Fix PR 19494: hang when killing unfollowed fork children
[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
4*** Changes since GDB 7.10
5
6* GDB now supports debugging kernel-based threads on FreeBSD.
7
8* Per-inferior thread numbers
9
10 Thread numbers are now per inferior instead of global. If you're
11 debugging multiple inferiors, GDB displays thread IDs using a
12 qualified INF_NUM.THR_NUM form. For example:
13
14 (gdb) info threads
15 Id Target Id Frame
16 1.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8155) (running)
17 1.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8168) (running)
18 * 2.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157) (running)
19 2.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8190) (running)
20
21 As consequence, thread numbers as visible in the $_thread
22 convenience variable and in Python's InferiorThread.num attribute
23 are no longer unique between inferiors.
24
25 GDB now maintains a second thread ID per thread, referred to as the
26 global thread ID, which is the new equivalent of thread numbers in
27 previous releases. See also $_gthread below.
28
29 For backwards compatibility, MI's thread IDs always refer to global
30 IDs.
31
32* Commands that accept thread IDs now accept the qualified
33 INF_NUM.THR_NUM form as well. For example:
34
35 (gdb) thread 2.1
36 [Switching to thread 2.1 (Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157))] (running)
37 (gdb)
38
39* In commands that accept a list of thread IDs, you can now refer to
40 all threads of an inferior using a star wildcard. GDB accepts
41 "INF_NUM.*", to refer to all threads of inferior INF_NUM, and "*" to
42 refer to all threads of the current inferior. For example, "info
43 threads 2.*".
44
45* You can use "info threads -gid" to display the global thread ID of
46 all threads.
47
48* The new convenience variable $_gthread holds the global number of
49 the current thread.
50
51* The new convenience variable $_inferior holds the number of the
52 current inferior.
53
54* GDB now displays the ID and name of the thread that hit a breakpoint
55 or received a signal, if your program is multi-threaded. For
56 example:
57
58 Thread 3 "bar" hit Breakpoint 1 at 0x40087a: file program.c, line 20.
59 Thread 1 "main" received signal SIGINT, Interrupt.
60
61* Record btrace now supports non-stop mode.
62
63* Support for tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver.
64
65* The 'record instruction-history' command now indicates speculative execution
66 when using the Intel Processor Trace recording format.
67
68* GDB now allows users to specify explicit locations, bypassing
69 the linespec parser. This feature is also available to GDB/MI
70 clients.
71
72* Multi-architecture debugging is supported on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
73 GDB now is able to debug both AArch64 applications and ARM applications
74 at the same time.
75
76* Support for fast tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver,
77 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression bytecode
78 into native code.
79
80* GDB now supports displaced stepping on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
81
82* "info threads", "info inferiors", "info display", "info checkpoints"
83 and "maint info program-spaces" now list the corresponding items in
84 ascending ID order, for consistency with all other "info" commands.
85
86* In Ada, the overloads selection menu has been enhanced to display the
87 parameter types and the return types for the matching overloaded subprograms.
88
89* New commands
90
91maint set target-non-stop (on|off|auto)
92maint show target-non-stop
93 Control whether GDB targets always operate in non-stop mode even if
94 "set non-stop" is "off". The default is "auto", meaning non-stop
95 mode is enabled if supported by the target.
96
97maint set bfd-sharing
98maint show bfd-sharing
99 Control the reuse of bfd objects.
100
101set debug bfd-cache
102show debug bfd-cache
103 Control display of debugging info regarding bfd caching.
104
105set debug fbsd-lwp
106show debug fbsd-lwp
107 Control display of debugging info regarding FreeBSD threads.
108
109set remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
110show remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
111 Set/show the use of the remote protocol multiprocess extensions.
112
113set remote thread-events
114show remote thread-events
115 Set/show the use of thread create/exit events.
116
117set ada print-signatures on|off
118show ada print-signatures"
119 Control whether parameter types and return types are displayed in overloads
120 selection menus. It is activaled (@code{on}) by default.
121
122* The "disassemble" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
123 It prints mixed source+disassembly like /m with two differences:
124 - disassembled instructions are now printed in program order, and
125 - and source for all relevant files is now printed.
126 The "/m" option is now considered deprecated: its "source-centric"
127 output hasn't proved useful in practice.
128
129* The "record instruction-history" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
130 It behaves exactly like /m and prints mixed source+disassembly.
131
132* The "set scheduler-locking" command supports a new mode "replay".
133 It behaves like "off" in record mode and like "on" in replay mode.
134
135* Support for various ROM monitors has been removed:
136
137 target dbug dBUG ROM monitor for Motorola ColdFire
138 target picobug Motorola picobug monitor
139 target dink32 DINK32 ROM monitor for PowerPC
140 target m32r Renesas M32R/D ROM monitor
141 target mon2000 mon2000 ROM monitor
142 target ppcbug PPCBUG ROM monitor for PowerPC
143
144* Support for reading/writing memory and extracting values on architectures
145 whose memory is addressable in units of any integral multiple of 8 bits.
146
147* New remote packets
148
149exec stop reason
150 Indicates that an exec system call was executed.
151
152exec-events feature in qSupported
153 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for exec
154 events using the new 'gdbfeature' exec-event, and the qSupported
155 response can contain the corresponding 'stubfeature'. Set and
156 show commands can be used to display whether these features are enabled.
157
158vCtrlC
159 Equivalent to interrupting with the ^C character, but works in
160 non-stop mode.
161
162thread created stop reason (T05 create:...)
163 Indicates that the thread was just created and is stopped at entry.
164
165thread exit stop reply (w exitcode;tid)
166 Indicates that the thread has terminated.
167
168QThreadEvents
169 Enables/disables thread create and exit event reporting. For
170 example, this is used in non-stop mode when GDB stops a set of
171 threads and synchronously waits for the their corresponding stop
172 replies. Without exit events, if one of the threads exits, GDB
173 would hang forever not knowing that it should no longer expect a
174 stop for that same thread.
175
176N stop reply
177
178 Indicates that there are no resumed threads left in the target (all
179 threads are stopped). The remote stub reports support for this stop
180 reply to GDB's qSupported query.
181
182QCatchSyscalls:1 [;SYSNO]...
183QCatchSyscalls:0
184 Enable ("QCatchSyscalls:1") or disable ("QCatchSyscalls:0")
185 catching syscalls from the inferior process.
186
187syscall_entry stop reason
188 Indicates that a syscall was just called.
189
190syscall_return stop reason
191 Indicates that a syscall just returned.
192
193QCatchSyscalls:1 in qSupported
194 The qSupported packet may now include QCatchSyscalls:1 in the reply
195 to indicate support for catching syscalls.
196
197* Extended-remote exec events
198
199 ** GDB now has support for exec events on extended-remote Linux targets.
200 For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later, this enables
201 follow-exec-mode and exec catchpoints.
202
203set remote exec-event-feature-packet
204show remote exec-event-feature-packet
205 Set/show the use of the remote exec event feature.
206
207 * Thread names in remote protocol
208
209 The reply to qXfer:threads:read may now include a name attribute for each
210 thread.
211
212* Target remote mode fork and exec events
213
214 ** GDB now has support for fork and exec events on target remote mode
215 Linux targets. For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later,
216 this enables follow-fork-mode, detach-on-fork, follow-exec-mode, and
217 fork and exec catchpoints.
218
219* Remote syscall events
220
221 ** GDB now has support for catch syscall on remote Linux targets,
222 currently enabled on x86/x86_64 architectures.
223
224set remote catch-syscall-packet
225show remote catch-syscall-packet
226 Set/show the use of the remote catch syscall feature.
227
228* MI changes
229
230 ** The -var-set-format command now accepts the zero-hexadecimal
231 format. It outputs data in hexadecimal format with zero-padding on the
232 left.
233
234* Python Scripting
235
236 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "global_num",
237 which refers to the thread's global thread ID. The existing
238 "num" attribute now refers to the thread's per-inferior number.
239 See "Per-inferior thread numbers" above.
240 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "inferior", which
241 is the Inferior object the thread belongs to.
242
243*** Changes in GDB 7.10
244
245* Support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on aarch64*-linux*
246 targets has been added. GDB now supports recording of A64 instruction set
247 including advance SIMD instructions.
248
249* Support for Sun's version of the "stabs" debug file format has been removed.
250
251* GDB now honors the content of the file /proc/PID/coredump_filter
252 (PID is the process ID) on GNU/Linux systems. This file can be used
253 to specify the types of memory mappings that will be included in a
254 corefile. For more information, please refer to the manual page of
255 "core(5)". GDB also has a new command: "set use-coredump-filter
256 on|off". It allows to set whether GDB will read the content of the
257 /proc/PID/coredump_filter file when generating a corefile.
258
259* The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
260 cpu information :
261 "info os cpus" Listing of all cpus/cores on the system
262
263* GDB has two new commands: "set serial parity odd|even|none" and
264 "show serial parity". These allows to set or show parity for the
265 remote serial I/O.
266
267* The "info source" command now displays the producer string if it was
268 present in the debug info. This typically includes the compiler version
269 and may include things like its command line arguments.
270
271* The "info dll", an alias of the "info sharedlibrary" command,
272 is now available on all platforms.
273
274* Directory names supplied to the "set sysroot" commands may be
275 prefixed with "target:" to tell GDB to access shared libraries from
276 the target system, be it local or remote. This replaces the prefix
277 "remote:". The default sysroot has been changed from "" to
278 "target:". "remote:" is automatically converted to "target:" for
279 backward compatibility.
280
281* The system root specified by "set sysroot" will be prepended to the
282 filename of the main executable (if reported to GDB as absolute by
283 the operating system) when starting processes remotely, and when
284 attaching to already-running local or remote processes.
285
286* GDB now supports automatic location and retrieval of executable
287 files from remote targets. Remote debugging can now be initiated
288 using only a "target remote" or "target extended-remote" command
289 (no "set sysroot" or "file" commands are required). See "New remote
290 packets" below.
291
292* The "dump" command now supports verilog hex format.
293
294* GDB now supports the vector ABI on S/390 GNU/Linux targets.
295
296* On GNU/Linux, GDB and gdbserver are now able to access executable
297 and shared library files without a "set sysroot" command when
298 attaching to processes running in different mount namespaces from
299 the debugger. This makes it possible to attach to processes in
300 containers as simply as "gdb -p PID" or "gdbserver --attach PID".
301 See "New remote packets" below.
302
303* The "tui reg" command now provides completion for all of the
304 available register groups, including target specific groups.
305
306* The HISTSIZE environment variable is no longer read when determining
307 the size of GDB's command history. GDB now instead reads the dedicated
308 GDBHISTSIZE environment variable. Setting GDBHISTSIZE to "-1" or to "" now
309 disables truncation of command history. Non-numeric values of GDBHISTSIZE
310 are ignored.
311
312* Guile Scripting
313
314 ** Memory ports can now be unbuffered.
315
316* Python Scripting
317
318 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "username",
319 which is the name of the objfile as specified by the user,
320 without, for example, resolving symlinks.
321 ** You can now write frame unwinders in Python.
322 ** gdb.Type objects have a new method "optimized_out",
323 returning optimized out gdb.Value instance of this type.
324 ** gdb.Value objects have new methods "reference_value" and
325 "const_value" which return a reference to the value and a
326 "const" version of the value respectively.
327
328* New commands
329
330maint print symbol-cache
331 Print the contents of the symbol cache.
332
333maint print symbol-cache-statistics
334 Print statistics of symbol cache usage.
335
336maint flush-symbol-cache
337 Flush the contents of the symbol cache.
338
339record btrace bts
340record bts
341 Start branch trace recording using Branch Trace Store (BTS) format.
342
343compile print
344 Evaluate expression by using the compiler and print result.
345
346tui enable
347tui disable
348 Explicit commands for enabling and disabling tui mode.
349
350show mpx bound
351set mpx bound on i386 and amd64
352 Support for bound table investigation on Intel MPX enabled applications.
353
354record btrace pt
355record pt
356 Start branch trace recording using Intel Processor Trace format.
357
358maint info btrace
359 Print information about branch tracing internals.
360
361maint btrace packet-history
362 Print the raw branch tracing data.
363
364maint btrace clear-packet-history
365 Discard the stored raw branch tracing data.
366
367maint btrace clear
368 Discard all branch tracing data. It will be fetched and processed
369 anew by the next "record" command.
370
371* New options
372
373set debug dwarf-die
374 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-die".
375show debug dwarf-die
376 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-die".
377
378set debug dwarf-read
379 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-read".
380show debug dwarf-read
381 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-read".
382
383maint set dwarf always-disassemble
384 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 always-disassemble".
385maint show dwarf always-disassemble
386 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 always-disassemble".
387
388maint set dwarf max-cache-age
389 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 max-cache-age".
390maint show dwarf max-cache-age
391 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 max-cache-age".
392
393set debug dwarf-line
394show debug dwarf-line
395 Control display of debugging info regarding DWARF line processing.
396
397set max-completions
398show max-completions
399 Set the maximum number of candidates to be considered during
400 completion. The default value is 200. This limit allows GDB
401 to avoid generating large completion lists, the computation of
402 which can cause the debugger to become temporarily unresponsive.
403
404set history remove-duplicates
405show history remove-duplicates
406 Control the removal of duplicate history entries.
407
408maint set symbol-cache-size
409maint show symbol-cache-size
410 Control the size of the symbol cache.
411
412set|show record btrace bts buffer-size
413 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
414 BTS format.
415 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
416 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
417
418set debug linux-namespaces
419show debug linux-namespaces
420 Control display of debugging info regarding Linux namespaces.
421
422set|show record btrace pt buffer-size
423 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
424 Intel Processor Trace format.
425 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
426 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
427
428maint set|show btrace pt skip-pad
429 Set and show whether PAD packets are skipped when computing the
430 packet history.
431
432* The command 'thread apply all' can now support new option '-ascending'
433 to call its specified command for all threads in ascending order.
434
435* Python/Guile scripting
436
437 ** GDB now supports auto-loading of Python/Guile scripts contained in the
438 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts'.
439
440* New remote packets
441
442qXfer:btrace-conf:read
443 Return the branch trace configuration for the current thread.
444
445Qbtrace-conf:bts:size
446 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in BTS format.
447
448Qbtrace:pt
449 Enable Intel Procesor Trace-based branch tracing for the current
450 process. The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's
451 qSupported query.
452
453Qbtrace-conf:pt:size
454 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in Intel Processor
455 Trace format.
456
457swbreak stop reason
458 Indicates a memory breakpoint instruction was executed, irrespective
459 of whether it was GDB that planted the breakpoint or the breakpoint
460 is hardcoded in the program. This is required for correct non-stop
461 mode operation.
462
463hwbreak stop reason
464 Indicates the target stopped for a hardware breakpoint. This is
465 required for correct non-stop mode operation.
466
467vFile:fstat:
468 Return information about files on the remote system.
469
470qXfer:exec-file:read
471 Return the full absolute name of the file that was executed to
472 create a process running on the remote system.
473
474vFile:setfs:
475 Select the filesystem on which vFile: operations with filename
476 arguments will operate. This is required for GDB to be able to
477 access files on remote targets where the remote stub does not
478 share a common filesystem with the inferior(s).
479
480fork stop reason
481 Indicates that a fork system call was executed.
482
483vfork stop reason
484 Indicates that a vfork system call was executed.
485
486vforkdone stop reason
487 Indicates that a vfork child of the specified process has executed
488 an exec or exit, allowing the vfork parent to resume execution.
489
490fork-events and vfork-events features in qSupported
491 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for fork and
492 vfork events using new 'gdbfeatures' fork-events and vfork-events,
493 and the qSupported response can contain the corresponding
494 'stubfeatures'. Set and show commands can be used to display
495 whether these features are enabled.
496
497* Extended-remote fork events
498
499 ** GDB now has support for fork events on extended-remote Linux
500 targets. For targets with Linux kernels 2.5.60 and later, this
501 enables follow-fork-mode and detach-on-fork for both fork and
502 vfork, as well as fork and vfork catchpoints.
503
504* The info record command now shows the recording format and the
505 branch tracing configuration for the current thread when using
506 the btrace record target.
507 For the BTS format, it shows the ring buffer size.
508
509* GDB now has support for DTrace USDT (Userland Static Defined
510 Tracing) probes. The supported targets are x86_64-*-linux-gnu.
511
512* GDB now supports access to vector registers on S/390 GNU/Linux
513 targets.
514
515* Removed command line options
516
517-xdb HP-UX XDB compatibility mode.
518
519* Removed targets and native configurations
520
521HP/PA running HP-UX hppa*-*-hpux*
522Itanium running HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
523
524* New configure options
525
526--with-intel-pt
527 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with support for
528 Intel Processor Trace (default: auto). This requires libipt.
529
530--with-libipt-prefix=PATH
531 Specify the path to the version of libipt that GDB should use.
532 $PATH/include should contain the intel-pt.h header and
533 $PATH/lib should contain the libipt.so library.
534
535*** Changes in GDB 7.9.1
536
537* Python Scripting
538
539 ** Xmethods can now specify a result type.
540
541*** Changes in GDB 7.9
542
543* GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on x86 GNU Hurd.
544
545* Python Scripting
546
547 ** You can now access frame registers from Python scripts.
548 ** New attribute 'producer' for gdb.Symtab objects.
549 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "progspace",
550 which is the gdb.Progspace object of the containing program space.
551 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "owner".
552 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "build_id",
553 which is the build ID generated when the file was built.
554 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new method "add_separate_debug_file".
555 ** A new event "gdb.clear_objfiles" has been added, triggered when
556 selecting a new file to debug.
557 ** You can now add attributes to gdb.Objfile and gdb.Progspace objects.
558 ** New function gdb.lookup_objfile.
559
560 New events which are triggered when GDB modifies the state of the
561 inferior.
562
563 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_pre: Function call is about to be made.
564 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_post: Function call has just been made.
565 ** gdb.events.memory_changed: A memory location has been altered.
566 ** gdb.events.register_changed: A register has been altered.
567
568* New Python-based convenience functions:
569
570 ** $_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
571 ** $_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
572 ** $_any_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
573 ** $_any_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
574
575* GDB now supports the compilation and injection of source code into
576 the inferior. GDB will use GCC 5.0 or higher built with libcc1.so
577 to compile the source code to object code, and if successful, inject
578 and execute that code within the current context of the inferior.
579 Currently the C language is supported. The commands used to
580 interface with this new feature are:
581
582 compile code [-raw|-r] [--] [source code]
583 compile file [-raw|-r] filename
584
585* New commands
586
587demangle [-l language] [--] name
588 Demangle "name" in the specified language, or the current language
589 if elided. This command is renamed from the "maint demangle" command.
590 The latter is kept as a no-op to avoid "maint demangle" being interpreted
591 as "maint demangler-warning".
592
593queue-signal signal-name-or-number
594 Queue a signal to be delivered to the thread when it is resumed.
595
596add-auto-load-scripts-directory directory
597 Add entries to the list of directories from which to load auto-loaded
598 scripts.
599
600maint print user-registers
601 List all currently available "user" registers.
602
603compile code [-r|-raw] [--] [source code]
604 Compile, inject, and execute in the inferior the executable object
605 code produced by compiling the provided source code.
606
607compile file [-r|-raw] filename
608 Compile and inject into the inferior the executable object code
609 produced by compiling the source code stored in the filename
610 provided.
611
612* On resume, GDB now always passes the signal the program had stopped
613 for to the thread the signal was sent to, even if the user changed
614 threads before resuming. Previously GDB would often (but not
615 always) deliver the signal to the thread that happens to be current
616 at resume time.
617
618* Conversely, the "signal" command now consistently delivers the
619 requested signal to the current thread. GDB now asks for
620 confirmation if the program had stopped for a signal and the user
621 switched threads meanwhile.
622
623* "breakpoint always-inserted" modes "off" and "auto" merged.
624
625 Now, when 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' is set to "off", GDB
626 won't remove breakpoints from the target until all threads stop,
627 even in non-stop mode. The "auto" mode has been removed, and "off"
628 is now the default mode.
629
630* New options
631
632set debug symbol-lookup
633show debug symbol-lookup
634 Control display of debugging info regarding symbol lookup.
635
636* MI changes
637
638 ** The -list-thread-groups command outputs an exit-code field for
639 inferiors that have exited.
640
641* New targets
642
643MIPS SDE mips*-sde*-elf*
644
645* Removed targets
646
647Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
648
649Alpha running OSF/1 (or Tru64) alpha*-*-osf*
650SGI Irix-5.x mips-*-irix5*
651SGI Irix-6.x mips-*-irix6*
652VAX running (4.2 - 4.3 Reno) BSD vax-*-bsd*
653VAX running Ultrix vax-*-ultrix*
654
655* The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
656 and "assf"), have been removed. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
657 its alias "share", instead.
658
659*** Changes in GDB 7.8
660
661* New command line options
662
663-D data-directory
664 This is an alias for the --data-directory option.
665
666* GDB supports printing and modifying of variable length automatic arrays
667 as specified in ISO C99.
668
669* The ARM simulator now supports instruction level tracing
670 with or without disassembly.
671
672* Guile scripting
673
674 GDB now has support for scripting using Guile. Whether this is
675 available is determined at configure time.
676 Guile version 2.0 or greater is required.
677 Guile version 2.0.9 is well tested, earlier 2.0 versions are not.
678
679* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
680
681guile [code]
682gu [code]
683 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Guile interpreter.
684
685guile-repl
686gr
687 Start a Guile interactive prompt (or "repl" for "read-eval-print loop").
688
689info auto-load guile-scripts [regexp]
690 Print the list of automatically loaded Guile scripts.
691
692* The source command is now capable of sourcing Guile scripts.
693 This feature is dependent on the debugger being built with Guile support.
694
695* New options
696
697set print symbol-loading (off|brief|full)
698show print symbol-loading
699 Control whether to print informational messages when loading symbol
700 information for a file. The default is "full", but when debugging
701 programs with large numbers of shared libraries the amount of output
702 becomes less useful.
703
704set guile print-stack (none|message|full)
705show guile print-stack
706 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Guile script.
707
708set auto-load guile-scripts (on|off)
709show auto-load guile-scripts
710 Control auto-loading of Guile script files.
711
712maint ada set ignore-descriptive-types (on|off)
713maint ada show ignore-descriptive-types
714 Control whether the debugger should ignore descriptive types in Ada
715 programs. The default is not to ignore the descriptive types. See
716 the user manual for more details on descriptive types and the intended
717 usage of this option.
718
719set auto-connect-native-target
720
721 Control whether GDB is allowed to automatically connect to the
722 native target for the run, attach, etc. commands when not connected
723 to any target yet. See also "target native" below.
724
725set record btrace replay-memory-access (read-only|read-write)
726show record btrace replay-memory-access
727 Control what memory accesses are allowed during replay.
728
729maint set target-async (on|off)
730maint show target-async
731 This controls whether GDB targets operate in synchronous or
732 asynchronous mode. Normally the default is asynchronous, if it is
733 available; but this can be changed to more easily debug problems
734 occurring only in synchronous mode.
735
736set mi-async (on|off)
737show mi-async
738 Control whether MI asynchronous mode is preferred. This supersedes
739 "set target-async" of previous GDB versions.
740
741* "set target-async" is deprecated as a CLI option and is now an alias
742 for "set mi-async" (only puts MI into async mode).
743
744* Background execution commands (e.g., "c&", "s&", etc.) are now
745 possible ``out of the box'' if the target supports them. Previously
746 the user would need to explicitly enable the possibility with the
747 "set target-async on" command.
748
749* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
750
751 ** New option --debug-format=option1[,option2,...] allows one to add
752 additional text to each output. At present only timestamps
753 are supported: --debug-format=timestamps.
754 Timestamps can also be turned on with the
755 "monitor set debug-format timestamps" command from GDB.
756
757* The 'record instruction-history' command now starts counting instructions
758 at one. This also affects the instruction ranges reported by the
759 'record function-call-history' command when given the /i modifier.
760
761* The command 'record function-call-history' supports a new modifier '/c' to
762 indent the function names based on their call stack depth.
763 The fields for the '/i' and '/l' modifier have been reordered.
764 The source line range is now prefixed with 'at'.
765 The instruction range is now prefixed with 'inst'.
766 Both ranges are now printed as '<from>, <to>' to allow copy&paste to the
767 "record instruction-history" and "list" commands.
768
769* The ranges given as arguments to the 'record function-call-history' and
770 'record instruction-history' commands are now inclusive.
771
772* The btrace record target now supports the 'record goto' command.
773 For locations inside the execution trace, the back trace is computed
774 based on the information stored in the execution trace.
775
776* The btrace record target supports limited reverse execution and replay.
777 The target does not record data and therefore does not allow reading
778 memory or registers.
779
780* The "catch syscall" command now works on s390*-linux* targets.
781
782* The "compare-sections" command is no longer specific to target
783 remote. It now works with all targets.
784
785* All native targets are now consistently called "native".
786 Consequently, the "target child", "target GNU", "target djgpp",
787 "target procfs" (Solaris/Irix/OSF/AIX) and "target darwin-child"
788 commands have been replaced with "target native". The QNX/NTO port
789 leaves the "procfs" target in place and adds a "native" target for
790 consistency with other ports. The impact on users should be minimal
791 as these commands previously either throwed an error, or were
792 no-ops. The target's name is visible in the output of the following
793 commands: "help target", "info target", "info files", "maint print
794 target-stack".
795
796* The "target native" command now connects to the native target. This
797 can be used to launch native programs even when "set
798 auto-connect-native-target" is set to off.
799
800* GDB now supports access to Intel MPX registers on GNU/Linux.
801
802* Support for Intel AVX-512 registers on GNU/Linux.
803 Support displaying and modifying Intel AVX-512 registers
804 $zmm0 - $zmm31 and $k0 - $k7 on GNU/Linux.
805
806* New remote packets
807
808qXfer:btrace:read's annex
809 The qXfer:btrace:read packet supports a new annex 'delta' to read
810 branch trace incrementally.
811
812* Python Scripting
813
814 ** Valid Python operations on gdb.Value objects representing
815 structs/classes invoke the corresponding overloaded operators if
816 available.
817 ** New `Xmethods' feature in the Python API. Xmethods are
818 additional methods or replacements for existing methods of a C++
819 class. This feature is useful for those cases where a method
820 defined in C++ source code could be inlined or optimized out by
821 the compiler, making it unavailable to GDB.
822
823* New targets
824PowerPC64 GNU/Linux little-endian powerpc64le-*-linux*
825
826* The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
827 and "assf"), have been deprecated. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
828 its alias "share", instead.
829
830* The commands "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" are no longer
831 supported. Use "set serial baud" and "show serial baud" (respectively)
832 instead.
833
834* MI changes
835
836 ** A new option "-gdb-set mi-async" replaces "-gdb-set
837 target-async". The latter is left as a deprecated alias of the
838 former for backward compatibility. If the target supports it,
839 CLI background execution commands are now always possible by
840 default, independently of whether the frontend stated a
841 preference for asynchronous execution with "-gdb-set mi-async".
842 Previously "-gdb-set target-async off" affected both MI execution
843 commands and CLI execution commands.
844
845*** Changes in GDB 7.7
846
847* Improved support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on
848 arm*-linux* targets. Support for thumb32 and syscall instruction
849 recording has been added.
850
851* GDB now supports SystemTap SDT probes on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
852
853* GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
854 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
855
856* New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
857 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
858 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
859 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
860 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
861 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
862 "void".
863
864* The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
865
866* The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
867
868* GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
869 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
870 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
871 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
872
873 (gdb) p $rax
874 $1 = <not saved>
875
876 (gdb) info registers rax
877 rax <not saved>
878
879 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
880 "*value not available*".
881
882* New script contrib/gdb-add-index.sh for adding .gdb_index sections
883 to binaries.
884
885* Python scripting
886
887 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
888 ** Temporary breakpoints are now supported.
889 ** Line tables representation has been added.
890 ** New attribute 'parent_type' for gdb.Field objects.
891 ** gdb.Field objects can be used as subscripts on gdb.Value objects.
892 ** New attribute 'name' for gdb.Type objects.
893
894* New targets
895
896Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
897Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
898Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
899
900* Removed native configurations
901
902Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
903been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
904
905arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
906i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
907i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
908i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
909m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
910sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
911vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
912
913* New commands:
914catch rethrow
915 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
916maint check-psymtabs
917 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
918maint check-symtabs
919 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
920maint expand-symtabs
921 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
922
923show configuration
924 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
925
926maint set|show per-command
927maint set|show per-command space
928maint set|show per-command time
929maint set|show per-command symtab
930 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
931
932remove-symbol-file FILENAME
933remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
934 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
935 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
936 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
937
938info exceptions
939info exceptions REGEXP
940 Display the list of Ada exceptions defined in the program being
941 debugged. If provided, only the exceptions whose names match REGEXP
942 are listed.
943
944* New options
945
946set debug symfile off|on
947show debug symfile
948 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
949 symbol tables within those files
950
951set print raw frame-arguments
952show print raw frame-arguments
953 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
954 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
955
956set remote trace-status-packet
957show remote trace-status-packet
958 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
959
960set debug nios2
961show debug nios2
962 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
963
964set range-stepping
965show range-stepping
966 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
967
968set startup-with-shell
969show startup-with-shell
970 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
971 directly.
972
973set code-cache
974show code-cache
975 Use the target memory cache for accesses to the code segment. This
976 improves performance of remote debugging (particularly disassembly).
977
978* You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
979 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
980 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
981 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
982 "set height 0".
983
984* The "set debug symtab-create" debugging option of GDB has been changed to
985 accept a verbosity level. 0 means "off", 1 provides basic debugging
986 output, and values of 2 or greater provides more verbose output.
987
988* New command-line options
989--configuration
990 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
991
992* The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
993 buffer in Common Trace Format.
994
995* Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
996 GDB command gcore.
997
998* GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
999
1000* The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
1001 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
1002
1003* The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
1004 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
1005
1006* The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
1007 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
1008 due to an uncaught signal.
1009
1010* MI changes
1011
1012 ** All MI commands now accept an optional "--language" option.
1013 Support for this feature can be verified by using the "-list-features"
1014 command, which should contain "language-option".
1015
1016 ** The new command -info-gdb-mi-command allows the user to determine
1017 whether a GDB/MI command is supported or not.
1018
1019 ** The "^error" result record returned when trying to execute an undefined
1020 GDB/MI command now provides a variable named "code" whose content is the
1021 "undefined-command" error code. Support for this feature can be verified
1022 by using the "-list-features" command, which should contain
1023 "undefined-command-error-code".
1024
1025 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
1026 Trace Format now.
1027
1028 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
1029
1030 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
1031 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
1032 are displayed.
1033
1034 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
1035 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
1036
1037 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
1038 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
1039 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
1040
1041 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
1042 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
1043 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
1044 main subprogram. Support for this feature can be verified using
1045 the "-list-features" command, which should contain
1046 "exec-run-start-option".
1047
1048 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
1049 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
1050
1051 ** The new command -info-ada-exceptions provides the equivalent of
1052 the new "info exceptions" command.
1053
1054* New system-wide configuration scripts
1055 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
1056 configuration scripts for the following systems:
1057 ** ElinOS
1058 ** Wind River Linux
1059
1060* GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
1061 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
1062 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
1063 below.
1064
1065* GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
1066 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
1067
1068* On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
1069 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
1070 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
1071
1072* New remote packets
1073
1074vCont;r
1075
1076 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
1077 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
1078 involvemement at each single-step.
1079
1080qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
1081 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
1082 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
1083 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
1084 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
1085 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
1086 speedup.
1087
1088* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1089
1090 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
1091 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
1092
1093 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
1094 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
1095 trace state variables.
1096
1097 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
1098 target.
1099
1100* New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
1101 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
1102
1103* GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
1104
1105* The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
1106 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
1107 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
1108 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1109
1110*** Changes in GDB 7.6
1111
1112* Target record has been renamed to record-full.
1113 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
1114 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
1115 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
1116
1117set|show record full insn-number-max
1118set|show record full stop-at-limit
1119set|show record full memory-query
1120
1121* A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
1122 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
1123 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
1124 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
1125 This new recording method can be enabled using:
1126
1127record btrace
1128
1129 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
1130 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
1131
1132* Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
1133 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
1134 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
1135
1136record instruction-history prints the execution history at
1137 instruction granularity
1138
1139record function-call-history prints the execution history at
1140 function granularity
1141
1142* New native configurations
1143
1144ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
1145FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
1146x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
1147Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
1148
1149* New targets
1150
1151ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
1152ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
1153Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
1154x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
1155Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
1156
1157* If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
1158 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
1159 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
1160 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
1161 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
1162 --data-directory command-line option.
1163
1164* New command line options:
1165
1166-nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
1167 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
1168
1169* Removed command line options
1170
1171-epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
1172 Emacs.
1173
1174* The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
1175 type formatting.
1176
1177* 'info proc' now works on some core files.
1178
1179* Python scripting
1180
1181 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
1182
1183 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
1184
1185 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
1186
1187 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
1188
1189 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
1190 of architecture in the Python API.
1191
1192 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
1193 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
1194
1195* New Python-based convenience functions:
1196
1197 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
1198 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
1199 ** $_strlen(str)
1200 ** $_regex(str, regex)
1201
1202* The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
1203 given an argument.
1204
1205* The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
1206 default for GCC since November 2000.
1207
1208* The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
1209
1210* The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
1211 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
1212
1213* New configure options
1214
1215--enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
1216 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
1217 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
1218 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
1219 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
1220 options allow the user to override that default.
1221--with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
1222 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
1223 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
1224
1225* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1226
1227catch signal
1228 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
1229 conditions to be attached.
1230
1231maint info bfds
1232 List the BFDs known to GDB.
1233
1234python-interactive [command]
1235pi [command]
1236 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
1237 and print the result of expressions.
1238
1239py [command]
1240 "py" is a new alias for "python".
1241
1242enable type-printer [name]...
1243disable type-printer [name]...
1244 Enable or disable type printers.
1245
1246* Removed commands
1247
1248 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
1249 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
1250 instead.
1251
1252* New options
1253
1254set print type methods (on|off)
1255show print type methods
1256 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
1257 The default is to show them.
1258
1259set print type typedefs (on|off)
1260show print type typedefs
1261 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
1262 The default is to show them.
1263
1264set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
1265show filename-display
1266 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
1267 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
1268
1269set trace-buffer-size
1270show trace-buffer-size
1271 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
1272
1273set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
1274show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
1275 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
1276
1277set debug aarch64
1278show debug aarch64
1279 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
1280 The default is off.
1281
1282set debug coff-pe-read
1283show debug coff-pe-read
1284 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
1285 exported symbols.
1286
1287set debug mach-o
1288show debug mach-o
1289 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
1290 processing.
1291
1292set debug notification
1293show debug notification
1294 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
1295
1296* MI changes
1297
1298 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
1299 "=cmd-param-changed".
1300 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
1301 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
1302 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
1303 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
1304 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
1305 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
1306 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
1307 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
1308 "=memory-changed".
1309 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
1310 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
1311 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
1312 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
1313 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
1314 library load/unload events.
1315 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
1316 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
1317 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
1318 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
1319 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
1320 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
1321 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
1322 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
1323
1324* GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
1325 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
1326 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
1327 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
1328
1329* New remote packets
1330
1331QTBuffer:size
1332 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
1333 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1334
1335Qbtrace:bts
1336 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
1337 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
1338 qSupported query.
1339
1340Qbtrace:off
1341 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
1342 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1343
1344qXfer:btrace:read
1345 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
1346 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1347
1348*** Changes in GDB 7.5
1349
1350* GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
1351 for more x32 ABI info.
1352
1353* GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
1354
1355* GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
1356
1357* The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
1358 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
1359 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
1360 "info os files" lists file descriptors
1361 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
1362 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
1363 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
1364 "info os msg" lists message queues
1365 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
1366
1367* GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
1368 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
1369 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
1370 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
1371 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
1372 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
1373
1374* GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
1375 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
1376 record/replay support.
1377
1378* The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
1379
1380* Python scripting
1381
1382 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
1383 "gdb.COMMAND_USER".
1384
1385 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
1386
1387 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
1388 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
1389
1390 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
1391
1392 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
1393 the source at which the symbol was defined.
1394
1395 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
1396 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
1397 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
1398 symbol's value.
1399
1400 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
1401 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
1402
1403 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
1404 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
1405 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
1406
1407 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
1408 object associated with a PC value.
1409
1410 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
1411 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
1412
1413* Go language support.
1414 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
1415 language.
1416
1417* GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
1418 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
1419
1420* The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
1421 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
1422
1423* GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
1424 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
1425 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
1426 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
1427 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
1428 $1 = (ONE | TWO)
1429
1430* The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
1431 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
1432 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
1433 build/libcpp/expr.c.
1434
1435* The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
1436 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
1437
1438* The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
1439 since December 2007.
1440
1441* The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
1442 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
1443 command does. For instance:
1444
1445 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
1446
1447 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
1448 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
1449 created, using the "condition" command.
1450
1451* The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
1452 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
1453
1454* GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
1455
1456* The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
1457 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
1458 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
1459 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
1460 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
1461 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
1462 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
1463 files with older .gdb_index sections.
1464
1465 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
1466 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
1467 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
1468 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
1469 the .gdb_index section.
1470
1471* Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
1472
1473* GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
1474 target.
1475
1476* MI changes
1477
1478 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
1479
1480 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
1481
1482* New commands
1483
1484 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
1485 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
1486 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
1487
1488 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
1489 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
1490
1491 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
1492 several hits.
1493
1494 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
1495 C++ and Java objects.
1496
1497 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
1498 can be used to recursively explore values and types of
1499 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
1500 configured with '--with-python'.
1501
1502 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
1503 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
1504 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
1505 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
1506 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
1507 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
1508 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
1509
1510 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
1511 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
1512 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
1513 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
1514
1515 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
1516 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
1517 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
1518 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
1519
1520 ** "set print symbol"
1521 "show print symbol"
1522 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
1523 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
1524 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
1525
1526* Deprecated commands
1527
1528 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
1529 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
1530
1531* New targets
1532
1533Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
1534HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
1535
1536* GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
1537 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
1538 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
1539 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
1540 evaluates to true.
1541
1542* New options
1543
1544set mips compression
1545show mips compression
1546 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
1547 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
1548 mips16
1549 micromips
1550 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
1551
1552set breakpoint condition-evaluation
1553show breakpoint condition-evaluation
1554 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
1555 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
1556 available mode.
1557 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
1558 target.
1559
1560set auto-load off
1561 Disable auto-loading globally.
1562
1563show auto-load
1564 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
1565
1566set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
1567show auto-load gdb-scripts
1568 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
1569
1570set auto-load python-scripts on|off
1571show auto-load python-scripts
1572 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
1573
1574set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
1575show auto-load local-gdbinit
1576 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
1577
1578set auto-load libthread-db on|off
1579show auto-load libthread-db
1580 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
1581
1582set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
1583show auto-load scripts-directory
1584 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
1585 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
1586 of the directories listed by this option.
1587 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
1588
1589set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
1590show auto-load safe-path
1591 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
1592 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
1593
1594set debug auto-load on|off
1595show debug auto-load
1596 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
1597
1598set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
1599show dprintf-style
1600 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
1601 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
1602 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
1603 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
1604
1605set dprintf-function <expr>
1606show dprintf-function
1607set dprintf-channel <expr>
1608show dprintf-channel
1609 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
1610 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
1611
1612set disconnected-dprintf on|off
1613show disconnected-dprintf
1614 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
1615 after GDB disconnects.
1616
1617* New configure options
1618
1619--with-auto-load-dir
1620 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
1621 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
1622 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
1623 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
1624 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
1625
1626--with-auto-load-safe-path
1627 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
1628 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
1629
1630--without-auto-load-safe-path
1631 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
1632 security feature.
1633
1634* New remote packets
1635
1636z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
1637
1638 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
1639 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
1640 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
1641 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
1642
1643QProgramSignals:
1644
1645 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
1646 program without GDB involvement.
1647
1648* New command line options
1649
1650--init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
1651 before loading inferior.
1652--init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
1653 execute it before loading inferior.
1654
1655*** Changes in GDB 7.4
1656
1657* GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
1658 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
1659 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
1660 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
1661 inferior changes.
1662
1663* GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
1664 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
1665
1666* GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
1667 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
1668 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
1669 target hardware watchpoint.
1670
1671 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
1672 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
1673 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
1674 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
1675
1676* Python scripting
1677
1678 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
1679 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
1680 existing one.
1681
1682 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
1683 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
1684 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
1685 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
1686 now "message", which just prints the error message without
1687 the stack trace.
1688
1689 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
1690 Python API.
1691
1692 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
1693 modules library. This module provides functionality for
1694 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
1695 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
1696 corresponding value.
1697
1698 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
1699 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
1700 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
1701 on GDB start-up.
1702
1703 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
1704 static_block will return the global and static blocks
1705 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
1706 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
1707
1708 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
1709
1710 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
1711 "gdb.breakpoints".
1712
1713 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
1714 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
1715 available in the CLI.
1716
1717 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
1718 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
1719 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
1720 "some_type.items()".
1721
1722 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
1723 new object file.
1724
1725 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
1726 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
1727 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
1728 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
1729 any anonymous fields.
1730
1731* MI changes
1732
1733 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
1734 "solib-event".
1735
1736 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
1737 "=breakpoint-modified".
1738
1739 ** New command -ada-task-info.
1740
1741* libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
1742 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
1743 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
1744 lives.
1745
1746 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
1747 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
1748 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
1749 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
1750 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
1751
1752 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
1753 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
1754
1755* New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
1756 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
1757 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
1758 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
1759 use this option to specify where to find it.
1760
1761* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
1762 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
1763 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
1764 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
1765 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
1766 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
1767 section in the user manual for more details.
1768
1769* The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
1770 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
1771 become available after that.
1772
1773* New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
1774
1775* New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
1776 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
1777 gcc version 4.7.
1778
1779* New commands
1780
1781!SHELL COMMAND
1782 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
1783 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
1784
1785* Changed commands
1786
1787watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
1788 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
1789 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
1790
1791info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
1792 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
1793 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
1794
1795info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
1796 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
1797 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
1798 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
1799 name starts with a hyphen.
1800
1801collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
1802 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
1803 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
1804 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
1805 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
1806 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
1807 number of bytes that will be collected.
1808
1809tstart [NOTES]
1810 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
1811 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
1812 setting the variable trace-notes.
1813
1814tstop [NOTES]
1815 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
1816 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
1817 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
1818 trace-stop-notes.
1819
1820* Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
1821 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
1822 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
1823 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
1824 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
1825 is running.
1826
1827* Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
1828 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
1829 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
1830
1831* New options
1832
1833set debug dwarf2-read
1834show debug dwarf2-read
1835 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
1836 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
1837
1838set debug symtab-create
1839show debug symtab-create
1840 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
1841 creation. The default is off.
1842
1843set extended-prompt
1844show extended-prompt
1845 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
1846 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
1847 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
1848 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
1849 prompt is displayed.
1850
1851set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
1852show print entry-values
1853 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
1854 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
1855 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
1856
1857set debug entry-values
1858show debug entry-values
1859 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
1860 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
1861
1862set basenames-may-differ
1863show basenames-may-differ
1864 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
1865 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
1866 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
1867 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
1868 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
1869 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
1870 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
1871 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
1872
1873set trace-user
1874show trace-user
1875set trace-notes
1876show trace-notes
1877 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
1878 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
1879 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
1880 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
1881
1882set trace-stop-notes
1883show trace-stop-notes
1884 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
1885 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
1886 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
1887 started by someone else.
1888
1889* New remote packets
1890
1891QTEnable
1892
1893 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1894
1895QTDisable
1896
1897 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1898
1899QTNotes
1900
1901 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
1902
1903qTP
1904
1905 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
1906
1907qTMinFTPILen
1908
1909 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
1910 be placed.
1911
1912* Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
1913 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
1914
1915* New targets
1916
1917Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
1918
1919* New Simulators
1920
1921Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
1922
1923*** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
1924
1925* The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
1926
1927*** Changes in GDB 7.3
1928
1929* GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
1930 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
1931 matches the given regular expression.
1932
1933* The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
1934
1935* The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
1936 dumping the instruction opcodes.
1937
1938* New command line options
1939
1940-data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
1941 This is mostly for testing purposes.
1942
1943* The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
1944 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
1945
1946* GDB has a new command: "set directories".
1947 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
1948 source path list instead of augmenting it.
1949
1950* GDB now understands thread names.
1951
1952 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
1953 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
1954
1955 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
1956 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
1957
1958* OpenCL C
1959 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
1960 has been integrated into GDB.
1961
1962* Python scripting
1963
1964 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
1965 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
1966 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
1967
1968 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1969 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
1970 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
1971 and allows for more dynamic content.
1972
1973 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
1974 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
1975 have an is_valid method.
1976
1977 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1978 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
1979 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
1980
1981 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
1982
1983 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
1984 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
1985 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
1986 that function like so:
1987
1988 result = some_value (10,20)
1989
1990 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
1991 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
1992 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
1993
1994 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
1995 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
1996 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
1997 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
1998 New function: register_pretty_printer.
1999
2000 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
2001 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
2002
2003 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
2004
2005 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
2006 selected thread.
2007
2008 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
2009 holds the thread's name.
2010
2011 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
2012 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
2013 occurring in the process being debugged.
2014 The following events are currently supported:
2015 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
2016 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
2017 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
2018
2019* C++ Improvements:
2020
2021 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
2022 instantiation. For example, if you have:
2023
2024 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
2025
2026 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
2027 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
2028 was added to GCC 4.5.
2029
2030 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
2031 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
2032 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
2033 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
2034 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
2035 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
2036
2037* GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
2038 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
2039 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
2040 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
2041 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
2042
2043* GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
2044 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
2045 execution to a label.
2046
2047* GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
2048 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
2049 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
2050 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
2051
2052* The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
2053 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
2054 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
2055 of scope.
2056
2057* GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
2058
2059 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
2060 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
2061 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
2062 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
2063 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
2064 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
2065
2066 (gdb) info threads
2067 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
2068
2069 While now you see this:
2070
2071 (gdb) info threads
2072 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
2073
2074 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
2075 dumps.
2076
2077 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
2078 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
2079 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
2080 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
2081
2082* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
2083 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
2084 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
2085 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
2086 section in the user manual for more details.
2087
2088* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2089
2090 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
2091 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
2092
2093 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
2094
2095* New native configurations
2096
2097ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
2098
2099* New targets:
2100
2101Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
2102
2103* Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
2104 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
2105 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
2106 in the GDB user manual.
2107
2108* Guile support was removed.
2109
2110* New features in the GNU simulator
2111
2112 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
2113
2114 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
2115
2116*** Changes in GDB 7.2
2117
2118* Shared library support for remote targets by default
2119
2120 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
2121 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
2122 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
2123 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
2124 was always disabled for such configurations.
2125
2126* C++ Improvements:
2127
2128 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
2129
2130 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
2131 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
2132 For example:
2133 namespace A
2134 {
2135 class B { };
2136 void foo (B) { }
2137 }
2138 ...
2139 A::B b
2140 foo(b)
2141 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
2142 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
2143 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
2144
2145 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
2146
2147 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
2148 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
2149 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
2150 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
2151 entry.
2152 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
2153 mentioned flavors of operators.
2154
2155 ** static const class members
2156
2157 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
2158 class definition has been fixed.
2159
2160* Windows Thread Information Block access.
2161
2162 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
2163 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
2164 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
2165 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
2166 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
2167 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
2168
2169* Static tracepoints
2170
2171 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
2172 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
2173 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
2174 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
2175 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
2176 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
2177 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
2178 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
2179 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
2180 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
2181 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
2182 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
2183 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
2184 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
2185 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
2186 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
2187 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
2188 the "New remote packets" section below.
2189
2190* Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
2191
2192 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
2193 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
2194 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
2195 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
2196
2197* Observer mode
2198
2199 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
2200 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
2201 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
2202 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
2203 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
2204 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
2205 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
2206
2207* The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
2208 current thread.
2209
2210* New remote packets
2211
2212qGetTIBAddr
2213
2214 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
2215
2216qRelocInsn
2217
2218 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
2219 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
2220 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
2221 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
2222 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
2223 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
2224
2225qTfSTM, qTsSTM
2226
2227 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
2228
2229qTSTMat
2230
2231 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
2232 program.
2233
2234qXfer:statictrace:read
2235
2236 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
2237 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
2238 to gdb's qSupported query.
2239
2240QAllow
2241
2242 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
2243
2244QTDPsrc
2245
2246 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
2247 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
2248
2249* The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
2250 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
2251 a directory.
2252
2253* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2254
2255 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
2256 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
2257 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
2258 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
2259
2260 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
2261 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
2262 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
2263 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
2264 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
2265 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
2266 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
2267
2268 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
2269 for static tracepoints support.
2270
2271 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
2272
2273* GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
2274 it understands register description.
2275
2276* The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
2277
2278* X86 general purpose registers
2279
2280 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
2281 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
2282 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
2283 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
2284 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
2285
2286* The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
2287 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
2288 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
2289 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
2290 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
2291 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
2292
2293* The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
2294 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
2295 in the specified file.
2296
2297* Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
2298 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
2299 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
2300 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
2301 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
2302 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
2303 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
2304 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
2305 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
2306 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
2307
2308* New commands
2309
2310eval template, expressions...
2311 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
2312 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
2313
2314set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
2315show target-file-system-kind
2316 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
2317 names.
2318
2319save breakpoints <filename>
2320 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
2321 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
2322 definitions, use the `source' command.
2323
2324`save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
2325is now deprecated.
2326
2327info static-tracepoint-markers
2328 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
2329
2330strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
2331 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
2332 function, line, address, or marker ID.
2333
2334set observer on|off
2335show observer
2336 Enable and disable observer mode.
2337
2338set may-write-registers on|off
2339set may-write-memory on|off
2340set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
2341set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
2342set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
2343set may-interrupt on|off
2344 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
2345 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
2346 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
2347 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
2348 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
2349 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
2350 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
2351
2352set record memory-query on|off
2353show record memory-query
2354 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
2355 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
2356
2357* Changed commands
2358
2359disassemble
2360 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
2361
2362* Python scripting
2363
2364** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
2365 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
2366 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
2367 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
2368 GDB using Python' in the manual.
2369
2370** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
2371 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
2372 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
2373 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
2374
2375** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
2376 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
2377
2378** New exception gdb.GdbError.
2379
2380** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
2381
2382** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
2383
2384** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
2385 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
2386 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
2387
2388* Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
2389there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
2390tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
2391regular breakpoints.
2392
2393* New targets
2394
2395ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
2396
2397* D language support.
2398 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
2399 language.
2400
2401* GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
2402 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
2403 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
2404 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
2405 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
2406
2407* GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
2408 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
2409 conditions of the form:
2410
2411 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
2412
2413 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
2414 interface mentioned above.
2415
2416*** Changes in GDB 7.1
2417
2418* C++ Improvements
2419
2420 ** Namespace Support
2421
2422 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
2423 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
2424 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
2425 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
2426 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
2427
2428 ** Bug Fixes
2429
2430 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
2431 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
2432 qualified name.
2433
2434 ** Cast Operators
2435
2436 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
2437 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
2438
2439* New targets
2440
2441Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
2442Renesas RX rx-*-elf
2443
2444* New Simulators
2445
2446Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
2447Renesas RX rx
2448
2449* Multi-program debugging.
2450
2451 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
2452 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
2453 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
2454 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
2455 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
2456 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
2457 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
2458 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
2459
2460* New tracing features
2461
2462 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
2463
2464 ** Trace state variables
2465
2466 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
2467 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
2468 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
2469 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
2470 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
2471 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
2472 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
2473 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
2474 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
2475 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
2476
2477 ** Fast tracepoints
2478
2479 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
2480 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
2481 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
2482 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
2483 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
2484 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
2485 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
2486 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
2487 the regular trace command.
2488
2489 ** Disconnected tracing
2490
2491 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
2492 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
2493 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
2494 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
2495 connection is lost unexpectedly.
2496
2497 ** Trace files
2498
2499 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
2500 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
2501 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
2502 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
2503 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
2504 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
2505 <name>".
2506
2507 ** Circular trace buffer
2508
2509 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
2510 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
2511 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
2512 not be available for all target agents.
2513
2514* Changed commands
2515
2516disassemble
2517 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
2518 the arguments to be comma-separated.
2519
2520info variables
2521 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
2522 which only declare a variable are not shown.
2523
2524source
2525 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
2526 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
2527 support.
2528
2529 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
2530 "set script-extension" (see below).
2531
2532* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2533
2534record save [<FILENAME>]
2535 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
2536 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
2537
2538record restore <FILENAME>
2539 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
2540 earlier time, for replay debugging.
2541
2542add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
2543 Add a new inferior.
2544
2545clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
2546 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
2547 inferior has loaded.
2548
2549remove-inferior ID
2550 Remove an inferior.
2551
2552maint info program-spaces
2553 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
2554
2555set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
2556show remote interrupt-sequence
2557 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
2558 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
2559 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
2560 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
2561 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
2562
2563set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
2564show remote interrupt-on-connect
2565 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
2566 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
2567 Linux kernel.
2568
2569set remotebreak [on | off]
2570show remotebreak
2571Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
2572
2573tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
2574 Create or modify a trace state variable.
2575
2576info tvariables
2577 List trace state variables and their values.
2578
2579delete tvariable $NAME ...
2580 Delete one or more trace state variables.
2581
2582teval EXPR, ...
2583 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
2584 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
2585
2586ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
2587 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
2588
2589* New expression syntax
2590
2591 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
2592 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
2593
2594* New options
2595
2596set follow-exec-mode new|same
2597show follow-exec-mode
2598 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
2599 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
2600 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
2601
2602set default-collect EXPR, ...
2603show default-collect
2604 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
2605 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
2606 such as registers or a critical global variable.
2607
2608set disconnected-tracing
2609show disconnected-tracing
2610 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
2611 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
2612 upon disconnection.
2613
2614set circular-trace-buffer
2615show circular-trace-buffer
2616 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
2617 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
2618 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
2619 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
2620
2621set script-extension off|soft|strict
2622show script-extension
2623 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
2624 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
2625 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
2626 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
2627 evaluation failed.
2628 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
2629
2630set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
2631show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
2632 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
2633 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
2634 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
2635 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
2636 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
2637 is on.
2638
2639* Python API Improvements
2640
2641 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
2642 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
2643 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
2644
2645 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
2646 `is_base_class' attribute.
2647
2648 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
2649
2650 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
2651 evaluate an expression.
2652
2653* New remote packets
2654
2655QTDV
2656 Define a trace state variable.
2657
2658qTV
2659 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
2660
2661QTDisconnected
2662 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
2663
2664QTBuffer:circular
2665 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
2666
2667qTfP, qTsP
2668 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
2669
2670* Bug fixes
2671
2672Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
2673
2674Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
2675much more reliable. In particular:
2676 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
2677 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
2678 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
2679 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
2680 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
2681 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
2682 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
2683 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
2684 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
2685 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
2686 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
2687 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
2688 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
2689 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
2690 non-threaded programs.
2691
2692PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
2693This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
2694libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
2695executable program.
2696
2697*** Changes in GDB 7.0
2698
2699* GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
2700dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
2701them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
2702for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
2703"JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
2704
2705* Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
2706breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
2707or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
2708the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
2709for tracepoint actions.
2710
2711* The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
2712raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
2713modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
2714
2715* Process record and replay
2716
2717 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
2718 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
2719 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
2720 execute commands.
2721
2722* Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
2723step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
2724set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
2725reverse execution.
2726
2727* GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
2728feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
27292.6.28 or later.
2730
2731* GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
2732target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
2733char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
2734literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
2735U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
2736`printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
2737system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
2738the installation instructions for more information.
2739
2740* GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
2741remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
2742with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
2743the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
2744
2745* "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
2746and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
2747
2748* Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
2749now complete on file names.
2750
2751* When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
2752completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
2753For instance, consider:
2754
2755 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
2756 # struct example variable;
2757 (gdb) p variable.
2758
2759If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
2760completions will be "f1" and "f2".
2761
2762* Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
2763the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
2764
2765* GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
2766operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
2767macros.
2768
2769* GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
2770the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
2771implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
2772
2773* GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
2774registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
2775can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
2776and simulator targets may also provide them.
2777
2778* New remote packets
2779
2780qSearch:memory:
2781 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
2782
2783QStartNoAckMode
2784 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
2785 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
2786 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
2787
2788vKill
2789 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
2790 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
2791
2792qXfer:osdata:read
2793 Obtains additional operating system information
2794
2795qXfer:siginfo:read
2796qXfer:siginfo:write
2797 Read or write additional signal information.
2798
2799* Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
2800
2801 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
2802 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
2803 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
2804
2805* GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
2806DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
2807
2808* The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
2809and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
2810`set/show sh calling-convention'.
2811
2812* GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
2813with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
2814
2815* 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
2816
2817* Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
2818
2819* Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
2820which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
2821
2822* The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
2823list of section offsets.
2824
2825* On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
2826conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
2827have also been fixed.
2828
2829* GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
2830From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
2831are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
2832
2833* GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
2834example, given:
2835
2836 template<typename T> class C { };
2837 C<char const *> c;
2838
2839GDB will now correctly handle all of:
2840
2841 ptype C<char const *>
2842 ptype C<char const*>
2843 ptype C<const char *>
2844 ptype C<const char*>
2845
2846* New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
2847
2848 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
2849 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
2850
2851 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
2852 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
2853 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
2854
2855 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
2856 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
2857
2858 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
2859 gdbserver.
2860
2861 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
2862 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
2863
2864 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
2865 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
2866 as appropriate.
2867
2868* Python scripting
2869
2870 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
2871 available is determined at configure time.
2872
2873 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
2874
2875* Ada tasking support
2876
2877 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
2878 been introduced:
2879
2880 info tasks
2881 Print the list of Ada tasks.
2882 info task N
2883 Print detailed information about task number N.
2884 task
2885 Print the task number of the current task.
2886 task N
2887 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
2888
2889* Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
2890add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
2891
2892* Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
2893
2894 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
2895 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
2896 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
2897 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
2898 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
2899 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
2900 below.
2901
2902* Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
2903"Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
2904information.
2905
2906* Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
2907to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
2908architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
2909See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
2910more information.
2911
2912* Multi-architecture debugging.
2913
2914 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
2915 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
2916 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
2917 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
2918 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
2919
2920* GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
2921use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
2922Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
2923powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
2924--enable-targets configure option.
2925
2926* Non-stop mode debugging.
2927
2928 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
2929 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
2930 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
2931 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
2932 section in the user manual for more information.
2933
2934 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
2935 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
2936 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
2937 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
2938 extensions on linux targets.
2939
2940* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2941
2942catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
2943 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
2944 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
2945 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
2946 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
2947 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
2948 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
2949 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
2950 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
2951
2952find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
2953 val1 [, val2, ...]
2954 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
2955
2956maint set python print-stack
2957maint show python print-stack
2958 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
2959
2960python [CODE]
2961 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
2962
2963macro define
2964macro list
2965macro undef
2966 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
2967 interactively.
2968
2969info os processes
2970 Show operating system information about processes.
2971
2972info inferiors
2973 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
2974
2975inferior NUM
2976 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
2977
2978detach inferior NUM
2979 Detach from inferior number NUM.
2980
2981kill inferior NUM
2982 Kill inferior number NUM.
2983
2984* New options
2985
2986set spu stop-on-load
2987show spu stop-on-load
2988 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2989
2990set spu auto-flush-cache
2991show spu auto-flush-cache
2992 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
2993 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2994
2995set sh calling-convention
2996show sh calling-convention
2997 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
2998
2999set debug timestamp
3000show debug timestamp
3001 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
3002
3003set disassemble-next-line
3004show disassemble-next-line
3005 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
3006 the debuggee stops.
3007
3008set remote noack-packet
3009show remote noack-packet
3010 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
3011 under "New remote packets."
3012
3013set remote query-attached-packet
3014show remote query-attached-packet
3015 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
3016
3017set remote read-siginfo-object
3018show remote read-siginfo-object
3019 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
3020 packet.
3021
3022set remote write-siginfo-object
3023show remote write-siginfo-object
3024 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
3025 packet.
3026
3027set remote reverse-continue
3028show remote reverse-continue
3029 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
3030
3031set remote reverse-step
3032show remote reverse-step
3033 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
3034
3035set displaced-stepping
3036show displaced-stepping
3037 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
3038 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
3039 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
3040
3041set debug displaced
3042show debug displaced
3043 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
3044
3045maint set internal-error
3046maint show internal-error
3047 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
3048
3049maint set internal-warning
3050maint show internal-warning
3051 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
3052
3053set exec-wrapper
3054show exec-wrapper
3055unset exec-wrapper
3056 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
3057
3058set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
3059show multiple-symbols
3060 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
3061 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
3062 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
3063
3064set breakpoint always-inserted
3065show breakpoint always-inserted
3066 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
3067 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
3068 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
3069
3070set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
3071show arm fallback-mode
3072set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
3073show arm force-mode
3074 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
3075 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
3076 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
3077 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
3078
3079set disable-randomization
3080show disable-randomization
3081 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
3082 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
3083 multiple debugging sessions.
3084
3085set non-stop
3086show non-stop
3087 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
3088 a breakpoint.
3089
3090set target-async
3091show target-async
3092 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
3093 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
3094 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
3095 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
3096
3097set target-wide-charset
3098show target-wide-charset
3099 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
3100 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
3101
3102set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
3103show tcp auto-retry
3104set tcp connect-timeout
3105show tcp connect-timeout
3106 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
3107 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
3108 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
3109
3110set libthread-db-search-path
3111show libthread-db-search-path
3112 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
3113 libthread_db.
3114
3115set schedule-multiple (on|off)
3116show schedule-multiple
3117 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
3118 the current process.
3119
3120set stack-cache
3121show stack-cache
3122 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
3123 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
3124 affecting correctness.
3125
3126set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
3127show interactive-mode
3128 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
3129 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
3130 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
3131 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
3132 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
3133
3134* Removed commands
3135
3136info forks
3137 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
3138 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
3139 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
3140 command.
3141
3142fork NUM
3143 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
3144 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
3145 alias for the `fork' command.
3146
3147process PID
3148 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
3149 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
3150 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
3151
3152delete fork NUM
3153 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
3154 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
3155 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
3156 fork' command.
3157
3158detach fork NUM
3159 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
3160 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
3161 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
3162 fork' command.
3163
3164* New native configurations
3165
3166x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
3167
3168x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
3169
3170* New targets
3171
3172Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
3173x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
3174x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
3175S+core 3 score-*-*
3176
3177* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
3178 (mingw32ce) debugging.
3179
3180* Removed commands
3181
3182catch load
3183catch unload
3184 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
3185
3186*** Changes in GDB 6.8
3187
3188* New native configurations
3189
3190NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
3191Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
3192
3193* New targets
3194
3195NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
3196Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
3197
3198* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
3199
3200 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
3201 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
3202 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
3203 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
3204
3205* GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
3206(mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
3207
3208* Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
3209is resolved.
3210
3211* GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
3212including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
3213and in inlined functions.
3214
3215* GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
3216accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
3217more than one contiguous range of addresses.
3218
3219* Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
3220
3221* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
3222registers on PowerPC targets.
3223
3224* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
3225targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
3226
3227* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
3228commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
3229
3230* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
3231extended-remote mode.
3232
3233* hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
3234The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
3235error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
3236The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
3237
3238* GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
3239building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
3240target architectures.
3241
3242* GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
3243Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
3244now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
3245stored in two consecutive float registers.
3246
3247* The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
3248breakpoints now.
3249
3250* Improved support for debugging Ada
3251Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
3252include:
3253 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
3254 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
3255 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
3256 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
3257 of an assignment
3258 - Improved command completion in Ada
3259 - Several bug fixes
3260
3261* GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
3262process.
3263
3264* New commands
3265
3266set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
3267show print frame-arguments
3268 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
3269 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
3270
3271remote put
3272remote get
3273remote delete
3274 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
3275
3276* New MI commands
3277
3278-target-file-put
3279-target-file-get
3280-target-file-delete
3281 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
3282
3283* New remote packets
3284
3285vFile:open:
3286vFile:close:
3287vFile:pread:
3288vFile:pwrite:
3289vFile:unlink:
3290 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
3291
3292vAttach
3293 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
3294 mode.
3295
3296vRun
3297 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
3298
3299*** Changes in GDB 6.7
3300
3301* Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
3302bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
3303Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
3304
3305* When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
3306symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
3307-Bsymbolic linker option.
3308
3309* When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
3310recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
3311is not supported.
3312
3313* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
3314frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
3315
3316* GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
331732-bit or 64-bit register values.
3318
3319* Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
3320
3321* GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
3322target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
3323a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
3324
3325* Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
3326automatically displayed as character or string data.
3327
3328* The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
3329arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
3330as strings.
3331
3332* Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
3333for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
3334only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
3335
3336* GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
3337iWMMXt coprocessor.
3338
3339* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
3340ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
3341has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
3342
3343* GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
3344
3345* GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
3346
3347* The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
3348layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
3349segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
3350
3351* The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
3352immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
3353
3354* The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
3355"library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
3356packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
3357where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
3358Windows and SymbianOS).
3359
3360* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
3361(DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
3362
3363* GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
3364according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
3365
3366* New commands
3367
3368set remoteflow
3369show remoteflow
3370 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
3371 when debugging using remote targets.
3372
3373set mem inaccessible-by-default
3374show mem inaccessible-by-default
3375 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
3376 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
3377 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
3378 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
3379 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
3380
3381set breakpoint auto-hw
3382show breakpoint auto-hw
3383 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
3384 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
3385 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
3386 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
3387 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
3388 including "next" and "finish".
3389
3390catch exception
3391catch exception unhandled
3392 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
3393
3394catch assert
3395 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
3396
3397set sysroot
3398show sysroot
3399 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
3400 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
3401 an alias to "set sysroot".
3402
3403info spu
3404 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
3405 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
3406 architecture.
3407
3408* New native configurations
3409
3410OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
3411
3412set tdesc filename
3413unset tdesc filename
3414show tdesc filename
3415 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
3416 not query the target for its built-in description.
3417
3418* New targets
3419
3420OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
3421MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
3422Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
3423
3424* New remote packets
3425
3426QPassSignals:
3427 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
3428 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
3429
3430qXfer:features:read:
3431 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
3432 features.
3433
3434qXfer:spu:read:
3435qXfer:spu:write:
3436 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
3437 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
3438
3439qXfer:libraries:read:
3440 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
3441 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
3442 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
3443 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
3444
3445* Removed targets
3446
3447Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
3448
3449alpha*-*-osf1*
3450alpha*-*-osf2*
3451d10v-*-*
3452hppa*-*-hiux*
3453i[34567]86-ncr-*
3454i[34567]86-*-dgux*
3455i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
3456i[34567]86-*-netware*
3457i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
3458i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
3459i[34567]86-*-sco*
3460i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
3461i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
3462i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
3463i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
3464i[34567]86-*-unixware*
3465i[34567]86-*-sysv*
3466i[34567]86-*-isc*
3467m68*-cisco*-*
3468m68*-tandem-*
3469mips*-*-pe
3470rs6000-*-lynxos*
3471sh*-*-pe
3472
3473* Other removed features
3474
3475target abug
3476target cpu32bug
3477target est
3478target rom68k
3479
3480 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
3481
3482target hms
3483target e7000
3484target sh3
3485target sh3e
3486
3487 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
3488 H8/300.
3489
3490target ocd
3491
3492 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
3493 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
3494 interfaces.
3495
3496DWARF 1 support
3497
3498 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
3499 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
3500
3501Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
3502
3503 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
3504 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
3505 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
3506 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
3507
3508MIPS ".pdr" sections
3509
3510 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
3511 in debugging information.
3512
3513Scheme support
3514
3515 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
3516 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
3517
3518set mips stack-arg-size
3519set mips saved-gpreg-size
3520
3521 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
3522
3523*** Changes in GDB 6.6
3524
3525* New targets
3526
3527Xtensa xtensa-elf
3528Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
3529
3530* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
3531(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
3532running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
3533
3534* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
3535Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
3536supported.
3537
3538* The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
3539broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
3540
3541* The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
3542stub provides the required support.
3543
3544* Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
3545longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
3546
3547* New commands
3548
3549set substitute-path
3550unset substitute-path
3551show substitute-path
3552 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
3553 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
3554 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
3555 between compilation and debugging.
3556
3557set trace-commands
3558show trace-commands
3559 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
3560 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
3561 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
3562
3563* REMOVED features
3564
3565The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
3566
3567Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
3568an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
3569
3570The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
3571
3572* New remote packets
3573
3574qSupported:
3575 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
3576 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
3577 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
3578 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
3579 target.
3580
3581qXfer:auxv:read:
3582 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
3583 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
3584
3585qXfer:memory-map:read:
3586 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
3587 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
3588
3589vFlashErase:
3590vFlashWrite:
3591vFlashDone:
3592 Erase and program a flash memory device.
3593
3594* Removed remote packets
3595
3596qPart:auxv:read:
3597 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
3598 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
3599
3600*** Changes in GDB 6.5
3601
3602* New targets
3603
3604Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
3605
3606Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
3607
3608* New commands
3609
3610init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
3611 only if it doesn't already have a value.
3612
3613The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
3614
3615checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
3616
3617restart <n> Return the program state to a
3618 previously saved state.
3619
3620info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
3621
3622delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
3623
3624set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
3625 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
3626
3627info forks List forks of the user program that
3628 are available to be debugged.
3629
3630fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
3631 forks of the user program that are
3632 available to be debugged.
3633
3634delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
3635 that are available to be debugged (and
3636 kill the forked process).
3637
3638detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
3639 that are available to be debugged (and
3640 allow the process to continue).
3641
3642* New architecture
3643
3644Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
3645
3646* Improved Windows host support
3647
3648GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
3649native console support, and remote communications using either
3650network sockets or serial ports.
3651
3652* Improved Modula-2 language support
3653
3654GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
3655basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
3656pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
3657printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
3658written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
3659GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
3660
3661* REMOVED features
3662
3663The ARM rdi-share module.
3664
3665The Netware NLM debug server.
3666
3667*** Changes in GDB 6.4
3668
3669* New native configurations
3670
3671OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
3672OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
3673
3674* New targets
3675
3676Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
3677
3678* New command line options
3679
3680--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
3681--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
3682 the child (debugged) program exited with.
3683--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
3684 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
3685 specified multiple times and in conjunction
3686 with the --command (-x) option.
3687
3688* Deprecated commands removed
3689
3690The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
3691removed:
3692
3693 Command Replacement
3694 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
3695 othernames set arm disassembler
3696 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
3697 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
3698 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
3699 regs info registers
3700
3701* New BSD user-level threads support
3702
3703It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
3704library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
3705configurations are:
3706
3707FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3708FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
3709OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
3710
3711Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
3712are not yet supported.
3713
3714* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
3715(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
3716
3717* REMOVED configurations and files
3718
3719VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
3720Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
3721National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
3722
3723* New "set print array-indexes" command
3724
3725After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
3726when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
3727behavior.
3728
3729* VAX floating point support
3730
3731GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
3732
3733* User-defined command support
3734
3735In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
3736to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
3737section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
3738
3739*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
3740
3741* New command line option
3742
3743GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
3744debugging.
3745
3746* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
3747
3748GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
3749information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
3750by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
3751proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
3752to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
3753
3754* Internationalization
3755
3756When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
3757internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
3758continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
3759
3760* Ada
3761
3762Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
3763implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
3764into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
3765
3766* New native configurations
3767
3768GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
3769
3770* Remote 'p' packet
3771
3772GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
3773packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
3774
3775* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
3776
3777GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
3778The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
3779features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
3780i386 application).
3781
3782GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
3783compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
3784continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
3785configurations:
3786
3787hppa-*-hpux
3788ia64-*-aix
3789mips-*-irix*
3790*-*-lynx
3791mips-*-linux-gnu
3792sds protocol
3793xdr protocol
3794powerpc bdm protocol
3795
3796Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
3797made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
3798
3799* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3800
3801Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3802been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3803configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3804permanently REMOVED.
3805
3806h8300-*-*
3807mcore-*-*
3808mn10300-*-*
3809ns32k-*-*
3810sh64-*-*
3811v850-*-*
3812
3813*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
3814
3815* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
3816
3817When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
3818heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
3819been fixed.
3820
3821* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
3822
3823When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
3824fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
3825IRIX long double values).
3826
3827* VAX and "next"
3828
3829A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
3830command. This problem has been fixed.
3831
3832*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
3833
3834* Fix for ``many threads''
3835
3836On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
3837rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
3838error message:
3839
3840 ptrace: No such process.
3841 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
3842
3843This problem has been fixed.
3844
3845* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
3846
3847Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
3848GDB to dump core).
3849
3850* New ``start'' command.
3851
3852This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
3853
3854* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
3855
3856Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
3857live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
3858platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
3859
3860FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3861FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
3862NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
3863NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
3864NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
3865OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
3866OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
3867OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
3868OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
3869
3870* Signal trampoline code overhauled
3871
3872Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
3873These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
3874of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
3875call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
3876signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
3877
3878Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
3879features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
3880include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3881
3882* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
3883
3884* New native configurations
3885
3886GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
3887OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
3888OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
3889OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
3890OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
3891NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
3892OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
3893
3894* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
3895
3896GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
3897The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
3898including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
3899migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
3900compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
3901work, was also included.
3902
3903GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
3904module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
3905
3906h8300-*-*
3907mcore-*-*
3908mn10300-*-*
3909ns32k-*-*
3910sh64-*-*
3911v850-*-*
3912xstormy16-*-*
3913
3914Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
3915made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
3916
3917* REMOVED configurations and files
3918
3919Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3920Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3921Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3922Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3923Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3924AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3925Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
3926decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3927riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3928sonymips mips-sony-*
3929sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
3930
3931*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
3932
3933* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
3934
3935The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
3936GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
3937command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
3938program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
3939with GDB".
3940
3941* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
3942
3943Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
3944libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
3945cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
3946GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
3947shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
3948the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
3949are created.
3950
3951Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
3952
3953* Fixed ISO-C build problems
3954
3955The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
3956non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
3957compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
3958
3959* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
3960
3961Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
3962wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
3963
3964* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
3965
3966The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
3967permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
3968systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
3969
3970* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
3971
3972Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
3973has been updated to use constant array sizes.
3974
3975* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
3976
3977GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
3978its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
3979panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
3980
3981* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
3982
3983When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
3984by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
3985not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
3986
3987*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
3988
3989* Removed --with-mmalloc
3990
3991Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
3992conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
3993
3994* Changes in AMD64 configurations
3995
3996The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
3997the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
3998and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
3999you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
4000
4001* Revised SPARC target
4002
4003The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
4004FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
4005support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
4006from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
4007(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
4008
4009* New C++ demangler
4010
4011GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
4012names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
4013with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
4014programs.
4015
4016* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
4017
4018GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
4019arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
4020encountered these.
4021
4022* C++ nested types and namespaces
4023
4024GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
4025improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
4026is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
4027Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
4028namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
4029"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
4030frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
4031if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
4032GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
4033
4034* New native configurations
4035
4036NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
4037OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
4038OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
4039OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
4040OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
4041
4042* New debugging protocols
4043
4044M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
4045
4046* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
4047
4048The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
4049and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
4050tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
4051
4052* OBSOLETE configurations and files
4053
4054Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4055been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4056configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4057permanently REMOVED.
4058
4059Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
4060Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
4061Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
4062Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
4063Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
4064AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
4065Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
4066decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
4067riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
4068sonymips mips-sony-*
4069sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
4070
4071* REMOVED configurations and files
4072
4073SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
4074SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4075Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4076Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4077H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4078HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
4079HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4080HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
4081PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
4082386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4083Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
4084 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
4085 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
4086SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
4087SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4088Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4089Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
4090
4091*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
4092
4093* Objective-C
4094
4095Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
4096integrated into GDB.
4097
4098* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
4099
4100DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
4101information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
4102By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
4103backtraces.
4104
4105The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
4106have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
4107DWARF 2 CFI support.
4108
4109* Hosted file I/O.
4110
4111GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
4112file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
4113remote protocol documentation for details.
4114
4115* All targets using the new architecture framework.
4116
4117All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
4118architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
4119to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
4120ppc32 on ppc64).
4121
4122* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
4123
4124GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
4125per-thread variables.
4126
4127* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
4128
4129GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
4130GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
4131
4132* Separate debug info.
4133
4134GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
4135automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
4136of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
4137system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
4138and optional debug files.
4139
4140* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
4141
4142DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
4143describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
4144debugger.
4145
4146GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
4147for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
4148
4149* Java
4150
4151A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
4152Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
4153considered "useable".
4154
4155* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
4156
4157The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
4158commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
4159kernel.
4160
4161* GDB supports logging output to a file
4162
4163There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
4164used to capture GDB's output to a file.
4165
4166* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
4167
4168The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
4169disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
4170command.
4171
4172* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
4173
4174The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
4175registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
4176
4177* Profiling support
4178
4179A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
4180be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
4181session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
4182"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
4183data, for more informative profiling results.
4184
4185* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
4186
4187The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
4188option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
4189"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
4190
4191Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
4192removed.
4193
4194Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
4195Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
4196Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
4197 in a subsequent -var-update.
4198
4199* New native configurations.
4200
4201FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
4202
4203* Multi-arched targets.
4204
4205HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
4206Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
4207
4208* OBSOLETE configurations and files
4209
4210Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4211been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4212configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4213permanently REMOVED.
4214
4215Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4216Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4217H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4218HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
4219HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4220HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
4221PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
4222Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
4223 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
4224 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
4225Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4226Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
4227
4228* REMOVED configurations and files
4229
4230V850EA ISA
4231Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4232IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
4233i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
4234i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
4235i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
4236HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
4237 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
4238 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4239Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4240Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4241Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4242OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4243I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4244
4245* MIPS $fp behavior changed
4246
4247The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
4248the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
4249context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
4250address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
4251The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
4252
4253*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
4254
4255* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
4256
4257When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
4258`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
4259in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
4260library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
4261shared libs like mad''.
4262
4263* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
4264
4265Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
4266the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
4267arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
4268powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
4269
4270* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
4271
4272GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
4273and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
4274they expand.
4275
4276The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
4277invocations in expression, and shows the result.
4278
4279The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
4280macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
4281
4282Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
4283information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
4284your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
4285information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
4286
4287* Multi-arched targets.
4288
4289DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
4290DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
4291NEC V850 v850-*-*
4292National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
4293Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
4294Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
4295
4296* New targets.
4297
4298Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
4299
4300
4301* New native configurations
4302
4303Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
4304SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
4305MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
4306UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
4307
4308* OBSOLETE configurations and files
4309
4310Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4311been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4312configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4313permanently REMOVED.
4314
4315Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4316OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4317IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
4318Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4319Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4320Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4321i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
4322i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
4323i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
4324HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
4325 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
4326 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4327I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4328
4329* OBSOLETE languages
4330
4331CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
4332
4333* REMOVED configurations and files
4334
4335AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
4336A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4337AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4338AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4339AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4340
4341testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
4342
4343* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
4344
4345This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
4346commands. The default is 1024.
4347
4348* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
4349
4350Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
4351
4352* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
4353
4354These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
4355to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
4356from a file into memory (restore).
4357
4358* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
4359
4360The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
4361including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
4362of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
4363
4364*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
4365
4366* New targets.
4367
4368Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
4369
4370* Bug fixes
4371
4372gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
4373mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
4374Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
4375
4376gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
4377dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
4378Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
4379
4380Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
4381Surprisingly enough, it works now.
4382By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
4383
4384i386 hardware watchpoint support:
4385avoid misses on second run for some targets.
4386By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
4387
4388*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
4389
4390* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
4391
4392This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
4393really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
4394In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
4395target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
4396This can be a significant performance improvement on some
4397(notably embedded) targets.
4398
4399* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
4400
4401This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
4402process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
4403GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
4404hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
4405
4406* New command line option
4407
4408GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
4409
4410* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
4411
4412There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
4413command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
4414a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
4415be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
4416open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
4417issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
4418a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
4419it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
4420GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
4421is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
4422
4423* Changes in ARM configurations.
4424
4425Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
4426configuration is fully multi-arch.
4427
4428* New native configurations
4429
4430ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
4431x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
4432AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
4433Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
4434
4435* New targets
4436
4437Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
4438
4439* OBSOLETE configurations and files
4440
4441Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4442been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4443configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4444permanently REMOVED.
4445
4446AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
4447A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4448AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4449AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4450AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4451
4452testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
4453
4454* REMOVED configurations and files
4455
4456TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4457WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4458PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4459PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4460PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
4461Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
4462Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
4463 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
4464SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
4465Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
4466Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4467ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
4468Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
4469
4470* Changes to command line processing
4471
4472The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
4473for the inferior from gdb's command line.
4474
4475* Changes to key bindings
4476
4477There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
4478
4479*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
4480
4481Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
4482
4483Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
4484corrupted.
4485
4486Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
4487
4488Numerous documentation fixes.
4489
4490Numerous testsuite fixes.
4491
4492*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
4493
4494* New native configurations
4495
4496Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
4497x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
4498MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
4499MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4500ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
4501s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
4502
4503* New targets
4504
4505Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
4506CRIS cris-axis
4507UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
4508
4509* OBSOLETE configurations and files
4510
4511x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
4512Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
4513Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
4514 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
4515TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4516WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4517Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
4518PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4519PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4520PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
4521SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
4522Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4523ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
4524Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
4525
4526stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
4527kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
4528
4529Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4530been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4531configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4532permanently REMOVED.
4533
4534* REMOVED configurations and files
4535
4536Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
4537Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
4538Pyramid pyramid-*-*
4539ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
4540Tahoe tahoe-*-*
4541ser-ocd.c *-*-*
4542
4543* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
4544
4545GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
4546sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
4547present.
4548
4549* Other news:
4550
4551* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
4552
4553* The MI enabled by default.
4554
4555The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
4556revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
4557engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
4558using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
4559which is now deprecated.
4560
4561* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
4562
4563GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
4564main features are supported:
4565
4566 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
4567
4568 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
4569 extension;
4570
4571 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
4572
4573 - a Pascal expression parser.
4574
4575However, some important features are not yet supported.
4576
4577 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
4578
4579 - there are some problems with boolean types;
4580
4581 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
4582 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
4583
4584 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
4585
4586 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
4587
4588* Changes in completion.
4589
4590Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
4591to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
4592users expect at the shell prompt.
4593
4594Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
4595`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
4596program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
4597files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
4598be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
4599considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
4600name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
4601
4602`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
4603
4604* New platform-independent commands:
4605
4606It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
4607hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
4608documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
4609
4610* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
4611
4612Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
4613revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
4614many threads as your system allows you to have.
4615
4616Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
4617
4618Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
4619multi-threaded programs though.
4620
4621* Changes in MIPS configurations.
4622
4623Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
4624
4625GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
4626debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
4627supported.)
4628
4629* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
4630
4631Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
4632breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
4633implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
4634put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
4635and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
4636registers.
4637
4638The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
4639debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
4640watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
4641
4642* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
4643
4644New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
4645the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
4646
4647New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
4648display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
4649IDT.
4650
4651New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
4652from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
4653New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
4654a given linear address.
4655
4656GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
4657program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
4658which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
4659
4660DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
4661
4662It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
4663
4664* Changes in documentation.
4665
4666All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
4667Documentation License.
4668
4669Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
4670manual.
4671
4672TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
4673
4674Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
4675manual.
4676
4677The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
4678documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
4679hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
4680
4681* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
4682
4683The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
4684``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
4685contents of this file.
4686
4687* gdba.el deleted
4688
4689GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
4690
4691*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
4692
4693* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
4694
4695Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
4696programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
4697displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
4698greater level of detail.
4699
4700* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
4701
4702It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
4703bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
4704on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
4705written.
4706
4707* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
4708
4709The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
4710necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
4711machines ``out of the box''.
4712
4713The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
4714possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
4715signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
4716would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
4717interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
4718
4719It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
4720standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
4721even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
4722and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
4723terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
4724
4725The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
4726enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
4727also works.
4728
4729DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
4730GDB.
4731
4732It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
4733directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
4734times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
4735breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
4736
4737* New native configurations
4738
4739ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
4740PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
4741
4742* New targets
4743
4744Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
4745x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
4746PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
4747TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4748
4749* OBSOLETE configurations
4750
4751Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
4752Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
4753Pyramid pyramid-*-*
4754ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
4755Tahoe tahoe-*-*
4756
4757Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
4758but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
4759these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
4760be permanently REMOVED.
4761
4762* Gould support removed
4763
4764Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
4765
4766* New features for SVR4
4767
4768On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
4769without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
4770load symbols from the running process's executable file.
4771
4772* Many C++ enhancements
4773
4774C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
4775in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
4776
4777* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
4778
4779A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
4780sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
4781with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
4782``|<program> <args>'' vis:
4783
4784 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
4785 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
4786
4787* MIPS 64 remote protocol
4788
4789A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
4790expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
4791instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
4792
4793The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
4794added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
4795
4796* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
4797
4798The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
4799``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
4800include ``set remote P-packet''.
4801
4802* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
4803
4804The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
4805accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
4806``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
4807
4808* ``apropos'' command added.
4809
4810The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
4811documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
4812try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
4813
4814* New MI interface
4815
4816A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
4817interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
4818process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
4819"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
4820enabled by configuring with:
4821
4822 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
4823
4824*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
4825
4826* New native configurations
4827
4828HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
4829HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
4830M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
4831
4832* New targets
4833
4834Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4835Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
4836Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4837
4838* OBSOLETE configurations
4839
4840Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
4841
4842Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
4843but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
4844these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
4845be permanently REMOVED.
4846
4847* ANSI/ISO C
4848
4849As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
4850buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
4851containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
4852use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
4853available. If this is not true, please report the affected
4854configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
4855information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
4856already.
4857
4858* Readline 2.2
4859
4860GDB now uses readline 2.2.
4861
4862* set extension-language
4863
4864You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
4865languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
4866you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
4867 set extension-language .c c++
4868The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
4869and their associated languages.
4870
4871* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
4872
4873When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
4874you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
4875PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
4876
4877 set processor NAME
4878
4879sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
4880following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
4881
4882 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
4883 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
4884 403 IBM PowerPC 403
4885 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
4886 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
4887 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
4888 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
4889 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
4890 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
4891 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
4892 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
4893
4894At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
4895special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
4896registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
4897only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
4898
4899* HP-UX support
4900
4901Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
4902more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
4903library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
4904support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
4905for xdb and dbx commands.
4906
4907* Catchpoints
4908
4909HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
4910generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
4911to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
4912
4913This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
4914argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
4915output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
4916
4917* Debugging across forks
4918
4919On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
4920in the inferior.
4921
4922* TUI
4923
4924HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
4925it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
4926configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
4927
4928* GDB remote protocol additions
4929
4930A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
4931Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
4932fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
4933allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
4934
4935For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
4936full 64-bit address. The command
4937
4938 set remoteaddresssize 32
4939
4940can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
4941the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
4942will be discarded.
4943
4944In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
4945command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
4946
4947 maint packet heythere
4948
4949sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
4950disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
4951time.
4952
4953The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
4954target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
4955downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
4956
4957* Tracing can collect general expressions
4958
4959You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
4960further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
4961doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
4962
4963* mask-address variable for Mips
4964
4965For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
4966a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
4967of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
4968
4969* Higher serial baud rates
4970
4971GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
4972230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
4973to achieve all of these rates.)
4974
4975* i960 simulator
4976
4977The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
4978builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
4979
4980
4981*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
4982
4983* New native configurations
4984
4985Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
4986Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
4987Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4988PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
4989PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4990Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
4991Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
4992
4993* New targets
4994
4995Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4996Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
4997Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4998Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
4999MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
5000MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
5001MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
5002Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
5003Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
5004Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5005NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
5006
5007* New debugging protocols
5008
5009ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
5010M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
5011DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
5012PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
5013PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
5014Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
5015
5016* DWARF 2
5017
5018All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
5019format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
5020information.
5021
5022* Java frontend
5023
5024GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
5025only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
5026
5027* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
5028
5029For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
5030loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
5031locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
5032
5033* Live range splitting
5034
5035GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
5036range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
5037more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
5038
5039* Hurd support
5040
5041GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
5042updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
5043
5044* ARM Thumb support
5045
5046GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
5047instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
5048instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
5049accordingly.
5050
5051* MIPS16 support
5052
5053GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
5054instruction set.
5055
5056* Overlay support
5057
5058GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
5059linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
5060will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
5061control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
5062additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
5063in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
5064
5065* info symbol
5066
5067The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
5068the symbol at the specified address.
5069
5070* Trace support
5071
5072The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
5073asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
5074extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
5075includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
5076file tracepoint.c for more details.
5077
5078* MIPS simulator
5079
5080Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
5081by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
5082of most MIPS variants.
5083
5084* Sparc simulator
5085
5086Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
5087by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
5088Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
5089
5090* set architecture
5091
5092For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
5093basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
5094architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
5095the possible architectures.
5096
5097*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
5098
5099* New native configurations
5100
5101Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
5102M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
5103PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
5104PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
5105PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
5106RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
5107
5108* New targets
5109
5110ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
5111I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5112MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
5113MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
5114PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
5115Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
5116Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5117
5118* PowerPC simulator
5119
5120The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
5121contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
5122PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
5123basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
5124performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
5125
5126* Solaris 2.5
5127
5128GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
5129
5130* Windows 95/NT native
5131
5132GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
5133To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
5134which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
5135Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
5136ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
5137
5138* dont-repeat command
5139
5140If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
5141command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
5142useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
5143extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
5144
5145* Send break instead of ^C
5146
5147The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
5148rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
5149GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
5150
5151* Remote protocol timeout
5152
5153The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
5154that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
5155to read from the target. The default value is 2.
5156
5157* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
5158
5159By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
5160loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
5161stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
5162when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
5163in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
5164
5165Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
5166/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
5167automatically on hpux10.
5168
5169* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
5170
5171Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
5172
5173* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
5174
5175When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
5176may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
5177the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
5178every character. The default value is 1050.
5179
5180* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
5181
5182If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
5183a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
5184replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
5185details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
5186remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
5187to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
5188
5189* Speedups for remote debugging
5190
5191GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
5192the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
5193and more efficient S-record downloading.
5194
5195* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
5196
5197GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
5198Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
5199
5200*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
5201
5202* Psymtabs for XCOFF
5203
5204The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
5205can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
5206
5207* Remote targets use caching
5208
5209Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
5210remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
5211it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
5212debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
5213off' turns the the data cache off.
5214
5215* Remote targets may have threads
5216
5217The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
5218in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
5219gdb/remote.c for details.
5220
5221* NetROM support
5222
5223If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
5224support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
5225acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
5226write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
5227support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
5228another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
5229sequence is something like
5230
5231 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
5232 load <prog>
5233 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
5234
5235* Macintosh host
5236
5237GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
5238may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
5239it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
5240available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
5241device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
5242directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
5243scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
5244mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
5245
5246* Autoconf
5247
5248GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
5249but does simplify configuration and building.
5250
5251* hpux10
5252
5253GDB now supports hpux10.
5254
5255*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
5256
5257* New native configurations
5258
5259x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
5260x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
5261NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
5262Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
5263
5264* New targets
5265
5266A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
5267HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
5268CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
5269PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
5270WDC 65816 w65-*-*
5271
5272* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
5273
5274GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
5275possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
5276filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
5277the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
5278if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
5279
5280* Arguments to user-defined commands
5281
5282User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
5283Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
5284trivial example:
5285define adder
5286 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
5287
5288To execute the command use:
5289adder 1 2 3
5290
5291Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
5292Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
5293use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
5294
5295* New `if' and `while' commands
5296
5297This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
5298commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
5299expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
5300execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
5301terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
5302`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
5303if the expression is zero.
5304
5305* Fortran source language mode
5306
5307GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
5308Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
5309variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
5310with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
5311Fortran compilers.
5312
5313* Better HPUX support
5314
5315Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
5316running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
5317processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
5318for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
5319that behavior do the following before running the program:
5320
5321 adb -w a.out
5322 __dld_flags?W 0x5
5323 control-d
5324
5325This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
5326To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
5327
5328 adb -w a.out
5329 __dld_flags?W 0x4
5330 control-d
5331
5332You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
5333the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
5334external linkage.
5335
5336GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
5337HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
5338
5339* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
5340
5341You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
5342commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
5343current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
5344"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
5345associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
5346configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
5347
5348* New DOS host serial code
5349
5350This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
5351no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
5352a PC's serial port.
5353
5354*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
5355
5356* New "complete" command
5357
5358This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
5359were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
5360
5361* Trailing space optional in prompt
5362
5363"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
5364allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
5365
5366* Breakpoint hit counts
5367
5368"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
5369has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
5370can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
5371to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
5372less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
5373that breakpoint.
5374
5375* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
5376
5377"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
5378an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
5379arrays actually contain only short strings.
5380
5381* Shared library breakpoints
5382
5383In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
5384breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
5385
5386* Hardware watchpoints
5387
5388There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
5389targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
5390
5391Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
5392
5393* Annotations
5394
5395Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
5396and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
5397
5398* Improved Irix 5 support
5399
5400GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
5401
5402* Improved HPPA support
5403
5404GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
5405
5406* New native configurations
5407
5408Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
5409HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
5410Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
5411RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
5412
5413* New targets
5414
5415OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
5416MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
5417Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
5418
5419* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
5420
5421There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
5422This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
5423
5424* Fixes
5425
5426As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
5427and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
5428
5429*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
5430
5431* Irix 5 is now supported
5432
5433* HPPA support
5434
5435GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
5436to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
5437GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
5438of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
5439can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
5440
5441
5442*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
5443
5444* User visible changes:
5445
5446* Remote Debugging
5447
5448The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
5449target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
5450debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
5451integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
5452debugging info for the mips target).
5453
5454* DEC Alpha native support
5455
5456GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
5457debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
5458work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
5459Alpha-specific notes.
5460
5461* Preliminary thread implementation
5462
5463GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
5464
5465* LynxOS native and target support for 386
5466
5467This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
5468to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
5469for details).
5470
5471* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
5472
5473This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
5474mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
5475call methods, ...etc.
5476
5477*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
5478
5479 * User visible changes:
5480
5481Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
5482supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
5483other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
5484somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
5485
5486Filename completion now works.
5487
5488When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
5489arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
5490addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
5491
5492All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
5493vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
5494should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
5495your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
5496to be on the far side of a thin network line.
5497
5498 * DEC alpha support
5499
5500This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
5501cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
5502
5503
5504*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
5505
5506 * Testsuite
5507
5508This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
5509The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
5510via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
5511
5512 * C++ demangling
5513
5514'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
5515emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
5516Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
5517disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
5518use gdb with AT&T cfront.
5519
5520 * Simulators
5521
5522GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
5523So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
5524Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
5525
5526 * New targets supported
5527
5528H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5529H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
5530SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
5531Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
5532IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
5533
5534Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
5535version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
5536GO32 memory extender.
5537
5538 * New remote protocols
5539
5540MIPS remote debugging protocol.
5541
5542 * New source languages supported
5543
5544This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
5545used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
5546into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
5547
5548
5549*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
5550
5551 * HP Precision Architecture supported
5552
5553GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
5554version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
5555University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
5556compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
5557format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
5558(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
5559
5560Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
5561
5562 * Faster and better demangling
5563
5564We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
5565demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
5566character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
5567only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
5568This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
5569increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
5570symbol lookups.
5571
5572`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
5573from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
5574compiler does not actually implement.
5575
5576 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
5577
5578In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
5579inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
5580recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
5581very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
5582The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
5583circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
5584fix.
5585
5586The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
5587release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
5588
5589 * Improved configure script
5590
5591The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
5592you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
5593host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
5594done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
5595
5596We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
5597version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
5598`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
5599The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
5600only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
5601We hope to make this the default in a future release.
5602
5603 * Documentation improvements
5604
5605There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
5606produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
5607before submitting changes.
5608
5609The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
5610M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
5611`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
5612you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
5613a future texinfo-X.Y release.
5614
5615*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
5616We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
5617been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
5618or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
5619`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
5620around this problem.
5621
5622 * New features
5623
5624GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
5625the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
5626`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
5627the target program.
5628
5629The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
5630how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
5631
5632 * New native hosts supported
5633
5634HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
5635386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
5636
5637 * New targets supported
5638
5639AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
5640
5641 * New file formats supported
5642
5643BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
5644HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
5645
5646 * Major bug fixes
5647
5648Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
5649
5650We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
5651printf_filtered("%s") problems.
5652
5653We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
5654for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
5655release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
5656
5657You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
5658will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
5659
5660We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
5661for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
5662especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
5663libraries.
5664
5665The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
5666information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
5667command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
5668any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
5669when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
5670
5671 * Internal improvements
5672
5673GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
5674debugging of multiple languages in the future.
5675
5676GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
5677Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
5678symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
5679contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
5680shared code that handles any of them.
5681
5682 * New command line options
5683
5684We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
5685
5686 * Mmalloc licensing
5687
5688The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
5689General Public License.
5690
5691*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
5692
5693 * Host/native/target split
5694
5695GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
5696hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
5697target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
5698local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
5699ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
5700
5701The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
5702GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
5703is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
5704code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
5705any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
5706built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
5707handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
5708
5709GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
5710It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
5711plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
5712
5713 * New hosts supported
5714
5715HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
5716386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
5717386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
5718
5719 * New targets supported
5720
5721Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
572268030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
5723
5724 * New native hosts supported
5725
5726386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
5727 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
5728386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
5729
5730 * New file formats supported
5731
5732BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
5733supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
5734format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
5735
5736 * New commands
5737
5738`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
5739`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
5740These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
5741
5742`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
5743
5744You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
5745scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
5746prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
5747executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
5748
5749 * C++ improvements
5750
5751We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
5752info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
5753symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
5754
5755Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
5756
5757 * Major bug fixes
5758
5759The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
5760fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
5761by the compiler.
5762
5763We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
5764support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
5765
5766John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
5767slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
5768that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
5769purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
5770the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
5771mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
5772
5773Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
5774about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
5775completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
5776we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
5777
5778 * AMD 29k support
5779
5780A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
5781specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
5782calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
5783usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
5784in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
5785
5786We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
5787Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
5788of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
5789resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
5790
5791 * Remote interfaces
5792
5793We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
5794with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
5795message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
5796This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
5797needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
5798breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
5799each instruction being stepped through.
5800
5801The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
5802registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
5803
5804There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
5805find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
5806Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
5807processor with a serial port.
5808
5809 * Configuration
5810
5811Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
5812`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
5813supported, and what files each one uses.
5814
5815 * Library changes
5816
5817There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
5818disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
5819Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
5820disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
5821
5822The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
5823Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
5824can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
5825grants all the rights from the General Public License.
5826
5827 * Documentation
5828
5829The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
5830reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
5831as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
5832encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
5833system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
5834bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
5835
5836And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
5837
5838
5839*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
5840
5841 * Better support for C++ function names
5842
5843GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
5844names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
5845(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
5846single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
5847Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
5848
5849GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
5850the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
5851You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
5852lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
5853for the list of formats.
5854
5855 * G++ symbol mangling problem
5856
5857Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
5858C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
5859directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
5860can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
5861usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
5862about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
5863this problem.)
5864
5865 * New 'maintenance' command
5866
5867All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
5868the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
5869can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
5870
5871 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
5872 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
5873 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
5874 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
5875 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
5876 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
5877
5878The following commands are new:
5879
5880 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
5881 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
5882 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
5883
5884 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
5885
5886We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
5887(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
5888be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
5889read after argv processing.
5890
5891 * New hosts supported
5892
5893Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
5894
5895GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
5896
5897We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
5898is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
5899for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
5900masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
5901fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
5902It costs extra.
5903
5904 * New targets supported
5905
5906Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5907
5908 * More smarts about finding #include files
5909
5910GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
5911all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
5912greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
5913especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
5914the one that contains your sources.
5915
5916We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
5917breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
5918try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
5919
5920 * Interesting infernals change
5921
5922GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
5923section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
5924target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
5925stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
5926
5927 * Bug fixes (of course!)
5928
5929There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
5930 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
5931 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
5932
5933See the ChangeLog for details.
5934
5935*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
5936
5937 * New machines supported (host and target)
5938
5939IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
5940
5941SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
5942
5943 * New malloc package
5944
5945GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
5946Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
5947capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
5948This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
5949pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
5950more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
5951
5952 * info proc
5953
5954The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
5955'help info proc' for details.
5956
5957 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
5958
5959The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
5960Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
5961possible.
5962
5963 * File name changes for MS-DOS
5964
5965Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
5966support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
5967conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
5968environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
5969that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
5970in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
5971
5972 * Cross byte order fixes
5973
5974Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
5975targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
5976
5977 * New -mapped and -readnow options
5978
5979If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
5980system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
5981`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
5982program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
5983called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
5984Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
5985and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
5986the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
5987option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
5988starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
5989
5990You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
5991the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
5992information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
5993slower, but makes future operations faster.
5994
5995The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
5996build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
5997A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
5998use is:
5999
6000 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
6001
6002The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
6003It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
6004shared across multiple host platforms.
6005
6006 * longjmp() handling
6007
6008GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
6009siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
6010all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
6011platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
6012
6013 * Solaris 2.0
6014
6015Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
6016this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
6017reading symbols.
6018
6019 * Bug fixes
6020
6021As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
6022People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
6023crashes and trashed symbol tables.
6024
6025*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
6026
6027 * New machines supported (host and target)
6028
6029SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
6030 (except core files)
6031BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
6032Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
6033
6034 * New machines supported (target)
6035
6036AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
6037
6038 * C++ support
6039
6040GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
6041The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
6042per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
6043
6044GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
6045`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
6046extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
6047good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
6048will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
6049released.
6050
6051 * New features for SVR4
6052
6053GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
6054shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
6055only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
6056
6057The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
6058on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
6059it prints the address mappings of the process.
6060
6061If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
6062bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
6063
6064 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
6065
6066Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
6067now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
6068skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
6069make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
6070same code linked statically.
6071
6072 * New Getopt
6073
6074GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
6075version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
6076continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
6077Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
6078added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
6079future by other options that begin with the same letter.
6080
6081 * Bugs fixed
6082
6083The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
6084Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
6085See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
6086
6087
6088*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
6089
6090 * New machines supported (host and target)
6091
6092Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
6093NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
6094Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
6095
6096 * Almost SCO Unix support
6097
6098We had hoped to support:
6099SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
6100(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
6101that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
6102about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
6103
6104 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
6105
6106GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
6107debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
6108is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
6109send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
6110reqired (if any).
6111
6112 * New Readline
6113
6114GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
6115is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
6116required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
6117
6118 * Bugs fixed
6119
6120The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
6121Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
6122See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
6123
6124 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
6125
6126GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
6127supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
6128symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
6129
6130Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
6131mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
6132debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
6133mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
6134version 2.
6135
6136Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
6137really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
6138line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
6139variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
6140situation somewhat.
6141
6142When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
6143However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
6144methods.
6145
6146We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
6147DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
6148encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
6149
6150
6151*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
6152
6153 * Improved configuration
6154
6155Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
6156Porting BFD is simpler.
6157
6158 * Stepping improved
6159
6160The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
6161of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
6162in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
6163function that has debugging information is called within the line.
6164
6165 * Bug fixing
6166
6167Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
6168
6169 * New host supported (not target)
6170
6171Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
6172
6173
6174*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
6175
6176 * Multiple source language support
6177
6178GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
6179It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
6180and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
6181language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
6182You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
6183`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
6184
6185 * GDB and Modula-2
6186
6187GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
6188currently under development at the State University of New York at
6189Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
6190continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
6191
6192Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
6193debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
6194symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
6195
6196There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
6197in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
6198
6199 * set write on/off
6200
6201GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
6202a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
6203the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
6204by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
6205effect immediately.
6206
6207 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
6208
6209When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
6210shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
6211The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
6212examining core files.
6213
6214 * set listsize
6215
6216You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
6217The default is 10.
6218
6219 * New machines supported (host and target)
6220
6221SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
6222Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
6223Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
6224
6225 * New hosts supported (not targets)
6226
6227IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
6228
6229 * New targets supported (not hosts)
6230
6231AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
6232AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
6233Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
6234
6235 * New remote interfaces
6236
6237AMD 29000 Adapt
6238AMD 29000 Minimon
6239
6240
6241*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
6242
6243 * New Facilities
6244
6245Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
6246
6247Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
6248target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
6249is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
6250remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
6251remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
6252also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
6253using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
6254stub on the target system.
6255
6256New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
6257
6258GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
6259library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
6260object file types such as a.out and coff.
6261
6262There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
6263refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
6264
6265
6266 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
6267
6268All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
6269by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
6270
6271For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
6272``Show prompt'' produces the response:
6273Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
6274
6275What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
6276print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
6277will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
6278all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
6279
6280confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
6281 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
6282 it is already running. Default is ON.
6283
6284editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
6285 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
6286 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
6287 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
6288 Default is ON.
6289
6290history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
6291 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
6292 or the value of the environment variable
6293 GDBHISTFILE.
6294
6295history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
6296 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
6297 HISTSIZE.
6298
6299history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
6300 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
6301 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
6302
6303history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
6304 history expansion will be performed on
6305 command line input. The default is OFF.
6306
6307radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
6308 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
6309 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
6310
6311height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
6312 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
6313 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
6314 variable TERM.
6315
6316width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
6317 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
6318 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
6319 variable TERM.
6320
6321Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
6322``set width'' instead.
6323
6324print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
6325 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
6326 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
6327 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
6328
6329print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
6330 is OFF.
6331
6332print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
6333 "raw" form if off.
6334
6335print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
6336 like instructions.
6337
6338print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
6339
6340
6341 * Support for Epoch Environment.
6342
6343The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
6344new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
6345are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
6346window.
6347
6348
6349 * Support for Shared Libraries
6350
6351GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
6352Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
6353before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
6354happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
6355At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
6356from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
6357shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
6358It can be abbreviated ``share''.
6359
6360sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
6361 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
6362 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
6363
6364info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
6365
6366
6367 * Watchpoints
6368
6369A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
6370expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
6371tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
6372quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
6373problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
6374more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
6375
6376watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
6377
6378info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
6379
6380delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6381disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6382enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6383
6384
6385 * C++ multiple inheritance
6386
6387When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
6388for C++ programs.
6389
6390 * C++ exception handling
6391
6392Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
6393ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
6394the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
6395handler's context).
6396
6397catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
6398 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
6399 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
6400
6401info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
6402 current stack frame.
6403
6404
6405 * Minor command changes
6406
6407The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
6408command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
6409is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
6410
6411The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
6412at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
6413frames without printing.
6414
6415 * New directory command
6416
6417'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
6418The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
6419about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
6420with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
6421find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
6422
6423 * Configuring GDB for compilation
6424
6425For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
6426for more details.
6427
6428GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
6429two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
6430Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
6431where the program that you are debugging will run.
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