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
3583has been updated to use constant array sizes.
3584
3585* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
3586
3587GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
3588its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
3589panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
3590
3591* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
3592
3593When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
3594by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
3595not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
3596
faae5abe 3597*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 3598
9175c9a3
MC
3599* Removed --with-mmalloc
3600
3601Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
3602conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
3603
3cc87ec0
MK
3604* Changes in AMD64 configurations
3605
3606The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
3607the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
3608and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
3609you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
3610
f0424ef6
MK
3611* Revised SPARC target
3612
3613The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
3614FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
03cebad2
MK
3615support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
3616from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
3617(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 3618
59659be2
ILT
3619* New C++ demangler
3620
3621GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
3622names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
3623with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
3624programs.
3625
9e08b29b
DJ
3626* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3627
3628GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
3629arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
3630encountered these.
3631
8dfe8985
DC
3632* C++ nested types and namespaces
3633
3634GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
3635improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
3636is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
3637Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
3638namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
3639"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
3640frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
3641if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
3642GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
3643
cced5e27
MK
3644* New native configurations
3645
3646NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 3647OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 3648OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
f2cab569
MK
3649OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
3650OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 3651
b4b4b794
KI
3652* New debugging protocols
3653
3654M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
3655
7989c619
AC
3656* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
3657
3658The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
3659and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
3660tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
3661
5994185b
AC
3662* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3663
3664Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3665been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3666configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3667permanently REMOVED.
3668
3669Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3670Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3671Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3672Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3673Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3674AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3675Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
0748d941
AC
3676decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3677riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3678sonymips mips-sony-*
3679sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 3680
0ddabb4c
AC
3681* REMOVED configurations and files
3682
3683SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
3684SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4a8269c0
AC
3685Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3686Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3687H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3688HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3689HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3690HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
3691PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 3692386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4a8269c0
AC
3693Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3694 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3695 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f0424ef6
MK
3696SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
3697SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4a8269c0
AC
3698Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3699Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 3700
c7f1390e
DJ
3701*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
3702
1fe43d45
AC
3703* Objective-C
3704
3705Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
3706integrated into GDB.
3707
e6beb428
AC
3708* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
3709
3710DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
3711information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
3712By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
3713backtraces.
3714
3715The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
3716have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
3717DWARF 2 CFI support.
3718
3719* Hosted file I/O.
3720
3721GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
3722file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
3723remote protocol documentation for details.
3724
3725* All targets using the new architecture framework.
3726
3727All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
3728architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
3729to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
3730ppc32 on ppc64).
3731
3732* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
3733
3734GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
3735per-thread variables.
3736
3737* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
3738
3739GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
3740GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
3741
3742* Separate debug info.
3743
3744GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
3745automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
3746of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
3747system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
3748and optional debug files.
3749
3750* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3751
3752DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
3753describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
3754debugger.
3755
3756GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
3757for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
3758
3759* Java
3760
3761A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
3762Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
3763considered "useable".
3764
85f8f974
DJ
3765* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
3766
3767The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
3768commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
3769kernel.
3770
0fac0b41
DJ
3771* GDB supports logging output to a file
3772
3773There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
3774used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 3775
6ad8ae5c
DJ
3776* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
3777
3778The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
3779disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
3780command.
3781
e286caf2 3782* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5f601589
AC
3783
3784The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
3785registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
3786
d28f9cdf
DJ
3787* Profiling support
3788
3789A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
3790be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
3791session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
3792"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
3793data, for more informative profiling results.
3794
da0f9dcd
AC
3795* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
3796
3797The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
3798option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 3799"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
da0f9dcd
AC
3800
3801Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
3802removed.
3803
fb9b6b35
JJ
3804Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
3805Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
3806Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
3807 in a subsequent -var-update.
3808
954a4db8
MK
3809* New native configurations.
3810
3811FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3812
6760f9e6
JB
3813* Multi-arched targets.
3814
b4263afa 3815HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 3816Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 3817
1b831c93
AC
3818* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3819
3820Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3821been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3822configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3823permanently REMOVED.
3824
8b0e5691 3825Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 3826Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 3827H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
56056df7
AC
3828HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3829HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3830HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 3831PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
AC
3832Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3833 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3834 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
AC
3835Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3836Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 3837
5835abe7
NC
3838* REMOVED configurations and files
3839
3840V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
3841Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3842IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
3843i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3844i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3845i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
3846HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3847 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
3848 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
3849Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3850Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3851Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3852OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3853I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 3854
a094c6fb
AC
3855* MIPS $fp behavior changed
3856
3857The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
3858the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
3859context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
3860address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
3861The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
3862
299ffc64 3863*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 3864
46248966
AC
3865* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
3866
3867When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
3868`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
3869in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
3870library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
3871shared libs like mad''.
3872
b9d14705 3873* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 3874
b9d14705
DJ
3875Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
3876the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
3877arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
3878powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 3879
e0e9281e
JB
3880* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
3881
3882GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
3883and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
3884they expand.
3885
dd73b9bb
AC
3886The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
3887invocations in expression, and shows the result.
3888
3889The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
3890macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
3891
e0e9281e
JB
3892Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
3893information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
3894your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
3895information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
3896
2250ee0c
CV
3897* Multi-arched targets.
3898
6e3ba3b8
JT
3899DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
3900DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 3901NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 3902National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
3903Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
3904Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 3905
cd9bfe15 3906* New targets.
e33ce519 3907
456f8b9d
DB
3908Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
3909
e33ce519 3910
da8ca43d
JT
3911* New native configurations
3912
3913Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 3914SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 3915MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 3916UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 3917
cd9bfe15
AC
3918* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3919
3920Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3921been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3922configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3923permanently REMOVED.
3924
92eb23c5 3925Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 3926OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 3927IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 3928Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 3929Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 3930Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
3931i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3932i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3933i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
3934HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3935 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
3936 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 3937I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 3938
db034ac5
AC
3939* OBSOLETE languages
3940
3941CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
3942
cd9bfe15
AC
3943* REMOVED configurations and files
3944
3945AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3946A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3947AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3948AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3949AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3950
3951testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
3952
20f01a46
DH
3953* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
3954
3955This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
3956commands. The default is 1024.
3957
a5941fbf
MK
3958* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
3959
3960Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
3961
89743e04
MS
3962* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
3963
3964These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
3965to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
3966from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 3967
9fb14e79
JB
3968* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
3969
3970The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
3971including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
3972of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
3973
2037aebb
AC
3974*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
3975
3976* New targets.
3977
3978Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
3979
3980* Bug fixes
3981
3982gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
3983mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
3984Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
3985
3986gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
3987dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
3988Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
3989
3990Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
3991Surprisingly enough, it works now.
3992By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
3993
3994i386 hardware watchpoint support:
3995avoid misses on second run for some targets.
3996By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
3997
37057839 3998*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 3999
1a703748
MS
4000* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
4001
4002This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
4003really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
4004In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
4005target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
4006This can be a significant performance improvement on some
4007(notably embedded) targets.
4008
cefd4ef5
MS
4009* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
4010
55241689
AC
4011This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
4012process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
4013GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
4014hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 4015
352ed7b4
MS
4016* New command line option
4017
4018GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
4019
4020* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
4021
4022There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
4023command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
4024a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
4025be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
4026open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
4027issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
4028a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
4029it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
4030GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
4031is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
4032
fe419ffc
RE
4033* Changes in ARM configurations.
4034
4035Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
4036configuration is fully multi-arch.
4037
eb7cedd9
MK
4038* New native configurations
4039
fe419ffc 4040ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 4041x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 4042AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 4043Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 4044
c9f63e6b
CV
4045* New targets
4046
4047Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
4048
9b4ff276
AC
4049* OBSOLETE configurations and files
4050
4051Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4052been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4053configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4054permanently REMOVED.
4055
4056AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
4057A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4058AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4059AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4060AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4061
b4ceaee6 4062testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 4063
e2caac18
AC
4064* REMOVED configurations and files
4065
4066TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 4067WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
4068PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4069PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4070PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 4071Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
4072Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
4073 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 4074SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 4075Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
4076Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4077ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 4078Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 4079
c2a727fa
TT
4080* Changes to command line processing
4081
4082The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
4083for the inferior from gdb's command line.
4084
467d8519
TT
4085* Changes to key bindings
4086
4087There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
4088
7072a954
AC
4089*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
4090
4091Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
4092
4093Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
4094corrupted.
4095
4096Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
4097
4098Numerous documentation fixes.
4099
4100Numerous testsuite fixes.
4101
34f47bc4 4102*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
4103
4104* New native configurations
4105
4106Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
4107x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 4108MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
4109MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4110ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 4111s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 4112
bf64bfd6
AC
4113* New targets
4114
def90278 4115Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 4116CRIS cris-axis
55241689 4117UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 4118
17e78a56 4119* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
4120
4121x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 4122Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
4123Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
4124 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
4125TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4126WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 4127Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
4128PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4129PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4130PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 4131SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
4132Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4133ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 4134Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 4135
17e78a56
AC
4136stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
4137kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
4138
7fcca85b
AC
4139Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4140been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4141configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4142permanently REMOVED.
4143
a196c81c 4144* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
4145
4146Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
4147Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
4148Pyramid pyramid-*-*
4149ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
4150Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 4151ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 4152
6d6b80e5 4153* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 4154
6d6b80e5 4155GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
4156sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
4157present.
4158
bf64bfd6
AC
4159* Other news:
4160
e23194cb
EZ
4161* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
4162
4163* The MI enabled by default.
4164
4165The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
4166revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
4167engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
4168using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
4169which is now deprecated.
4170
4171* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
4172
4173GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
4174main features are supported:
4175
4176 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
4177
4178 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
4179 extension;
4180
4181 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
4182
4183 - a Pascal expression parser.
4184
4185However, some important features are not yet supported.
4186
4187 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
4188
4189 - there are some problems with boolean types;
4190
4191 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
4192 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
4193
4194 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
4195
4196 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
4197
4198* Changes in completion.
4199
4200Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
4201to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
4202users expect at the shell prompt.
4203
4204Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
4205`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
4206program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
4207files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
4208be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
4209considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
4210name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
4211
4212`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
4213
4214* New platform-independent commands:
4215
4216It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
4217hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
4218documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
4219
4220* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
4221
d7275149
MK
4222Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
4223revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
4224many threads as your system allows you to have.
4225
e23194cb
EZ
4226Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
4227
d7275149
MK
4228Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
4229multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
4230
4231* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
4232
4233Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
4234
e23194cb
EZ
4235GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
4236debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
4237supported.)
4238
4239* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
4240
4241Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
4242breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
4243implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
4244put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
4245and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
4246registers.
4247
4248The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
4249debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
4250watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
4251
4252* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
4253
4254New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
4255the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
4256
4257New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
4258display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
4259IDT.
4260
4261New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
4262from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
4263New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
4264a given linear address.
4265
4266GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
4267program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
4268which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
4269
4270DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
4271
6c56c069
EZ
4272It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
4273
e23194cb
EZ
4274* Changes in documentation.
4275
4276All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
4277Documentation License.
4278
4279Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
4280manual.
4281
4282TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
4283
4284Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
4285manual.
4286
4287The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
4288documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
4289hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
4290
5d6640b1
AC
4291* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
4292
4293The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
4294``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
4295contents of this file.
4296
1a1d8446
AC
4297* gdba.el deleted
4298
4299GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 4300
9debab2f 4301*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 4302
c63ce875
EZ
4303* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
4304
4305Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
4306programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
4307displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
4308greater level of detail.
4309
4310* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
4311
4312It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
4313bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
4314on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
4315written.
4316
4317* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
4318
4319The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
4320necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
4321machines ``out of the box''.
4322
4323The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
4324possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
4325signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
4326would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
4327interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
4328
4329It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
4330standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
4331even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
4332and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
4333terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
4334
4335The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
4336enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
4337also works.
4338
4339DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
4340GDB.
4341
4342It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
4343directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
4344times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
4345breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
4346
ed9a39eb
JM
4347* New native configurations
4348
4349ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 4350PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 4351
7a292a7a
SS
4352* New targets
4353
96baa820 4354Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
4355x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
4356PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
4357TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4358
085dd6e6
JM
4359* OBSOLETE configurations
4360
4361Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
4362Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 4363Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 4364ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 4365Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 4366
9debab2f
AC
4367Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
4368but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
4369these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
4370be permanently REMOVED.
4371
5330533d
SS
4372* Gould support removed
4373
4374Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
4375
bc9e5bbf
AC
4376* New features for SVR4
4377
4378On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
4379without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
4380load symbols from the running process's executable file.
4381
4382* Many C++ enhancements
4383
4384C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
4385in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
4386
adf40b2e
JM
4387* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
4388
4389A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
4390sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
4391with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
4392``|<program> <args>'' vis:
4393
4394 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
4395 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
4396
43e526b9
JM
4397* MIPS 64 remote protocol
4398
4399A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
4400expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
4401instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
4402
4403The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
4404added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
4405
96baa820
JM
4406* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
4407
4408The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
4409``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
4410include ``set remote P-packet''.
4411
11cf8741
JM
4412* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
4413
4414The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
4415accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
4416``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
4417
7876dd43
DB
4418* ``apropos'' command added.
4419
4420The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
4421documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
4422try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
4423
bc9e5bbf
AC
4424* New MI interface
4425
4426A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
4427interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
4428process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
4429"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
4430enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
4431
4432 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
4433
c906108c
SS
4434*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
4435
4436* New native configurations
4437
4438HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
4439HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 4440M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
4441
4442* New targets
4443
4444Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4445Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
4446Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4447
4448* OBSOLETE configurations
4449
4450Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
4451
4452Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
4453but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
4454these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
4455be permanently REMOVED.
4456
4457* ANSI/ISO C
4458
4459As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
4460buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
4461containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
4462use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
4463available. If this is not true, please report the affected
4464configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
4465information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
4466already.
4467
4468* Readline 2.2
4469
4470GDB now uses readline 2.2.
4471
4472* set extension-language
4473
4474You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
4475languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
4476you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
4477 set extension-language .c c++
4478The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
4479and their associated languages.
4480
4481* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
4482
4483When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
4484you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
4485PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
4486
4487 set processor NAME
4488
4489sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
4490following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
4491
4492 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
4493 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
4494 403 IBM PowerPC 403
4495 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
4496 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
4497 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
4498 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
4499 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
4500 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
4501 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
4502 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
4503
4504At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
4505special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
4506registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
4507only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
4508
4509* HP-UX support
4510
4511Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
4512more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
4513library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
4514support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
4515for xdb and dbx commands.
4516
4517* Catchpoints
4518
4519HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
4520generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
4521to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
4522
4523This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
4524argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
4525output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
4526
4527* Debugging across forks
4528
4529On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
4530in the inferior.
4531
4532* TUI
4533
4534HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
4535it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
4536configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
4537
4538* GDB remote protocol additions
4539
4540A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
4541Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
4542fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
4543allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
4544
4545For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
4546full 64-bit address. The command
4547
4548 set remoteaddresssize 32
4549
4550can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
4551the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
4552will be discarded.
4553
4554In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
4555command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
4556
4557 maint packet heythere
4558
4559sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
4560disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
4561time.
4562
4563The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
4564target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
4565downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
4566
4567* Tracing can collect general expressions
4568
4569You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
4570further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
4571doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
4572
4573* mask-address variable for Mips
4574
4575For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
4576a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
4577of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
4578
4579* Higher serial baud rates
4580
4581GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
4582230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
4583to achieve all of these rates.)
4584
4585* i960 simulator
4586
4587The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
4588builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
4589
4590
4591*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
4592
4593* New native configurations
4594
4595Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
4596Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
4597Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4598PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
4599PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4600Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
4601Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
4602
4603* New targets
4604
4605Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4606Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
4607Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4608Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
4609MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
4610MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
4611MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
4612Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
4613Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
4614Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4615NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
4616
4617* New debugging protocols
4618
4619ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
4620M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
4621DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
4622PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4623PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4624Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4625
4626* DWARF 2
4627
4628All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
4629format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
4630information.
4631
4632* Java frontend
4633
4634GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
4635only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
4636
4637* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
4638
4639For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
4640loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
4641locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
4642
4643* Live range splitting
4644
4645GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
4646range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
4647more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
4648
4649* Hurd support
4650
4651GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
4652updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
4653
4654* ARM Thumb support
4655
4656GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
4657instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
4658instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
4659accordingly.
4660
4661* MIPS16 support
4662
4663GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
4664instruction set.
4665
4666* Overlay support
4667
4668GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
4669linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
4670will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
4671control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
4672additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
4673in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
4674
4675* info symbol
4676
4677The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
4678the symbol at the specified address.
4679
4680* Trace support
4681
4682The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
4683asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
4684extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
4685includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
4686file tracepoint.c for more details.
4687
4688* MIPS simulator
4689
4690Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
4691by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
4692of most MIPS variants.
4693
4694* Sparc simulator
4695
4696Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
4697by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
4698Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
4699
4700* set architecture
4701
4702For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
4703basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
4704architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
4705the possible architectures.
4706
4707*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
4708
4709* New native configurations
4710
4711Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
4712M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
4713PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
4714PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
4715PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4716RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
4717
4718* New targets
4719
4720ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
4721I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4722MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
4723MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
4724PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
4725Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
4726Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4727
4728* PowerPC simulator
4729
4730The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
4731contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
4732PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
4733basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
4734performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
4735
4736* Solaris 2.5
4737
4738GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
4739
4740* Windows 95/NT native
4741
4742GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
4743To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
4744which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
4745Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
4746ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
4747
4748* dont-repeat command
4749
4750If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
4751command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
4752useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
4753extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
4754
4755* Send break instead of ^C
4756
4757The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
4758rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
4759GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
4760
4761* Remote protocol timeout
4762
4763The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
4764that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
4765to read from the target. The default value is 2.
4766
4767* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
4768
4769By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
4770loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
4771stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
4772when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
4773in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
4774
4775Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
4776/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
4777automatically on hpux10.
4778
4779* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
4780
4781Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
4782
4783* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
4784
4785When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
4786may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
4787the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
4788every character. The default value is 1050.
4789
4790* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
4791
4792If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
4793a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
4794replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
4795details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
4796remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
4797to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
4798
4799* Speedups for remote debugging
4800
4801GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
4802the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
4803and more efficient S-record downloading.
4804
4805* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
4806
4807GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
4808Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
4809
4810*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
4811
4812* Psymtabs for XCOFF
4813
4814The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
4815can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
4816
4817* Remote targets use caching
4818
4819Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
4820remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
4821it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
4822debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
4823off' turns the the data cache off.
4824
4825* Remote targets may have threads
4826
4827The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
4828in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
4829gdb/remote.c for details.
4830
4831* NetROM support
4832
4833If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
4834support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
4835acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
4836write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
4837support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
4838another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
4839sequence is something like
4840
4841 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
4842 load <prog>
4843 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
4844
4845* Macintosh host
4846
4847GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
4848may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
4849it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
4850available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
4851device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
4852directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
4853scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
4854mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
4855
4856* Autoconf
4857
4858GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
4859but does simplify configuration and building.
4860
4861* hpux10
4862
4863GDB now supports hpux10.
4864
4865*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
4866
4867* New native configurations
4868
4869x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
4870x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
4871NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
4872Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
4873
4874* New targets
4875
4876A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4877HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
4878CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
4879PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
4880WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4881
4882* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
4883
4884GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
4885possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
4886filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
4887the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
4888if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
4889
4890* Arguments to user-defined commands
4891
4892User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
4893Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
4894trivial example:
4895define adder
4896 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
4897
4898To execute the command use:
4899adder 1 2 3
4900
4901Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
4902Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
4903use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
4904
4905* New `if' and `while' commands
4906
4907This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
4908commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
4909expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
4910execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
4911terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
4912`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
4913if the expression is zero.
4914
4915* Fortran source language mode
4916
4917GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
4918Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
4919variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
4920with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
4921Fortran compilers.
4922
4923* Better HPUX support
4924
4925Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
4926running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
4927processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
4928for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
4929that behavior do the following before running the program:
4930
4931 adb -w a.out
4932 __dld_flags?W 0x5
4933 control-d
4934
4935This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
4936To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
4937
4938 adb -w a.out
4939 __dld_flags?W 0x4
4940 control-d
4941
4942You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
4943the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
4944external linkage.
4945
4946GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
4947HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
4948
4949* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
4950
4951You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
4952commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
4953current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
4954"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
4955associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
4956configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
4957
4958* New DOS host serial code
4959
4960This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
4961no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
4962a PC's serial port.
4963
4964*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
4965
4966* New "complete" command
4967
4968This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
4969were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
4970
4971* Trailing space optional in prompt
4972
4973"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
4974allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
4975
4976* Breakpoint hit counts
4977
4978"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
4979has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
4980can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
4981to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
4982less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
4983that breakpoint.
4984
4985* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
4986
4987"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
4988an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
4989arrays actually contain only short strings.
4990
4991* Shared library breakpoints
4992
4993In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
4994breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
4995
4996* Hardware watchpoints
4997
4998There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
4999targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
5000
55241689 5001Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
5002
5003* Annotations
5004
5005Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
5006and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
5007
5008* Improved Irix 5 support
5009
5010GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
5011
5012* Improved HPPA support
5013
5014GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
5015
5016* New native configurations
5017
5018Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
5019HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
5020Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
5021RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
5022
5023* New targets
5024
5025OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
5026MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
5027Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
5028
5029* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
5030
5031There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
5032This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
5033
5034* Fixes
5035
5036As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
5037and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
5038
5039*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
5040
5041* Irix 5 is now supported
5042
5043* HPPA support
5044
5045GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
5046to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
5047GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
5048of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
5049can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
5050
5051
5052*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
5053
5054* User visible changes:
5055
5056* Remote Debugging
5057
5058The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
5059target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
5060debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
5061integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
5062debugging info for the mips target).
5063
5064* DEC Alpha native support
5065
5066GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
5067debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
5068work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
5069Alpha-specific notes.
5070
5071* Preliminary thread implementation
5072
5073GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
5074
5075* LynxOS native and target support for 386
5076
5077This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
5078to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
5079for details).
5080
5081* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
5082
5083This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
5084mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
5085call methods, ...etc.
5086
5087*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
5088
5089 * User visible changes:
5090
5091Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
5092supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
5093other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
5094somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
5095
5096Filename completion now works.
5097
5098When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
5099arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
5100addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
5101
5102All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
5103vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
5104should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
5105your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
5106to be on the far side of a thin network line.
5107
5108 * DEC alpha support
5109
5110This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
5111cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
5112
5113
5114*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
5115
5116 * Testsuite
5117
5118This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
5119The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
5120via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
5121
5122 * C++ demangling
5123
5124'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
5125emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
5126Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
5127disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
5128use gdb with AT&T cfront.
5129
5130 * Simulators
5131
5132GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
5133So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
5134Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
5135
5136 * New targets supported
5137
5138H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5139H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
5140SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
5141Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
5142IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
5143
5144Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
5145version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
5146GO32 memory extender.
5147
5148 * New remote protocols
5149
5150MIPS remote debugging protocol.
5151
5152 * New source languages supported
5153
5154This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
5155used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
5156into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
5157
5158
5159*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
5160
5161 * HP Precision Architecture supported
5162
5163GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
5164version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
5165University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
5166compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
5167format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
5168(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
5169
5170Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
5171
5172 * Faster and better demangling
5173
5174We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
5175demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
5176character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
5177only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
5178This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
5179increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
5180symbol lookups.
5181
5182`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
5183from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
5184compiler does not actually implement.
5185
5186 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
5187
5188In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
5189inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
5190recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
5191very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
5192The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
5193circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
5194fix.
5195
5196The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
5197release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
5198
5199 * Improved configure script
5200
5201The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
5202you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
5203host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
5204done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
5205
5206We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
5207version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
5208`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
5209The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
5210only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
5211We hope to make this the default in a future release.
5212
5213 * Documentation improvements
5214
5215There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
5216produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
5217before submitting changes.
5218
5219The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
5220M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
5221`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
5222you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
5223a future texinfo-X.Y release.
5224
5225*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
5226We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
5227been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
5228or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
5229`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
5230around this problem.
5231
5232 * New features
5233
5234GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
5235the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
5236`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
5237the target program.
5238
5239The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
5240how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
5241
5242 * New native hosts supported
5243
5244HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
5245386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
5246
5247 * New targets supported
5248
5249AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
5250
5251 * New file formats supported
5252
5253BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
5254HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
5255
5256 * Major bug fixes
5257
5258Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
5259
5260We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
5261printf_filtered("%s") problems.
5262
5263We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
5264for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
5265release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
5266
5267You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
5268will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
5269
5270We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
5271for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
5272especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
5273libraries.
5274
5275The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
5276information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
5277command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
5278any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
5279when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
5280
5281 * Internal improvements
5282
5283GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
5284debugging of multiple languages in the future.
5285
5286GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
5287Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
5288symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
5289contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
5290shared code that handles any of them.
5291
5292 * New command line options
5293
5294We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
5295
5296 * Mmalloc licensing
5297
5298The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
5299General Public License.
5300
5301*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
5302
5303 * Host/native/target split
5304
5305GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
5306hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
5307target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
5308local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
5309ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
5310
5311The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
5312GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
5313is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
5314code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
5315any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
5316built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
5317handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
5318
5319GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
5320It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
5321plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
5322
5323 * New hosts supported
5324
5325HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
5326386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
5327386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
5328
5329 * New targets supported
5330
5331Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
533268030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
5333
5334 * New native hosts supported
5335
5336386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
5337 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
5338386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
5339
5340 * New file formats supported
5341
5342BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
5343supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
5344format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
5345
5346 * New commands
5347
5348`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
5349`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
5350These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
5351
5352`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
5353
5354You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
5355scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
5356prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
5357executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
5358
5359 * C++ improvements
5360
5361We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
5362info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
5363symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
5364
5365Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
5366
5367 * Major bug fixes
5368
5369The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
5370fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
5371by the compiler.
5372
5373We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
5374support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
5375
5376John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
5377slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
5378that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
5379purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
5380the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
5381mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
5382
5383Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
5384about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
5385completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
5386we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
5387
5388 * AMD 29k support
5389
5390A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
5391specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
5392calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
5393usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
5394in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
5395
5396We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
5397Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
5398of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
5399resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
5400
5401 * Remote interfaces
5402
5403We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
5404with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
5405message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
5406This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
5407needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
5408breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
5409each instruction being stepped through.
5410
5411The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
5412registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
5413
5414There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
5415find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
5416Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
5417processor with a serial port.
5418
5419 * Configuration
5420
5421Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
5422`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
5423supported, and what files each one uses.
5424
5425 * Library changes
5426
5427There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
5428disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
5429Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
5430disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
5431
5432The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
5433Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
5434can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
5435grants all the rights from the General Public License.
5436
5437 * Documentation
5438
5439The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
5440reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
5441as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
5442encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
5443system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
5444bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
5445
5446And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
5447
5448
5449*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
5450
5451 * Better support for C++ function names
5452
5453GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
5454names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
5455(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
5456single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
5457Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
5458
5459GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
5460the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
5461You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
5462lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
5463for the list of formats.
5464
5465 * G++ symbol mangling problem
5466
5467Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
5468C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
5469directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
5470can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
5471usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
5472about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
5473this problem.)
5474
5475 * New 'maintenance' command
5476
5477All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
5478the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
5479can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
5480
5481 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
5482 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
5483 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
5484 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
5485 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
5486 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
5487
5488The following commands are new:
5489
5490 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
5491 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
5492 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
5493
5494 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
5495
5496We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
5497(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
5498be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
5499read after argv processing.
5500
5501 * New hosts supported
5502
5503Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
5504
55241689 5505GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
5506
5507We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
5508is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
5509for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
5510masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
5511fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
5512It costs extra.
5513
5514 * New targets supported
5515
5516Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5517
5518 * More smarts about finding #include files
5519
5520GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
5521all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
5522greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
5523especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
5524the one that contains your sources.
5525
5526We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
5527breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
5528try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
5529
5530 * Interesting infernals change
5531
5532GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
5533section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
5534target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
5535stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
5536
5537 * Bug fixes (of course!)
5538
5539There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
5540 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
5541 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
5542
5543See the ChangeLog for details.
5544
5545*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
5546
5547 * New machines supported (host and target)
5548
5549IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
5550
5551SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
5552
5553 * New malloc package
5554
5555GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
5556Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
5557capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
5558This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
5559pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
5560more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
5561
5562 * info proc
5563
5564The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
5565'help info proc' for details.
5566
5567 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
5568
5569The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
5570Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
5571possible.
5572
5573 * File name changes for MS-DOS
5574
5575Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
5576support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
5577conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
5578environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
5579that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
5580in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
5581
5582 * Cross byte order fixes
5583
5584Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
5585targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
5586
5587 * New -mapped and -readnow options
5588
5589If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
5590system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
5591`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
5592program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
5593called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
5594Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
5595and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
5596the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
5597option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
5598starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
5599
5600You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
5601the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
5602information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
5603slower, but makes future operations faster.
5604
5605The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
5606build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
5607A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
5608use is:
5609
5610 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
5611
5612The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
5613It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
5614shared across multiple host platforms.
5615
5616 * longjmp() handling
5617
5618GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
5619siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
5620all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
5621platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
5622
5623 * Solaris 2.0
5624
5625Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
5626this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
5627reading symbols.
5628
5629 * Bug fixes
5630
5631As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
5632People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
5633crashes and trashed symbol tables.
5634
5635*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
5636
5637 * New machines supported (host and target)
5638
5639SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5640 (except core files)
5641BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
5642Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
5643
5644 * New machines supported (target)
5645
5646AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5647
5648 * C++ support
5649
5650GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
5651The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
5652per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
5653
5654GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
5655`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
5656extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
5657good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
5658will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
5659released.
5660
5661 * New features for SVR4
5662
5663GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
5664shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
5665only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
5666
5667The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
5668on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
5669it prints the address mappings of the process.
5670
5671If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
5672bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
5673
5674 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
5675
5676Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
5677now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
5678skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
5679make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
5680same code linked statically.
5681
5682 * New Getopt
5683
5684GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
5685version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
5686continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
5687Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
5688added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
5689future by other options that begin with the same letter.
5690
5691 * Bugs fixed
5692
5693The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5694Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5695See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5696
5697
5698*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
5699
5700 * New machines supported (host and target)
5701
5702Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
5703NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
5704Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5705
5706 * Almost SCO Unix support
5707
5708We had hoped to support:
5709SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5710(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
5711that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
5712about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
5713
5714 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
5715
5716GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
5717debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
5718is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
5719send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
5720reqired (if any).
5721
5722 * New Readline
5723
5724GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
5725is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
5726required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
5727
5728 * Bugs fixed
5729
5730The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5731Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5732See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5733
5734 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
5735
5736GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
5737supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
5738symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
5739
5740Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
5741mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
5742debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
5743mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
5744version 2.
5745
5746Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
5747really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
5748line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
5749variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
5750situation somewhat.
5751
5752When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
5753However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
5754methods.
5755
5756We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
5757DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
5758encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
5759
5760
5761*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
5762
5763 * Improved configuration
5764
5765Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
5766Porting BFD is simpler.
5767
5768 * Stepping improved
5769
5770The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
5771of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
5772in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
5773function that has debugging information is called within the line.
5774
5775 * Bug fixing
5776
5777Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
5778
5779 * New host supported (not target)
5780
5781Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
5782
5783
5784*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
5785
5786 * Multiple source language support
5787
5788GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
5789It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
5790and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
5791language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
5792You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
5793`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
5794
5795 * GDB and Modula-2
5796
5797GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
5798currently under development at the State University of New York at
5799Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
5800continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
5801
5802Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
5803debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
5804symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
5805
5806There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
5807in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
5808
5809 * set write on/off
5810
5811GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
5812a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
5813the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
5814by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
5815effect immediately.
5816
5817 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
5818
5819When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
5820shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
5821The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
5822examining core files.
5823
5824 * set listsize
5825
5826You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
5827The default is 10.
5828
5829 * New machines supported (host and target)
5830
5831SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
5832Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
5833Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
5834
5835 * New hosts supported (not targets)
5836
5837IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
5838
5839 * New targets supported (not hosts)
5840
5841AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5842AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5843Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
5844
5845 * New remote interfaces
5846
5847AMD 29000 Adapt
5848AMD 29000 Minimon
5849
5850
5851*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
5852
5853 * New Facilities
5854
5855Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
5856
5857Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
5858target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
5859is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
5860remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
5861remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
5862also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
5863using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
5864stub on the target system.
5865
5866New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
5867
5868GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
5869library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
5870object file types such as a.out and coff.
5871
5872There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
5873refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
5874
5875
5876 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
5877
5878All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
5879by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
5880
5881For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
5882``Show prompt'' produces the response:
5883Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
5884
5885What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
5886print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
5887will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
5888all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
5889
5890confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
5891 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
5892 it is already running. Default is ON.
5893
5894editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
5895 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
5896 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
5897 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
5898 Default is ON.
5899
5900history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
5901 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
5902 or the value of the environment variable
5903 GDBHISTFILE.
5904
5905history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
5906 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
5907 HISTSIZE.
5908
5909history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
5910 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
5911 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
5912
5913history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
5914 history expansion will be performed on
5915 command line input. The default is OFF.
5916
5917radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
5918 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
5919 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
5920
5921height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
5922 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
5923 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5924 variable TERM.
5925
5926width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
5927 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
5928 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5929 variable TERM.
5930
5931Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
5932``set width'' instead.
5933
5934print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
5935 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
5936 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
5937 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
5938
5939print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
5940 is OFF.
5941
5942print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
5943 "raw" form if off.
5944
5945print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
5946 like instructions.
5947
5948print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
5949
5950
5951 * Support for Epoch Environment.
5952
5953The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
5954new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
5955are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
5956window.
5957
5958
5959 * Support for Shared Libraries
5960
5961GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
5962Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
5963before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
5964happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
5965At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
5966from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
5967shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
5968It can be abbreviated ``share''.
5969
5970sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
5971 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
5972 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
5973
5974info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
5975
5976
5977 * Watchpoints
5978
5979A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
5980expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
5981tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
5982quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
5983problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
5984more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
5985
5986watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
5987
5988info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
5989
5990delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5991disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5992enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5993
5994
5995 * C++ multiple inheritance
5996
5997When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
5998for C++ programs.
5999
6000 * C++ exception handling
6001
6002Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
6003ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
6004the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
6005handler's context).
6006
6007catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
6008 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
6009 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
6010
6011info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
6012 current stack frame.
6013
6014
6015 * Minor command changes
6016
6017The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
6018command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
6019is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
6020
6021The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
6022at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
6023frames without printing.
6024
6025 * New directory command
6026
6027'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
6028The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
6029about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
6030with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
6031find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
6032
6033 * Configuring GDB for compilation
6034
6035For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
6036for more details.
6037
6038GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
6039two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
6040Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
6041where the program that you are debugging will run.
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