* NEWS: Add entry for python program space support.
[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
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4*** Changes since GDB 7.1
5
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6* The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
7 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
8 a directory.
9
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10* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
11
12 - GDBserver now support tracepoints. The feature is currently
13 supported by the i386-linux and amd64-linux builds.
14
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15* GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
16 it understands register description.
17
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18* The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
19
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20* X86 general purpose registers
21
22 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
23 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
24 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
25 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
26 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
27
95a42b64 28* The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
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29 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
30 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
31 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
32 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
33 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
95a42b64 34
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35* Python scripting
36
adc36818 37** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
fa33c3cd 38 tables, program spaces, and frame's code blocks.
f870a310 39
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40** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
41 gdb.progspaces, and gdb.current_progspace.
42
43** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
f3e9a817 44
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45* Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
46there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
47tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
48regular breakpoints.
49
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50* New targets
51
52ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
53
bfbf3774 54*** Changes in GDB 7.1
abc7453d 55
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56* C++ Improvements
57
58 ** Namespace Support
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59
60 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
61 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
62 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
63 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
64 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
65
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66 ** Bug Fixes
67
68 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
69 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
70 qualified name.
71
72 ** Cast Operators
73
74 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
75 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
76
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77* New targets
78
79Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
34207b9e 80Renesas RX rx-*-elf
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81
82* New Simulators
83
84Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
34207b9e 85Renesas RX rx
2d1c1221 86
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87* Multi-program debugging.
88
89 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
90 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
91 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
92 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
93 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
94 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
95 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
96 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
97
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98* New tracing features
99
100 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
101
102 ** Trace state variables
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103
104 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
105 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
106 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
107 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
108 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
109 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
110 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
111 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
112 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
113 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
7a697b8d 114
d5551862 115 ** Fast tracepoints
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116
117 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
118 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
119 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
120 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
121 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
122 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
123 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
124 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
125 the regular trace command.
126
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127 ** Disconnected tracing
128
129 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
130 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
131 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
132 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
133 connection is lost unexpectedly.
134
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135 ** Trace files
136
137 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
138 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
139 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
140 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
141 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
142 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
143 <name>".
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144
145 ** Circular trace buffer
146
147 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
148 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
149 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
150 not be available for all target agents.
151
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152* Changed commands
153
154disassemble
155 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
156 the arguments to be comma-separated.
157
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158info variables
159 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
160 which only declare a variable are not shown.
161
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162source
163 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
164 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
165 support.
166
167 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
168 "set script-extension" (see below).
169
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170* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
171
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172record save [<FILENAME>]
173 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
174 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
175
176record restore <FILENAME>
177 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
178 earlier time, for replay debugging.
179
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180add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
181 Add a new inferior.
182
183clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
184 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
185 inferior has loaded.
186
187remove-inferior ID
188 Remove an inferior.
189
190maint info program-spaces
191 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
192
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193set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
194show remote interrupt-sequence
195 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
196 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
197 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
198 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
199 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
200
201set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
202show remote interrupt-on-connect
203 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
204 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
205 Linux kernel.
206
207set remotebreak [on | off]
208show remotebreak
209Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
210
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211tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
212 Create or modify a trace state variable.
213
214info tvariables
215 List trace state variables and their values.
216
217delete tvariable $NAME ...
218 Delete one or more trace state variables.
219
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220teval EXPR, ...
221 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
222 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
223
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224ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
225 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
226
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227* New expression syntax
228
229 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
230 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
231
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232* New options
233
234set follow-exec-mode new|same
235show follow-exec-mode
236 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
237 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
238 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
239
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240set default-collect EXPR, ...
241show default-collect
242 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
243 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
244 such as registers or a critical global variable.
245
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246set disconnected-tracing
247show disconnected-tracing
248 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
249 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
250 upon disconnection.
251
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252set circular-trace-buffer
253show circular-trace-buffer
254 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
255 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
256 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
257 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
258
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259set script-extension off|soft|strict
260show script-extension
261 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
262 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
263 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
264 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
265 evaluation failed.
266 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
267
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268set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
269show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
270 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
271 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
272 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
273 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
274 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
275 is on.
276
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277* Python API Improvements
278
279 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
280 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
281 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
282
283 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
284 `is_base_class' attribute.
285
286 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
287
288 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
289 evaluate an expression.
290
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291* New remote packets
292
293QTDV
294 Define a trace state variable.
295
296qTV
297 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
298
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299QTDisconnected
300 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
301
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302QTBuffer:circular
303 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
304
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305qTfP, qTsP
306 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
307
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308* Bug fixes
309
310Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
311
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312Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
313much more reliable. In particular:
314 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
315 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
316 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
317 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
318 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
319 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
320 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
321 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
322 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
323 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
324 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
325 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
326 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
327 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
328 non-threaded programs.
329
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330PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
331This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
332libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
333executable program.
334
abc7453d 335*** Changes in GDB 7.0
75feb17d 336
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337* GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
338dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
339them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
340for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
341"JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
342
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343* Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
344breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
345or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
346the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
347for tracepoint actions.
348
e6158f16 349* "disassemble" command with a /r modifier, print the raw instructions
7280022e 350in hex as well as in symbolic form.
e6158f16 351
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352* Process record and replay
353
354 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
355 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
356 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
357 execute commands.
358
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359* Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
360step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
361set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
362reverse execution.
363
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364* GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
365feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
3662.6.28 or later.
367
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368* GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
369target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
370char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
371literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
372U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
373`printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
374system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
375the installation instructions for more information.
376
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377* GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
378remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
379with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
380the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
381
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382* "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
383and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
384
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385* Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
386now complete on file names.
387
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388* When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
389completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
390For instance, consider:
391
392 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
393 # struct example variable;
394 (gdb) p variable.
395
396If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
397completions will be "f1" and "f2".
398
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399* Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
400the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
401
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402* GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
403operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
404macros.
405
47a3467a 406* GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
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407the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
408implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
409
410* GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
411registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
412can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
413and simulator targets may also provide them.
47a3467a 414
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415* New remote packets
416
417qSearch:memory:
418 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
419
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420QStartNoAckMode
421 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
422 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
423 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
424
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425vKill
426 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
427 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
428
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429qXfer:osdata:read
430 Obtains additional operating system information
431
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432qXfer:siginfo:read
433qXfer:siginfo:write
434 Read or write additional signal information.
435
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436* Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
437
438 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
439 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
440 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
441
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442* The "disassemble" command now supports an optional /m modifier to print mixed
443source+assembly.
444
c055b101 445* GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
a0ef4274 446DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
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447
448* The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
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449and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
450`set/show sh calling-convention'.
c055b101 451
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452* GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
453with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
454
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455* 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
456
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457* Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
458
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459* Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
460which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
461
1fddbabb 462* The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
31fffb02 463list of section offsets.
1fddbabb 464
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465* On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
466conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
467have also been fixed.
468
bfb8797a 469* GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
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470From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
471are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
bfb8797a 472
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473* GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
474example, given:
475
476 template<typename T> class C { };
477 C<char const *> c;
478
479GDB will now correctly handle all of:
480
481 ptype C<char const *>
482 ptype C<char const*>
483 ptype C<const char *>
484 ptype C<const char*>
485
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486* New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
487
488 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
489 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
490
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491 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
492 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
493 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
494
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495 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
496 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
497
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498 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
499 gdbserver.
500
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501 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
502 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
503
504 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
505 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
506 as appropriate.
507
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508* Python scripting
509
510 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
511 available is determined at configure time.
512
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513 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
514
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515* Ada tasking support
516
517 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
518 been introduced:
519
520 info tasks
521 Print the list of Ada tasks.
522 info task N
523 Print detailed information about task number N.
524 task
525 Print the task number of the current task.
526 task N
527 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
528
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529* Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
530add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
531
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532* Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
533
534 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
535 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
536 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
537 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
538 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
539 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
540 below.
541
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542* Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
543"Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
544information.
545
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546* Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
547to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
548architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
549See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
550more information.
551
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552* Multi-architecture debugging.
553
554 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
555 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
556 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
557 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
558 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
559
560* GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
561use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
562Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
563powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
564--enable-targets configure option.
565
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566* Non-stop mode debugging.
567
568 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
569 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
570 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
571 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
572 section in the user manual for more information.
573
574 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
575 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
576 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
577 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
578 extensions on linux targets.
579
d7713ae0 580* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
75feb17d 581
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582catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
583 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
584 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
585 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
586 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
587 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
588 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
589 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
590 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
591
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592find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
593 val1 [, val2, ...]
594 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
595
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596maint set python print-stack
597maint show python print-stack
598 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
599
600python [CODE]
601 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
602
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603macro define
604macro list
605macro undef
606 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
607 interactively.
608
609info os processes
610 Show operating system information about processes.
611
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612info inferiors
613 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
614
615inferior NUM
616 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
617
618detach inferior NUM
619 Detach from inferior number NUM.
620
621kill inferior NUM
622 Kill inferior number NUM.
623
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624* New options
625
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626set spu stop-on-load
627show spu stop-on-load
628 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
629
ff1a52c6
UW
630set spu auto-flush-cache
631show spu auto-flush-cache
632 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
633 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
634
d7713ae0
EZ
635set sh calling-convention
636show sh calling-convention
637 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
638
e0a3ce09 639set debug timestamp
75feb17d 640show debug timestamp
d7713ae0
EZ
641 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
642
643set disassemble-next-line
644show disassemble-next-line
645 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
646 the debuggee stops.
647
648set remote noack-packet
649show remote noack-packet
650 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
651 under "New remote packets."
652
653set remote query-attached-packet
654show remote query-attached-packet
655 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
656
657set remote read-siginfo-object
658show remote read-siginfo-object
659 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
660 packet.
661
662set remote write-siginfo-object
663show remote write-siginfo-object
664 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
665 packet.
666
40ab02ce
MS
667set remote reverse-continue
668show remote reverse-continue
669 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
670
671set remote reverse-step
672show remote reverse-step
673 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
674
d7713ae0
EZ
675set displaced-stepping
676show displaced-stepping
677 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
678 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
679 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
680
681set debug displaced
682show debug displaced
683 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
684
685maint set internal-error
686maint show internal-error
687 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
688
689maint set internal-warning
690maint show internal-warning
691 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
75feb17d 692
ccd213ac
DJ
693set exec-wrapper
694show exec-wrapper
695unset exec-wrapper
696 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
fa4727a6 697
aad4b048
JB
698set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
699show multiple-symbols
700 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
701 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
702 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
703
74960c60
VP
704set breakpoint always-inserted
705show breakpoint always-inserted
706 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
707 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
708 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
709
0428b8f5
DJ
710set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
711show arm fallback-mode
712set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
713show arm force-mode
714 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
715 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
716 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
717 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
718
10568435
JK
719set disable-randomization
720show disable-randomization
721 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
722 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
723 multiple debugging sessions.
724
d7713ae0
EZ
725set non-stop
726show non-stop
727 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
728 a breakpoint.
729
b3eb342c 730set target-async
d7713ae0 731show target-async
b3eb342c
VP
732 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
733 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
734 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
735 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
736
6c7a06a3
TT
737set target-wide-charset
738show target-wide-charset
739 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
740 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
741
84603566
SL
742set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
743show tcp auto-retry
744set tcp connect-timeout
745show tcp connect-timeout
746 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
747 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
748 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
749
17a37d48
PP
750set libthread-db-search-path
751show libthread-db-search-path
752 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
753 libthread_db.
754
d4db2f36
PA
755set schedule-multiple (on|off)
756show schedule-multiple
757 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
758 the current process.
759
4e5d721f
DE
760set stack-cache
761show stack-cache
762 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
763 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
764 affecting correctness.
765
910c5da8
JB
766set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
767show interactive-mode
768 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
769 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
770 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
771 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
772 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
773
2277426b
PA
774* Removed commands
775
776info forks
777 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
778 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
779 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
780 command.
781
782fork NUM
783 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
784 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
785 alias for the `fork' command.
786
787process PID
788 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
789 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
790 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
791
792delete fork NUM
793 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
794 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
795 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
796 fork' command.
797
798detach fork NUM
799 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
800 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
801 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
802 fork' command.
803
a80b95ba
TG
804* New native configurations
805
806x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
807
b8bfd3ed
JB
808x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
809
75a2d5e7
TT
810* New targets
811
c28c63d8 812Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
75a2d5e7 813x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
4c1d2973 814x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
5f814c3b 815S+core 3 score-*-*
75a2d5e7 816
6de3146c
PA
817* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
818 (mingw32ce) debugging.
819
d5cbbe6e
JB
820* Removed commands
821
822catch load
823catch unload
824 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
825
75feb17d 826*** Changes in GDB 6.8
f9ed52be 827
af5ca30d
NH
828* New native configurations
829
830NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
94a0e877 831Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d
NH
832
833* New targets
834
835NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
94a0e877 836Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d 837
7a404eba
PA
838* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
839
840 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
841 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
842 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
843 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
844
430ebac9
PA
845* GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
846(mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
847
fe6fbf8b 848* Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
8d5f9c6f 849is resolved.
fe6fbf8b
VP
850
851* GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
8d5f9c6f
DJ
852including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
853and in inlined functions.
fe6fbf8b 854
10665d76
JB
855* GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
856accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
857more than one contiguous range of addresses.
858
7cc46491
DJ
859* Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
860
d71340b8
DJ
861* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
862registers on PowerPC targets.
863
523c4513
DJ
864* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
865targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
866
a6b151f1
DJ
867* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
868commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
869
2d717e4f
DJ
870* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
871extended-remote mode.
872
24a836bd 873* hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
d001be7a
DJ
874The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
875error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
876The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
24a836bd 877
d0c678e6
UW
878* GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
879building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
880target architectures.
881
d64a946d
TJB
882* GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
883Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
884now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
885stored in two consecutive float registers.
886
ee163bf5
VP
887* The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
888breakpoints now.
889
b93b6ca7 890* Improved support for debugging Ada
d001be7a
DJ
891Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
892include:
b93b6ca7
JB
893 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
894 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
895 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
896 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
897 of an assignment
898 - Improved command completion in Ada
899 - Several bug fixes
900
d001be7a
DJ
901* GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
902process.
903
a6b151f1
DJ
904* New commands
905
6d53d0af
JB
906set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
907show print frame-arguments
908 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
909 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
910
a6b151f1
DJ
911remote put
912remote get
913remote delete
914 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
915
916* New MI commands
917
918-target-file-put
919-target-file-get
920-target-file-delete
921 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
922
923* New remote packets
924
925vFile:open:
926vFile:close:
927vFile:pread:
928vFile:pwrite:
929vFile:unlink:
930 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
d0c678e6 931
2d717e4f
DJ
932vAttach
933 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
934 mode.
935
936vRun
937 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
938
8d5f9c6f 939*** Changes in GDB 6.7
6dd09645 940
19d378fc
MS
941* Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
942bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
943Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
944
3a40aaa0
UW
945* When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
946symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
947-Bsymbolic linker option.
948
a6ec25f2
BW
949* When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
950recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
951is not supported.
952
6dd09645
JB
953* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
954frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
955
c9bb8148
DJ
956* GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
95732-bit or 64-bit register values.
958
0d5de010
DJ
959* Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
960
23181151
DJ
961* GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
962target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
963a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
964
ea37ba09
DJ
965* Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
966automatically displayed as character or string data.
967
968* The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
969arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
970as strings.
e1f48ead 971
123dc839
DJ
972* Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
973for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
8d5f9c6f 974only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
123dc839 975
05a4558a
DJ
976* GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
977iWMMXt coprocessor.
fb1e4ffc 978
7c963485
PA
979* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
980ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
981has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
982
b18be20d
DJ
983* GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
984
0ca420ce
UW
985* GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
986
31d99776
DJ
987* The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
988layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
989segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
990
a4642986
MR
991* The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
992immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
993
cfa9d6d9
DJ
994* The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
995"library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
996packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
997where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
998Windows and SymbianOS).
255e7678
DJ
999
1000* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
1001(DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
f5db8714
JK
1002
1003* GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
1004according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
cfa9d6d9 1005
c9bb8148
DJ
1006* New commands
1007
23776285
MR
1008set remoteflow
1009show remoteflow
1010 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
1011 when debugging using remote targets.
1012
c9bb8148
DJ
1013set mem inaccessible-by-default
1014show mem inaccessible-by-default
1015 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1016 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1017 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
1018 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
1019 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
1020
1021set breakpoint auto-hw
1022show breakpoint auto-hw
1023 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1024 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1025 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
1026 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
1027 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
1028 including "next" and "finish".
1029
0e420bd8
JB
1030catch exception
1031catch exception unhandled
1032 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
1033
1034catch assert
1035 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
1036
f822c95b
DJ
1037set sysroot
1038show sysroot
1039 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
1040 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
1041 an alias to "set sysroot".
1042
83cc5c53
UW
1043info spu
1044 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
1045 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
1046 architecture.
1047
bd372731
MK
1048* New native configurations
1049
1050OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
1051
23181151
DJ
1052set tdesc filename
1053unset tdesc filename
1054show tdesc filename
1055 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
1056 not query the target for its built-in description.
1057
c9bb8148
DJ
1058* New targets
1059
54fe9172 1060OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
c9bb8148 1061MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
c077150c 1062Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
c9bb8148 1063
6dd09645
JB
1064* New remote packets
1065
1066QPassSignals:
1067 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
1068 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
1069
23181151
DJ
1070qXfer:features:read:
1071 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
1072 features.
6dd09645 1073
83cc5c53
UW
1074qXfer:spu:read:
1075qXfer:spu:write:
1076 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
1077 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
1078
cfa9d6d9
DJ
1079qXfer:libraries:read:
1080 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
1081 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
1082 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
1083 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
1084
483367ee
DJ
1085* Removed targets
1086
1087Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
1088
d08950c4
UW
1089alpha*-*-osf1*
1090alpha*-*-osf2*
7ce59000 1091d10v-*-*
483367ee
DJ
1092hppa*-*-hiux*
1093i[34567]86-ncr-*
1094i[34567]86-*-dgux*
1095i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
1096i[34567]86-*-netware*
1097i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
1098i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
1099i[34567]86-*-sco*
1100i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
1101i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
1102i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
1103i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
1104i[34567]86-*-unixware*
1105i[34567]86-*-sysv*
1106i[34567]86-*-isc*
1107m68*-cisco*-*
1108m68*-tandem-*
ad527d2e 1109mips*-*-pe
483367ee 1110rs6000-*-lynxos*
ad527d2e 1111sh*-*-pe
483367ee 1112
7ce59000
DJ
1113* Other removed features
1114
1115target abug
1116target cpu32bug
1117target est
1118target rom68k
1119
1120 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
1121
ea35711c
DJ
1122target hms
1123target e7000
1124target sh3
1125target sh3e
1126
1127 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
1128 H8/300.
1129
1130target ocd
1131
1132 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
1133 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
1134 interfaces.
1135
7ce59000
DJ
1136DWARF 1 support
1137
1138 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
1139 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
1140
54d61198
DJ
1141Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
1142
1143 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
1144 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
1145 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
1146 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
1147
ea35711c
DJ
1148MIPS ".pdr" sections
1149
1150 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
1151 in debugging information.
1152
1153Scheme support
1154
1155 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
1156 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
1157
1a69e1e4
DJ
1158set mips stack-arg-size
1159set mips saved-gpreg-size
1160
1161 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
1162
6dd09645 1163*** Changes in GDB 6.6
e374b601 1164
ca3bf3bd
DJ
1165* New targets
1166
1167Xtensa xtensa-elf
9c309e77 1168Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
ca3bf3bd 1169
6aec2e11
DJ
1170* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
1171(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
1172running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
1173
1174* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
1175Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
1176supported.
1177
17218d91
DJ
1178* The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
1179broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
1180
9ebce043
DJ
1181* The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
1182stub provides the required support.
1183
7d3d3ece
DJ
1184* Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
1185longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
1186
4f8253f3
JB
1187* New commands
1188
1189set substitute-path
1190unset substitute-path
1191show substitute-path
1192 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
1193 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
1194 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
1195 between compilation and debugging.
1196
9fa66fd7
AS
1197set trace-commands
1198show trace-commands
1199 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
1200 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
1201 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
1202
1f5befc1
DJ
1203* REMOVED features
1204
1205The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
1206
2ec3381a
DJ
1207Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
1208an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
1209
3d00d119
DJ
1210The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
1211
be2a5f71
DJ
1212* New remote packets
1213
1214qSupported:
1215 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
1216 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
1217 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
1218 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
1219 target.
1220
0876f84a
DJ
1221qXfer:auxv:read:
1222 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
1223 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
1224
9ebce043
DJ
1225qXfer:memory-map:read:
1226 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
1227 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
1228
1229vFlashErase:
1230vFlashWrite:
1231vFlashDone:
1232 Erase and program a flash memory device.
1233
0876f84a
DJ
1234* Removed remote packets
1235
1236qPart:auxv:read:
1237 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
1238 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
1239
e374b601 1240*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 1241
96309189
MS
1242* New targets
1243
1244Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
1245
1246Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
1247
53e5f3cf
AS
1248* New commands
1249
1250init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
1251 only if it doesn't already have a value.
1252
ac264b3b
MS
1253The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
1254
1255checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
1256
1257restart <n> Return the program state to a
1258 previously saved state.
1259
1260info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
1261
1262delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
1263
1264set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
1265 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
1266
1267info forks List forks of the user program that
1268 are available to be debugged.
1269
1270fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
1271 forks of the user program that are
1272 available to be debugged.
1273
1274delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
1275 that are available to be debugged (and
1276 kill the forked process).
1277
1278detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
1279 that are available to be debugged (and
1280 allow the process to continue).
1281
3950dc3f
NS
1282* New architecture
1283
1284Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
1285
0ea3f30e
DJ
1286* Improved Windows host support
1287
1288GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
1289native console support, and remote communications using either
1290network sockets or serial ports.
1291
f79daebb
GM
1292* Improved Modula-2 language support
1293
1294GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
1295basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
1296pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
1297printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
1298written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
1299GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
1300
acab6ab2
MM
1301* REMOVED features
1302
1303The ARM rdi-share module.
1304
f4267320
DJ
1305The Netware NLM debug server.
1306
53e5f3cf 1307*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 1308
e0ecbda1
MK
1309* New native configurations
1310
02a677ac 1311OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
e0ecbda1
MK
1312OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
1313
d64a6579
KB
1314* New targets
1315
1316Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
1317
b33a6190
AS
1318* New command line options
1319
1320--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
1321--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
1322 the child (debugged) program exited with.
1323--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
1324 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
1325 specified multiple times and in conjunction
1326 with the --command (-x) option.
1327
11dced61
AC
1328* Deprecated commands removed
1329
1330The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
1331removed:
1332
1333 Command Replacement
1334 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
1335 othernames set arm disassembler
1336 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
1337 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
1338 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
1339 regs info registers
1340
6fe85783
MK
1341* New BSD user-level threads support
1342
1343It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
1344library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
1345configurations are:
1346
1347FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1348FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
1349OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
1350
1351Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
1352are not yet supported.
1353
5260ca71
MS
1354* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
1355(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
1356
e84ecc99
AC
1357* REMOVED configurations and files
1358
1359VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 1360Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 1361National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 1362
31e35378
JB
1363* New "set print array-indexes" command
1364
1365After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
1366when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
1367behavior.
1368
e85e5c83
MK
1369* VAX floating point support
1370
1371GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
1372
d91e9901
AS
1373* User-defined command support
1374
1375In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
1376to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
1377section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
1378
f2cb65ca
MC
1379*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
1380
f47b1503
AS
1381* New command line option
1382
1383GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
1384debugging.
1385
f2cb65ca
MC
1386* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
1387
1388GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
1389information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
1390by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
1391proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
1392to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 1393
d08c0230
AC
1394* Internationalization
1395
1396When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
1397internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
1398continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
1399
117ea3cf
PH
1400* Ada
1401
1402Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
1403implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
1404into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
1405
d08c0230
AC
1406* New native configurations
1407
1408GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
1409
1410* Remote 'p' packet
1411
1412GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
1413packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
1414
1415* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
1416
1417GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
1418The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
1419features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
1420i386 application).
1421
1422GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
1423compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
1424continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
1425configurations:
1426
1427hppa-*-hpux
1428ia64-*-aix
1429mips-*-irix*
1430*-*-lynx
1431mips-*-linux-gnu
1432sds protocol
1433xdr protocol
1434powerpc bdm protocol
1435
1436Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
1437made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
1438
1439* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1440
1441Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1442been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1443configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1444permanently REMOVED.
1445
1446h8300-*-*
1447mcore-*-*
1448mn10300-*-*
1449ns32k-*-*
1450sh64-*-*
1451v850-*-*
1452
ebb7c577
AC
1453*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
1454
1455* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
1456
1457When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
1458heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
1459been fixed.
1460
1461* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
1462
1463When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
1464fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
1465IRIX long double values).
1466
1467* VAX and "next"
1468
1469A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
1470command. This problem has been fixed.
1471
860660cb 1472*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 1473
0dea2468
AC
1474* Fix for ``many threads''
1475
1476On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
1477rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
1478error message:
1479
1480 ptrace: No such process.
1481 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
1482
1483This problem has been fixed.
1484
2c07db7a
AC
1485* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
1486
1487Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
1488GDB to dump core).
1489
c23968a2
JB
1490* New ``start'' command.
1491
1492This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
1493
71009278
MK
1494* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
1495
1496Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
1497live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
1498platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
1499
1500FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1501FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
1502NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
1503NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
1504NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
1505OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
1506OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
1507OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
1508OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
1509
3c0b7db2
AC
1510* Signal trampoline code overhauled
1511
1512Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
1513These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
1514of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
1515call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
1516signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
1517
73cc75f3
AC
1518Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
1519features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
1520include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 1521
7243600a
BF
1522* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
1523
6f606e1c
MK
1524* New native configurations
1525
97dc871c 1526GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 1527OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
bf2ca189
MK
1528OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
1529OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 1530OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 1531NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 1532OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 1533
a1b461bf
AC
1534* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
1535
1536GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
1537The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
1538including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
1539migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
1540compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
1541work, was also included.
1542
1543GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
1544module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
1545
1546h8300-*-*
1547mcore-*-*
1548mn10300-*-*
1549ns32k-*-*
1550sh64-*-*
1551v850-*-*
1552xstormy16-*-*
1553
1554Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
1555made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
1556
3c7012f5
AC
1557* REMOVED configurations and files
1558
1559Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
1560Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
1561Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
1562Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
1563Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
1564AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
1565Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
1566decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
1567riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
1568sonymips mips-sony-*
1569sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
1570
e5fe55f7
AC
1571*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
1572
1573* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
1574
1575The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
1576GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
1577command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
1578program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
1579with GDB".
1580
1581* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
1582
1583Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
1584libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
1585cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
1586GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
1587shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
1588the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
1589are created.
1590
1591Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
1592
1593* Fixed ISO-C build problems
1594
1595The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
1596non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
1597compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
1598
1599* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
1600
1601Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
1602wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
1603
1604* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
1605
1606The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
1607permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
1608systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
1609
1610* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
1611
1612Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
1613has been updated to use constant array sizes.
1614
1615* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
1616
1617GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
1618its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
1619panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
1620
1621* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
1622
1623When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
1624by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
1625not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
1626
faae5abe 1627*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 1628
9175c9a3
MC
1629* Removed --with-mmalloc
1630
1631Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
1632conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
1633
3cc87ec0
MK
1634* Changes in AMD64 configurations
1635
1636The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
1637the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
1638and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
1639you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
1640
f0424ef6
MK
1641* Revised SPARC target
1642
1643The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
1644FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
03cebad2
MK
1645support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
1646from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
1647(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 1648
59659be2
ILT
1649* New C++ demangler
1650
1651GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
1652names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
1653with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
1654programs.
1655
9e08b29b
DJ
1656* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
1657
1658GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
1659arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
1660encountered these.
1661
8dfe8985
DC
1662* C++ nested types and namespaces
1663
1664GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
1665improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
1666is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
1667Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
1668namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
1669"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
1670frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
1671if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
1672GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
1673
cced5e27
MK
1674* New native configurations
1675
1676NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 1677OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 1678OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
f2cab569
MK
1679OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
1680OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 1681
b4b4b794
KI
1682* New debugging protocols
1683
1684M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
1685
7989c619
AC
1686* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
1687
1688The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
1689and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
1690tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
1691
5994185b
AC
1692* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1693
1694Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1695been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1696configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1697permanently REMOVED.
1698
1699Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
1700Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
1701Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
1702Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
1703Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
1704AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
1705Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
0748d941
AC
1706decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
1707riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
1708sonymips mips-sony-*
1709sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 1710
0ddabb4c
AC
1711* REMOVED configurations and files
1712
1713SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1714SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4a8269c0
AC
1715Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1716Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1717H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1718HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
1719HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1720HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
1721PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 1722386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4a8269c0
AC
1723Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
1724 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
1725 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f0424ef6
MK
1726SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
1727SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4a8269c0
AC
1728Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1729Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 1730
c7f1390e
DJ
1731*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
1732
1fe43d45
AC
1733* Objective-C
1734
1735Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
1736integrated into GDB.
1737
e6beb428
AC
1738* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
1739
1740DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
1741information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
1742By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
1743backtraces.
1744
1745The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
1746have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
1747DWARF 2 CFI support.
1748
1749* Hosted file I/O.
1750
1751GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
1752file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
1753remote protocol documentation for details.
1754
1755* All targets using the new architecture framework.
1756
1757All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
1758architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
1759to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
1760ppc32 on ppc64).
1761
1762* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
1763
1764GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
1765per-thread variables.
1766
1767* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
1768
1769GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
1770GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
1771
1772* Separate debug info.
1773
1774GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
1775automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
1776of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
1777system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
1778and optional debug files.
1779
1780* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
1781
1782DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
1783describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
1784debugger.
1785
1786GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
1787for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
1788
1789* Java
1790
1791A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
1792Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
1793considered "useable".
1794
85f8f974
DJ
1795* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
1796
1797The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
1798commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
1799kernel.
1800
0fac0b41
DJ
1801* GDB supports logging output to a file
1802
1803There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
1804used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 1805
6ad8ae5c
DJ
1806* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
1807
1808The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
1809disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
1810command.
1811
e286caf2 1812* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5f601589
AC
1813
1814The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
1815registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
1816
d28f9cdf
DJ
1817* Profiling support
1818
1819A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
1820be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
1821session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
1822"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
1823data, for more informative profiling results.
1824
da0f9dcd
AC
1825* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
1826
1827The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
1828option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 1829"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
da0f9dcd
AC
1830
1831Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
1832removed.
1833
fb9b6b35
JJ
1834Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
1835Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
1836Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
1837 in a subsequent -var-update.
1838
954a4db8
MK
1839* New native configurations.
1840
1841FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1842
6760f9e6
JB
1843* Multi-arched targets.
1844
b4263afa 1845HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 1846Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 1847
1b831c93
AC
1848* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1849
1850Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1851been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1852configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1853permanently REMOVED.
1854
8b0e5691 1855Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 1856Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 1857H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
56056df7
AC
1858HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
1859HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1860HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 1861PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
AC
1862Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
1863 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
1864 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
AC
1865Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1866Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 1867
5835abe7
NC
1868* REMOVED configurations and files
1869
1870V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
1871Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1872IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
1873i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1874i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1875i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
1876HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1877 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
1878 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
1879Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1880Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1881Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1882OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1883I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 1884
a094c6fb
AC
1885* MIPS $fp behavior changed
1886
1887The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
1888the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
1889context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
1890address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
1891The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
1892
299ffc64 1893*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 1894
46248966
AC
1895* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
1896
1897When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
1898`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
1899in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
1900library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
1901shared libs like mad''.
1902
b9d14705 1903* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 1904
b9d14705
DJ
1905Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
1906the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
1907arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
1908powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 1909
e0e9281e
JB
1910* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
1911
1912GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
1913and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
1914they expand.
1915
dd73b9bb
AC
1916The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
1917invocations in expression, and shows the result.
1918
1919The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
1920macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
1921
e0e9281e
JB
1922Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
1923information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
1924your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
1925information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
1926
2250ee0c
CV
1927* Multi-arched targets.
1928
6e3ba3b8
JT
1929DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
1930DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 1931NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 1932National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
1933Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
1934Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 1935
cd9bfe15 1936* New targets.
e33ce519 1937
456f8b9d
DB
1938Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
1939
e33ce519 1940
da8ca43d
JT
1941* New native configurations
1942
1943Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 1944SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 1945MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 1946UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 1947
cd9bfe15
AC
1948* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1949
1950Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1951been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1952configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1953permanently REMOVED.
1954
92eb23c5 1955Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 1956OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 1957IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 1958Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 1959Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 1960Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
1961i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1962i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1963i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
1964HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1965 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
1966 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 1967I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 1968
db034ac5
AC
1969* OBSOLETE languages
1970
1971CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
1972
cd9bfe15
AC
1973* REMOVED configurations and files
1974
1975AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1976A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1977AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1978AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1979AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1980
1981testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
1982
20f01a46
DH
1983* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
1984
1985This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
1986commands. The default is 1024.
1987
a5941fbf
MK
1988* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
1989
1990Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
1991
89743e04
MS
1992* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
1993
1994These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
1995to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
1996from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 1997
9fb14e79
JB
1998* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
1999
2000The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
2001including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
2002of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
2003
2037aebb
AC
2004*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
2005
2006* New targets.
2007
2008Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
2009
2010* Bug fixes
2011
2012gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
2013mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
2014Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
2015
2016gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
2017dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
2018Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
2019
2020Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
2021Surprisingly enough, it works now.
2022By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
2023
2024i386 hardware watchpoint support:
2025avoid misses on second run for some targets.
2026By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
2027
37057839 2028*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 2029
1a703748
MS
2030* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
2031
2032This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
2033really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
2034In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
2035target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
2036This can be a significant performance improvement on some
2037(notably embedded) targets.
2038
cefd4ef5
MS
2039* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
2040
55241689
AC
2041This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
2042process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
2043GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
2044hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 2045
352ed7b4
MS
2046* New command line option
2047
2048GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
2049
2050* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2051
2052There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
2053command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
2054a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
2055be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
2056open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
2057issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
2058a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
2059it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
2060GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
2061is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
2062
fe419ffc
RE
2063* Changes in ARM configurations.
2064
2065Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
2066configuration is fully multi-arch.
2067
eb7cedd9
MK
2068* New native configurations
2069
fe419ffc 2070ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 2071x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 2072AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 2073Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 2074
c9f63e6b
CV
2075* New targets
2076
2077Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
2078
9b4ff276
AC
2079* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2080
2081Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2082been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2083configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2084permanently REMOVED.
2085
2086AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2087A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2088AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2089AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2090AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2091
b4ceaee6 2092testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 2093
e2caac18
AC
2094* REMOVED configurations and files
2095
2096TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 2097WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
2098PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2099PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2100PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 2101Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
2102Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2103 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 2104SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 2105Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
2106Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2107ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 2108Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 2109
c2a727fa
TT
2110* Changes to command line processing
2111
2112The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
2113for the inferior from gdb's command line.
2114
467d8519
TT
2115* Changes to key bindings
2116
2117There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
2118
7072a954
AC
2119*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
2120
2121Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
2122
2123Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
2124corrupted.
2125
2126Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
2127
2128Numerous documentation fixes.
2129
2130Numerous testsuite fixes.
2131
34f47bc4 2132*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
2133
2134* New native configurations
2135
2136Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
2137x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 2138MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
2139MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
2140ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 2141s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 2142
bf64bfd6
AC
2143* New targets
2144
def90278 2145Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 2146CRIS cris-axis
55241689 2147UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 2148
17e78a56 2149* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
2150
2151x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 2152Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
2153Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2154 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
2155TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2156WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 2157Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
2158PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2159PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2160PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 2161SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
2162Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2163ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 2164Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 2165
17e78a56
AC
2166stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
2167kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
2168
7fcca85b
AC
2169Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2170been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2171configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2172permanently REMOVED.
2173
a196c81c 2174* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
2175
2176Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
2177Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
2178Pyramid pyramid-*-*
2179ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
2180Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 2181ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 2182
6d6b80e5 2183* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 2184
6d6b80e5 2185GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
2186sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
2187present.
2188
bf64bfd6
AC
2189* Other news:
2190
e23194cb
EZ
2191* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
2192
2193* The MI enabled by default.
2194
2195The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
2196revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
2197engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
2198using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
2199which is now deprecated.
2200
2201* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
2202
2203GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
2204main features are supported:
2205
2206 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
2207
2208 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
2209 extension;
2210
2211 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
2212
2213 - a Pascal expression parser.
2214
2215However, some important features are not yet supported.
2216
2217 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
2218
2219 - there are some problems with boolean types;
2220
2221 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
2222 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
2223
2224 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
2225
2226 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
2227
2228* Changes in completion.
2229
2230Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
2231to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
2232users expect at the shell prompt.
2233
2234Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
2235`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
2236program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
2237files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
2238be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
2239considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
2240name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
2241
2242`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
2243
2244* New platform-independent commands:
2245
2246It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
2247hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
2248documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
2249
2250* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
2251
d7275149
MK
2252Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
2253revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
2254many threads as your system allows you to have.
2255
e23194cb
EZ
2256Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
2257
d7275149
MK
2258Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
2259multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
2260
2261* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
2262
2263Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
2264
e23194cb
EZ
2265GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
2266debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
2267supported.)
2268
2269* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
2270
2271Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
2272breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
2273implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
2274put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
2275and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
2276registers.
2277
2278The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
2279debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
2280watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
2281
2282* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
2283
2284New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
2285the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
2286
2287New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
2288display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
2289IDT.
2290
2291New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
2292from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
2293New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
2294a given linear address.
2295
2296GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
2297program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
2298which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
2299
2300DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
2301
6c56c069
EZ
2302It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
2303
e23194cb
EZ
2304* Changes in documentation.
2305
2306All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
2307Documentation License.
2308
2309Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
2310manual.
2311
2312TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
2313
2314Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
2315manual.
2316
2317The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
2318documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
2319hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
2320
5d6640b1
AC
2321* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
2322
2323The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
2324``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
2325contents of this file.
2326
1a1d8446
AC
2327* gdba.el deleted
2328
2329GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 2330
9debab2f 2331*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 2332
c63ce875
EZ
2333* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
2334
2335Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
2336programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
2337displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
2338greater level of detail.
2339
2340* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
2341
2342It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
2343bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
2344on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
2345written.
2346
2347* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
2348
2349The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
2350necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
2351machines ``out of the box''.
2352
2353The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
2354possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
2355signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
2356would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
2357interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
2358
2359It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
2360standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
2361even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
2362and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
2363terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
2364
2365The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
2366enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
2367also works.
2368
2369DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
2370GDB.
2371
2372It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
2373directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
2374times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
2375breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
2376
ed9a39eb
JM
2377* New native configurations
2378
2379ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 2380PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 2381
7a292a7a
SS
2382* New targets
2383
96baa820 2384Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
2385x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
2386PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
2387TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2388
085dd6e6
JM
2389* OBSOLETE configurations
2390
2391Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
2392Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 2393Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 2394ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 2395Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 2396
9debab2f
AC
2397Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
2398but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
2399these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
2400be permanently REMOVED.
2401
5330533d
SS
2402* Gould support removed
2403
2404Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
2405
bc9e5bbf
AC
2406* New features for SVR4
2407
2408On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
2409without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
2410load symbols from the running process's executable file.
2411
2412* Many C++ enhancements
2413
2414C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
2415in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
2416
adf40b2e
JM
2417* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
2418
2419A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
2420sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
2421with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
2422``|<program> <args>'' vis:
2423
2424 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
2425 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
2426
43e526b9
JM
2427* MIPS 64 remote protocol
2428
2429A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
2430expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
2431instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
2432
2433The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
2434added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
2435
96baa820
JM
2436* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
2437
2438The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
2439``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
2440include ``set remote P-packet''.
2441
11cf8741
JM
2442* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
2443
2444The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
2445accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
2446``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
2447
7876dd43
DB
2448* ``apropos'' command added.
2449
2450The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
2451documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
2452try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
2453
bc9e5bbf
AC
2454* New MI interface
2455
2456A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
2457interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
2458process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
2459"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
2460enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
2461
2462 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
2463
c906108c
SS
2464*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
2465
2466* New native configurations
2467
2468HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
2469HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 2470M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
2471
2472* New targets
2473
2474Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
2475Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
2476Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
2477
2478* OBSOLETE configurations
2479
2480Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
2481
2482Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
2483but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
2484these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
2485be permanently REMOVED.
2486
2487* ANSI/ISO C
2488
2489As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
2490buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
2491containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
2492use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
2493available. If this is not true, please report the affected
2494configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
2495information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
2496already.
2497
2498* Readline 2.2
2499
2500GDB now uses readline 2.2.
2501
2502* set extension-language
2503
2504You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
2505languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
2506you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
2507 set extension-language .c c++
2508The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
2509and their associated languages.
2510
2511* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
2512
2513When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
2514you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
2515PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
2516
2517 set processor NAME
2518
2519sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
2520following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
2521
2522 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
2523 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
2524 403 IBM PowerPC 403
2525 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
2526 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
2527 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
2528 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
2529 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
2530 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
2531 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
2532 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
2533
2534At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
2535special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
2536registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
2537only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
2538
2539* HP-UX support
2540
2541Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
2542more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
2543library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
2544support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
2545for xdb and dbx commands.
2546
2547* Catchpoints
2548
2549HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
2550generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
2551to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
2552
2553This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
2554argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
2555output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
2556
2557* Debugging across forks
2558
2559On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
2560in the inferior.
2561
2562* TUI
2563
2564HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
2565it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
2566configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
2567
2568* GDB remote protocol additions
2569
2570A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
2571Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
2572fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
2573allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
2574
2575For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
2576full 64-bit address. The command
2577
2578 set remoteaddresssize 32
2579
2580can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
2581the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
2582will be discarded.
2583
2584In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
2585command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
2586
2587 maint packet heythere
2588
2589sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
2590disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
2591time.
2592
2593The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
2594target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
2595downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
2596
2597* Tracing can collect general expressions
2598
2599You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
2600further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
2601doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
2602
2603* mask-address variable for Mips
2604
2605For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
2606a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
2607of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
2608
2609* Higher serial baud rates
2610
2611GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
2612230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
2613to achieve all of these rates.)
2614
2615* i960 simulator
2616
2617The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
2618builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
2619
2620
2621*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
2622
2623* New native configurations
2624
2625Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
2626Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
2627Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
2628PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
2629PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2630Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
2631Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
2632
2633* New targets
2634
2635Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2636Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
2637Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2638Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
2639MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
2640MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
2641MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
2642Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
2643Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
2644Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2645NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
2646
2647* New debugging protocols
2648
2649ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
2650M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
2651DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
2652PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2653PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2654Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2655
2656* DWARF 2
2657
2658All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
2659format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
2660information.
2661
2662* Java frontend
2663
2664GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
2665only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
2666
2667* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
2668
2669For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
2670loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
2671locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
2672
2673* Live range splitting
2674
2675GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
2676range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
2677more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
2678
2679* Hurd support
2680
2681GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
2682updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
2683
2684* ARM Thumb support
2685
2686GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
2687instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
2688instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
2689accordingly.
2690
2691* MIPS16 support
2692
2693GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
2694instruction set.
2695
2696* Overlay support
2697
2698GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
2699linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
2700will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
2701control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
2702additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
2703in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
2704
2705* info symbol
2706
2707The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
2708the symbol at the specified address.
2709
2710* Trace support
2711
2712The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
2713asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
2714extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
2715includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
2716file tracepoint.c for more details.
2717
2718* MIPS simulator
2719
2720Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
2721by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
2722of most MIPS variants.
2723
2724* Sparc simulator
2725
2726Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
2727by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
2728Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
2729
2730* set architecture
2731
2732For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
2733basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
2734architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
2735the possible architectures.
2736
2737*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
2738
2739* New native configurations
2740
2741Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
2742M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
2743PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
2744PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
2745PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2746RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
2747
2748* New targets
2749
2750ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
2751I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
2752MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
2753MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
2754PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
2755Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
2756Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2757
2758* PowerPC simulator
2759
2760The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
2761contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
2762PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
2763basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
2764performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
2765
2766* Solaris 2.5
2767
2768GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
2769
2770* Windows 95/NT native
2771
2772GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
2773To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
2774which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
2775Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
2776ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
2777
2778* dont-repeat command
2779
2780If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
2781command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
2782useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
2783extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
2784
2785* Send break instead of ^C
2786
2787The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
2788rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
2789GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
2790
2791* Remote protocol timeout
2792
2793The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
2794that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
2795to read from the target. The default value is 2.
2796
2797* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
2798
2799By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
2800loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
2801stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
2802when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
2803in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
2804
2805Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
2806/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
2807automatically on hpux10.
2808
2809* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
2810
2811Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
2812
2813* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
2814
2815When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
2816may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
2817the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
2818every character. The default value is 1050.
2819
2820* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
2821
2822If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
2823a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
2824replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
2825details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
2826remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
2827to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
2828
2829* Speedups for remote debugging
2830
2831GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
2832the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
2833and more efficient S-record downloading.
2834
2835* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
2836
2837GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
2838Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
2839
2840*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
2841
2842* Psymtabs for XCOFF
2843
2844The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
2845can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
2846
2847* Remote targets use caching
2848
2849Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
2850remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
2851it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
2852debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
2853off' turns the the data cache off.
2854
2855* Remote targets may have threads
2856
2857The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
2858in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
2859gdb/remote.c for details.
2860
2861* NetROM support
2862
2863If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
2864support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
2865acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
2866write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
2867support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
2868another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
2869sequence is something like
2870
2871 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
2872 load <prog>
2873 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
2874
2875* Macintosh host
2876
2877GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
2878may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
2879it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
2880available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
2881device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
2882directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
2883scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
2884mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
2885
2886* Autoconf
2887
2888GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
2889but does simplify configuration and building.
2890
2891* hpux10
2892
2893GDB now supports hpux10.
2894
2895*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
2896
2897* New native configurations
2898
2899x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
2900x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
2901NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
2902Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
2903
2904* New targets
2905
2906A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2907HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
2908CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
2909PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
2910WDC 65816 w65-*-*
2911
2912* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
2913
2914GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
2915possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
2916filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
2917the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
2918if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
2919
2920* Arguments to user-defined commands
2921
2922User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
2923Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
2924trivial example:
2925define adder
2926 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
2927
2928To execute the command use:
2929adder 1 2 3
2930
2931Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
2932Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
2933use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
2934
2935* New `if' and `while' commands
2936
2937This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
2938commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
2939expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
2940execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
2941terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
2942`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
2943if the expression is zero.
2944
2945* Fortran source language mode
2946
2947GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
2948Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
2949variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
2950with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
2951Fortran compilers.
2952
2953* Better HPUX support
2954
2955Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
2956running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
2957processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
2958for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
2959that behavior do the following before running the program:
2960
2961 adb -w a.out
2962 __dld_flags?W 0x5
2963 control-d
2964
2965This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
2966To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
2967
2968 adb -w a.out
2969 __dld_flags?W 0x4
2970 control-d
2971
2972You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
2973the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
2974external linkage.
2975
2976GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
2977HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
2978
2979* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
2980
2981You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
2982commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
2983current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
2984"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
2985associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
2986configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
2987
2988* New DOS host serial code
2989
2990This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
2991no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
2992a PC's serial port.
2993
2994*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
2995
2996* New "complete" command
2997
2998This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
2999were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
3000
3001* Trailing space optional in prompt
3002
3003"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
3004allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
3005
3006* Breakpoint hit counts
3007
3008"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
3009has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
3010can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
3011to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
3012less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
3013that breakpoint.
3014
3015* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
3016
3017"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
3018an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
3019arrays actually contain only short strings.
3020
3021* Shared library breakpoints
3022
3023In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
3024breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
3025
3026* Hardware watchpoints
3027
3028There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
3029targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
3030
55241689 3031Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
3032
3033* Annotations
3034
3035Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
3036and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
3037
3038* Improved Irix 5 support
3039
3040GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
3041
3042* Improved HPPA support
3043
3044GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
3045
3046* New native configurations
3047
3048Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
3049HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3050Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
3051RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
3052
3053* New targets
3054
3055OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3056MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
3057Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
3058
3059* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
3060
3061There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
3062This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
3063
3064* Fixes
3065
3066As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
3067and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
3068
3069*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
3070
3071* Irix 5 is now supported
3072
3073* HPPA support
3074
3075GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
3076to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
3077GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
3078of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
3079can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
3080
3081
3082*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
3083
3084* User visible changes:
3085
3086* Remote Debugging
3087
3088The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
3089target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
3090debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
3091integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
3092debugging info for the mips target).
3093
3094* DEC Alpha native support
3095
3096GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
3097debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
3098work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
3099Alpha-specific notes.
3100
3101* Preliminary thread implementation
3102
3103GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
3104
3105* LynxOS native and target support for 386
3106
3107This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
3108to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
3109for details).
3110
3111* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
3112
3113This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
3114mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
3115call methods, ...etc.
3116
3117*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
3118
3119 * User visible changes:
3120
3121Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
3122supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
3123other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
3124somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
3125
3126Filename completion now works.
3127
3128When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
3129arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
3130addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
3131
3132All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
3133vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
3134should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
3135your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
3136to be on the far side of a thin network line.
3137
3138 * DEC alpha support
3139
3140This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
3141cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
3142
3143
3144*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
3145
3146 * Testsuite
3147
3148This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
3149The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
3150via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
3151
3152 * C++ demangling
3153
3154'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
3155emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
3156Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
3157disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
3158use gdb with AT&T cfront.
3159
3160 * Simulators
3161
3162GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
3163So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
3164Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
3165
3166 * New targets supported
3167
3168H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
3169H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3170SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
3171Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3172IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
3173
3174Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
3175version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
3176GO32 memory extender.
3177
3178 * New remote protocols
3179
3180MIPS remote debugging protocol.
3181
3182 * New source languages supported
3183
3184This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
3185used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
3186into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
3187
3188
3189*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
3190
3191 * HP Precision Architecture supported
3192
3193GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
3194version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
3195University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
3196compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
3197format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
3198(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
3199
3200Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
3201
3202 * Faster and better demangling
3203
3204We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
3205demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
3206character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
3207only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
3208This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
3209increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
3210symbol lookups.
3211
3212`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
3213from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
3214compiler does not actually implement.
3215
3216 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
3217
3218In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
3219inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
3220recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
3221very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
3222The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
3223circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
3224fix.
3225
3226The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
3227release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
3228
3229 * Improved configure script
3230
3231The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
3232you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
3233host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
3234done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
3235
3236We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
3237version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
3238`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
3239The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
3240only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
3241We hope to make this the default in a future release.
3242
3243 * Documentation improvements
3244
3245There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
3246produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
3247before submitting changes.
3248
3249The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
3250M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
3251`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
3252you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
3253a future texinfo-X.Y release.
3254
3255*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
3256We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
3257been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
3258or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
3259`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
3260around this problem.
3261
3262 * New features
3263
3264GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
3265the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
3266`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
3267the target program.
3268
3269The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
3270how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
3271
3272 * New native hosts supported
3273
3274HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
3275386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
3276
3277 * New targets supported
3278
3279AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
3280
3281 * New file formats supported
3282
3283BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
3284HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
3285
3286 * Major bug fixes
3287
3288Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
3289
3290We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
3291printf_filtered("%s") problems.
3292
3293We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
3294for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
3295release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
3296
3297You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
3298will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
3299
3300We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
3301for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
3302especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
3303libraries.
3304
3305The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
3306information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
3307command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
3308any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
3309when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
3310
3311 * Internal improvements
3312
3313GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
3314debugging of multiple languages in the future.
3315
3316GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
3317Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
3318symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
3319contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
3320shared code that handles any of them.
3321
3322 * New command line options
3323
3324We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
3325
3326 * Mmalloc licensing
3327
3328The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
3329General Public License.
3330
3331*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
3332
3333 * Host/native/target split
3334
3335GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
3336hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
3337target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
3338local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
3339ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
3340
3341The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
3342GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
3343is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
3344code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
3345any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
3346built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
3347handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
3348
3349GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
3350It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
3351plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
3352
3353 * New hosts supported
3354
3355HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
3356386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
3357386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
3358
3359 * New targets supported
3360
3361Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
336268030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
3363
3364 * New native hosts supported
3365
3366386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
3367 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
3368386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
3369
3370 * New file formats supported
3371
3372BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
3373supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
3374format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
3375
3376 * New commands
3377
3378`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
3379`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
3380These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
3381
3382`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
3383
3384You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
3385scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
3386prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
3387executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
3388
3389 * C++ improvements
3390
3391We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
3392info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
3393symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
3394
3395Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
3396
3397 * Major bug fixes
3398
3399The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
3400fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
3401by the compiler.
3402
3403We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
3404support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
3405
3406John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
3407slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
3408that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
3409purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
3410the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
3411mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
3412
3413Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
3414about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
3415completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
3416we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
3417
3418 * AMD 29k support
3419
3420A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
3421specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
3422calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
3423usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
3424in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
3425
3426We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
3427Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
3428of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
3429resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
3430
3431 * Remote interfaces
3432
3433We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
3434with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
3435message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
3436This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
3437needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
3438breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
3439each instruction being stepped through.
3440
3441The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
3442registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
3443
3444There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
3445find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
3446Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
3447processor with a serial port.
3448
3449 * Configuration
3450
3451Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
3452`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
3453supported, and what files each one uses.
3454
3455 * Library changes
3456
3457There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
3458disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
3459Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
3460disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
3461
3462The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
3463Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
3464can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
3465grants all the rights from the General Public License.
3466
3467 * Documentation
3468
3469The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
3470reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
3471as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
3472encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
3473system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
3474bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
3475
3476And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
3477
3478
3479*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
3480
3481 * Better support for C++ function names
3482
3483GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
3484names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
3485(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
3486single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
3487Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
3488
3489GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
3490the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
3491You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
3492lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
3493for the list of formats.
3494
3495 * G++ symbol mangling problem
3496
3497Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
3498C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
3499directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
3500can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
3501usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
3502about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
3503this problem.)
3504
3505 * New 'maintenance' command
3506
3507All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
3508the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
3509can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
3510
3511 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
3512 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
3513 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
3514 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
3515 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
3516 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
3517
3518The following commands are new:
3519
3520 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
3521 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
3522 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
3523
3524 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
3525
3526We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
3527(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
3528be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
3529read after argv processing.
3530
3531 * New hosts supported
3532
3533Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
3534
55241689 3535GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
3536
3537We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
3538is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
3539for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
3540masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
3541fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
3542It costs extra.
3543
3544 * New targets supported
3545
3546Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
3547
3548 * More smarts about finding #include files
3549
3550GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
3551all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
3552greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
3553especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
3554the one that contains your sources.
3555
3556We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
3557breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
3558try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
3559
3560 * Interesting infernals change
3561
3562GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
3563section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
3564target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
3565stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
3566
3567 * Bug fixes (of course!)
3568
3569There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
3570 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
3571 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
3572
3573See the ChangeLog for details.
3574
3575*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
3576
3577 * New machines supported (host and target)
3578
3579IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
3580
3581SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
3582
3583 * New malloc package
3584
3585GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
3586Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
3587capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
3588This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
3589pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
3590more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
3591
3592 * info proc
3593
3594The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
3595'help info proc' for details.
3596
3597 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
3598
3599The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
3600Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
3601possible.
3602
3603 * File name changes for MS-DOS
3604
3605Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
3606support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
3607conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
3608environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
3609that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
3610in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
3611
3612 * Cross byte order fixes
3613
3614Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
3615targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
3616
3617 * New -mapped and -readnow options
3618
3619If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
3620system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
3621`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
3622program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
3623called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
3624Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
3625and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
3626the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
3627option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
3628starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
3629
3630You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
3631the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
3632information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
3633slower, but makes future operations faster.
3634
3635The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
3636build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
3637A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
3638use is:
3639
3640 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
3641
3642The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
3643It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
3644shared across multiple host platforms.
3645
3646 * longjmp() handling
3647
3648GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
3649siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
3650all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
3651platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
3652
3653 * Solaris 2.0
3654
3655Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
3656this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
3657reading symbols.
3658
3659 * Bug fixes
3660
3661As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
3662People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
3663crashes and trashed symbol tables.
3664
3665*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
3666
3667 * New machines supported (host and target)
3668
3669SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
3670 (except core files)
3671BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
3672Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
3673
3674 * New machines supported (target)
3675
3676AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3677
3678 * C++ support
3679
3680GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
3681The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
3682per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
3683
3684GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
3685`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
3686extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
3687good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
3688will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
3689released.
3690
3691 * New features for SVR4
3692
3693GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
3694shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
3695only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
3696
3697The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
3698on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
3699it prints the address mappings of the process.
3700
3701If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
3702bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
3703
3704 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
3705
3706Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
3707now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
3708skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
3709make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
3710same code linked statically.
3711
3712 * New Getopt
3713
3714GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
3715version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
3716continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
3717Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
3718added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
3719future by other options that begin with the same letter.
3720
3721 * Bugs fixed
3722
3723The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
3724Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
3725See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
3726
3727
3728*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
3729
3730 * New machines supported (host and target)
3731
3732Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
3733NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
3734Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3735
3736 * Almost SCO Unix support
3737
3738We had hoped to support:
3739SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
3740(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
3741that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
3742about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
3743
3744 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
3745
3746GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
3747debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
3748is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
3749send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
3750reqired (if any).
3751
3752 * New Readline
3753
3754GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
3755is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
3756required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
3757
3758 * Bugs fixed
3759
3760The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
3761Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
3762See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
3763
3764 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
3765
3766GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
3767supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
3768symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
3769
3770Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
3771mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
3772debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
3773mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
3774version 2.
3775
3776Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
3777really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
3778line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
3779variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
3780situation somewhat.
3781
3782When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
3783However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
3784methods.
3785
3786We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
3787DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
3788encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
3789
3790
3791*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
3792
3793 * Improved configuration
3794
3795Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
3796Porting BFD is simpler.
3797
3798 * Stepping improved
3799
3800The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
3801of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
3802in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
3803function that has debugging information is called within the line.
3804
3805 * Bug fixing
3806
3807Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
3808
3809 * New host supported (not target)
3810
3811Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
3812
3813
3814*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
3815
3816 * Multiple source language support
3817
3818GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
3819It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
3820and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
3821language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
3822You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
3823`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
3824
3825 * GDB and Modula-2
3826
3827GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
3828currently under development at the State University of New York at
3829Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
3830continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
3831
3832Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
3833debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
3834symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
3835
3836There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
3837in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
3838
3839 * set write on/off
3840
3841GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
3842a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
3843the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
3844by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
3845effect immediately.
3846
3847 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
3848
3849When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
3850shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
3851The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
3852examining core files.
3853
3854 * set listsize
3855
3856You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
3857The default is 10.
3858
3859 * New machines supported (host and target)
3860
3861SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
3862Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
3863Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
3864
3865 * New hosts supported (not targets)
3866
3867IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
3868
3869 * New targets supported (not hosts)
3870
3871AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3872AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3873Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
3874
3875 * New remote interfaces
3876
3877AMD 29000 Adapt
3878AMD 29000 Minimon
3879
3880
3881*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
3882
3883 * New Facilities
3884
3885Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
3886
3887Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
3888target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
3889is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
3890remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
3891remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
3892also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
3893using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
3894stub on the target system.
3895
3896New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
3897
3898GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
3899library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
3900object file types such as a.out and coff.
3901
3902There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
3903refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
3904
3905
3906 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
3907
3908All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
3909by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
3910
3911For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
3912``Show prompt'' produces the response:
3913Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
3914
3915What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
3916print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
3917will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
3918all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
3919
3920confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
3921 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
3922 it is already running. Default is ON.
3923
3924editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
3925 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
3926 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
3927 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
3928 Default is ON.
3929
3930history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
3931 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
3932 or the value of the environment variable
3933 GDBHISTFILE.
3934
3935history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
3936 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
3937 HISTSIZE.
3938
3939history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
3940 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
3941 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
3942
3943history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
3944 history expansion will be performed on
3945 command line input. The default is OFF.
3946
3947radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
3948 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
3949 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
3950
3951height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
3952 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
3953 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3954 variable TERM.
3955
3956width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
3957 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
3958 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3959 variable TERM.
3960
3961Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
3962``set width'' instead.
3963
3964print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
3965 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
3966 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
3967 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
3968
3969print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
3970 is OFF.
3971
3972print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
3973 "raw" form if off.
3974
3975print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
3976 like instructions.
3977
3978print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
3979
3980
3981 * Support for Epoch Environment.
3982
3983The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
3984new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
3985are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
3986window.
3987
3988
3989 * Support for Shared Libraries
3990
3991GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
3992Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
3993before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
3994happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
3995At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
3996from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
3997shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
3998It can be abbreviated ``share''.
3999
4000sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
4001 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
4002 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
4003
4004info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
4005
4006
4007 * Watchpoints
4008
4009A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
4010expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
4011tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
4012quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
4013problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
4014more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
4015
4016watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
4017
4018info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
4019
4020delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4021disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4022enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4023
4024
4025 * C++ multiple inheritance
4026
4027When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
4028for C++ programs.
4029
4030 * C++ exception handling
4031
4032Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
4033ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
4034the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
4035handler's context).
4036
4037catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
4038 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
4039 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
4040
4041info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
4042 current stack frame.
4043
4044
4045 * Minor command changes
4046
4047The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
4048command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
4049is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
4050
4051The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
4052at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
4053frames without printing.
4054
4055 * New directory command
4056
4057'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
4058The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
4059about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
4060with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
4061find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
4062
4063 * Configuring GDB for compilation
4064
4065For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
4066for more details.
4067
4068GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
4069two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
4070Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
4071where the program that you are debugging will run.
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