1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 6.5
8 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
13 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
14 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
15 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
16 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
19 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
23 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
25 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
29 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
30 only if it doesn't already have a value.
32 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
34 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
36 restart <n> Return the program state to a
37 previously saved state.
39 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
41 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
43 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
44 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
46 info forks List forks of the user program that
47 are available to be debugged.
49 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
50 forks of the user program that are
51 available to be debugged.
53 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
54 that are available to be debugged (and
55 kill the forked process).
57 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
58 that are available to be debugged (and
59 allow the process to continue).
63 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
65 * Improved Windows host support
67 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
68 native console support, and remote communications using either
69 network sockets or serial ports.
71 * Improved Modula-2 language support
73 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
74 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
75 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
76 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
77 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
78 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
82 The ARM rdi-share module.
84 The Netware NLM debug server.
86 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
88 * New native configurations
90 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
91 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
95 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
97 * New command line options
99 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
100 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
101 the child (debugged) program exited with.
102 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
103 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
104 specified multiple times and in conjunction
105 with the --command (-x) option.
107 * Deprecated commands removed
109 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
113 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
114 othernames set arm disassembler
115 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
116 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
117 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
120 * New BSD user-level threads support
122 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
123 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
126 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
127 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
128 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
130 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
131 are not yet supported.
133 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
134 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
136 * REMOVED configurations and files
138 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
139 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
140 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
142 * New "set print array-indexes" command
144 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
145 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
148 * VAX floating point support
150 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
152 * User-defined command support
154 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
155 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
156 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
158 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
160 * New command line option
162 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
165 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
167 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
168 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
169 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
170 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
171 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
173 * Internationalization
175 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
176 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
177 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
181 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
182 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
183 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
185 * New native configurations
187 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
191 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
192 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
194 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
196 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
197 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
198 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
201 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
202 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
203 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
215 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
216 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
218 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
220 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
221 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
222 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
232 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
234 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
236 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
237 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
240 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
242 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
243 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
244 IRIX long double values).
248 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
249 command. This problem has been fixed.
251 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
253 * Fix for ``many threads''
255 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
256 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
259 ptrace: No such process.
260 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
262 This problem has been fixed.
264 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
266 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
269 * New ``start'' command.
271 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
273 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
275 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
276 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
277 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
279 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
280 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
281 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
282 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
283 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
284 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
285 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
286 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
287 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
289 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
291 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
292 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
293 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
294 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
295 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
297 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
298 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
299 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
301 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
303 * New native configurations
305 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
306 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
307 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
308 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
309 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
310 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
311 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
313 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
315 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
316 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
317 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
318 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
319 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
320 work, was also included.
322 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
323 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
333 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
334 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
336 * REMOVED configurations and files
338 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
339 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
340 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
341 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
342 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
343 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
344 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
345 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
346 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
348 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
350 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
352 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
354 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
355 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
356 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
357 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
360 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
362 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
363 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
364 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
365 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
366 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
367 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
370 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
372 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
374 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
375 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
376 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
378 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
380 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
381 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
383 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
385 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
386 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
387 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
389 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
391 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
392 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
394 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
396 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
397 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
398 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
400 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
402 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
403 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
404 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
406 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
408 * Removed --with-mmalloc
410 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
411 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
413 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
415 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
416 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
417 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
418 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
420 * Revised SPARC target
422 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
423 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
424 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
425 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
426 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
430 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
431 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
432 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
435 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
437 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
438 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
441 * C++ nested types and namespaces
443 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
444 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
445 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
446 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
447 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
448 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
449 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
450 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
451 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
453 * New native configurations
455 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
456 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
457 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
458 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
459 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
461 * New debugging protocols
463 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
465 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
467 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
468 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
469 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
471 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
473 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
474 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
475 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
478 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
479 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
480 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
481 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
482 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
483 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
484 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
485 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
486 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
488 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
490 * REMOVED configurations and files
492 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
493 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
494 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
495 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
496 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
497 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
498 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
499 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
500 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
501 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
502 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
503 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
504 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
505 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
506 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
507 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
508 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
510 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
514 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
517 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
519 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
520 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
521 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
524 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
525 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
530 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
531 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
532 remote protocol documentation for details.
534 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
536 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
537 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
538 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
541 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
543 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
544 per-thread variables.
546 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
548 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
549 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
551 * Separate debug info.
553 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
554 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
555 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
556 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
557 and optional debug files.
559 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
561 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
562 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
565 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
566 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
570 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
571 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
572 considered "useable".
574 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
576 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
577 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
580 * GDB supports logging output to a file
582 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
583 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
585 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
587 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
588 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
591 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
593 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
594 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
598 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
599 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
600 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
601 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
602 data, for more informative profiling results.
604 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
606 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
607 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
608 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
610 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
613 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
614 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
615 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
616 in a subsequent -var-update.
618 * New native configurations.
620 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
622 * Multi-arched targets.
624 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
625 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
627 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
629 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
630 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
631 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
634 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
635 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
636 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
637 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
638 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
639 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
640 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
641 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
642 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
643 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
644 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
645 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
647 * REMOVED configurations and files
650 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
651 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
652 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
653 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
654 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
655 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
657 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
658 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
659 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
660 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
661 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
662 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
664 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
666 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
667 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
668 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
669 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
670 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
672 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
674 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
676 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
677 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
678 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
679 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
680 shared libs like mad''.
682 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
684 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
685 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
686 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
687 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
689 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
691 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
692 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
695 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
696 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
698 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
699 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
701 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
702 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
703 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
704 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
706 * Multi-arched targets.
708 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
709 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
711 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
712 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
713 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
717 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
720 * New native configurations
722 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
723 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
724 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
725 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
727 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
729 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
730 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
731 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
734 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
735 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
736 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
737 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
738 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
739 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
740 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
741 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
742 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
743 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
745 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
746 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
750 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
752 * REMOVED configurations and files
754 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
755 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
756 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
757 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
758 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
760 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
762 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
764 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
765 commands. The default is 1024.
767 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
769 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
771 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
773 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
774 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
775 from a file into memory (restore).
777 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
779 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
780 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
781 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
783 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
791 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
792 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
793 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
795 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
796 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
797 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
799 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
800 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
801 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
803 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
804 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
805 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
807 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
809 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
811 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
812 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
813 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
814 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
815 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
816 (notably embedded) targets.
818 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
820 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
821 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
822 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
823 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
825 * New command line option
827 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
829 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
831 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
832 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
833 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
834 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
835 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
836 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
837 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
838 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
839 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
840 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
842 * Changes in ARM configurations.
844 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
845 configuration is fully multi-arch.
847 * New native configurations
849 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
850 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
851 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
852 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
856 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
858 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
860 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
861 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
862 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
865 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
866 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
867 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
868 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
869 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
871 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
873 * REMOVED configurations and files
875 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
877 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
878 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
879 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
880 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
881 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
882 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
883 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
884 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
885 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
886 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
887 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
889 * Changes to command line processing
891 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
892 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
894 * Changes to key bindings
896 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
898 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
900 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
902 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
905 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
907 Numerous documentation fixes.
909 Numerous testsuite fixes.
911 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
913 * New native configurations
915 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
916 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
917 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
918 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
920 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
924 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
926 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
928 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
930 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
931 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
932 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
933 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
934 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
936 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
937 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
938 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
939 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
940 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
941 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
942 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
943 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
945 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
946 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
948 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
949 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
950 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
953 * REMOVED configurations and files
955 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
956 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
958 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
962 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
964 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
965 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
970 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
972 * The MI enabled by default.
974 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
975 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
976 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
977 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
978 which is now deprecated.
980 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
982 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
983 main features are supported:
985 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
987 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
990 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
992 - a Pascal expression parser.
994 However, some important features are not yet supported.
996 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
998 - there are some problems with boolean types;
1000 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
1001 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
1003 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
1005 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
1007 * Changes in completion.
1009 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
1010 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
1011 users expect at the shell prompt.
1013 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
1014 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
1015 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
1016 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
1017 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
1018 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
1019 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
1021 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
1023 * New platform-independent commands:
1025 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
1026 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
1027 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
1029 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
1031 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
1032 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
1033 many threads as your system allows you to have.
1035 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
1037 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
1038 multi-threaded programs though.
1040 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
1042 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
1044 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
1045 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
1048 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
1050 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
1051 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
1052 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
1053 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
1054 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
1057 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
1058 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
1059 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
1061 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
1063 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
1064 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
1066 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
1067 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
1070 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
1071 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
1072 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
1073 a given linear address.
1075 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
1076 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
1077 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
1079 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
1081 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
1083 * Changes in documentation.
1085 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
1086 Documentation License.
1088 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1091 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
1093 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1096 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
1097 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
1098 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
1100 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
1102 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
1103 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
1104 contents of this file.
1108 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
1110 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
1112 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
1114 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
1115 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
1116 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
1117 greater level of detail.
1119 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
1121 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
1122 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
1123 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
1126 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
1128 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
1129 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
1130 machines ``out of the box''.
1132 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
1133 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
1134 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
1135 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
1136 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
1138 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
1139 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
1140 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
1141 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
1142 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
1144 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
1145 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
1148 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
1151 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
1152 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
1153 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
1154 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
1156 * New native configurations
1158 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
1159 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1163 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
1164 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
1165 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
1166 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1168 * OBSOLETE configurations
1170 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1171 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
1173 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
1176 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1177 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1178 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1179 be permanently REMOVED.
1181 * Gould support removed
1183 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
1185 * New features for SVR4
1187 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
1188 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
1189 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
1191 * Many C++ enhancements
1193 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
1194 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
1196 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
1198 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
1199 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
1200 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
1201 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
1203 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
1204 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
1206 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
1208 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
1209 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
1210 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
1212 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
1213 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1215 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
1217 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
1218 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
1219 include ``set remote P-packet''.
1221 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
1223 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
1224 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
1225 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
1227 * ``apropos'' command added.
1229 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
1230 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
1231 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
1235 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
1236 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
1237 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
1238 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
1239 enabled by configuring with:
1241 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
1243 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
1245 * New native configurations
1247 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
1248 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
1249 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
1253 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1254 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
1255 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1257 * OBSOLETE configurations
1259 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
1261 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1262 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1263 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1264 be permanently REMOVED.
1268 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
1269 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
1270 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
1271 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
1272 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
1273 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
1274 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
1279 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
1281 * set extension-language
1283 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
1284 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
1285 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
1286 set extension-language .c c++
1287 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
1288 and their associated languages.
1290 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
1292 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
1293 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
1294 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
1298 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
1299 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
1301 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
1302 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
1304 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
1305 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
1306 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
1307 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
1308 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
1309 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
1310 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
1311 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
1313 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
1314 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
1315 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
1316 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
1320 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
1321 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
1322 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
1323 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
1324 for xdb and dbx commands.
1328 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
1329 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
1330 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
1332 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
1333 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
1334 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
1336 * Debugging across forks
1338 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
1343 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
1344 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
1345 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
1347 * GDB remote protocol additions
1349 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
1350 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
1351 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
1352 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
1354 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
1355 full 64-bit address. The command
1357 set remoteaddresssize 32
1359 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
1360 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
1363 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
1364 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
1366 maint packet heythere
1368 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
1369 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
1372 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
1373 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
1374 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
1376 * Tracing can collect general expressions
1378 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
1379 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
1380 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
1382 * mask-address variable for Mips
1384 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
1385 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
1386 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
1388 * Higher serial baud rates
1390 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
1391 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
1392 to achieve all of these rates.)
1396 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
1397 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
1400 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
1402 * New native configurations
1404 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
1405 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
1406 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1407 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1408 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1409 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
1410 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
1414 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1415 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
1416 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1417 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
1418 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
1419 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
1420 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
1421 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
1422 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
1423 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1424 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
1426 * New debugging protocols
1428 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
1429 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
1430 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
1431 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1432 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1433 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1437 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
1438 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
1443 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
1444 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
1446 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
1448 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
1449 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
1450 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
1452 * Live range splitting
1454 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
1455 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
1456 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
1460 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
1461 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
1465 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
1466 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
1467 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
1472 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
1477 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
1478 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
1479 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
1480 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
1481 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
1482 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
1486 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
1487 the symbol at the specified address.
1491 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
1492 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
1493 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
1494 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
1495 file tracepoint.c for more details.
1499 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
1500 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
1501 of most MIPS variants.
1505 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
1506 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
1507 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
1511 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
1512 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
1513 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
1514 the possible architectures.
1516 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
1518 * New native configurations
1520 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
1521 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
1522 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
1523 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
1524 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1525 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
1529 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
1530 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1531 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
1532 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
1533 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
1535 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1539 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
1540 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
1541 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
1542 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
1543 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
1547 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
1549 * Windows 95/NT native
1551 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
1552 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
1553 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
1554 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
1555 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
1557 * dont-repeat command
1559 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
1560 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
1561 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
1562 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
1564 * Send break instead of ^C
1566 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
1567 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
1568 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
1570 * Remote protocol timeout
1572 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
1573 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
1574 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
1576 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
1578 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
1579 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
1580 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
1581 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
1582 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
1584 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
1585 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
1586 automatically on hpux10.
1588 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
1590 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
1592 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
1594 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
1595 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
1596 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
1597 every character. The default value is 1050.
1599 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
1601 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
1602 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
1603 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
1604 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
1605 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
1606 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
1608 * Speedups for remote debugging
1610 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
1611 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
1612 and more efficient S-record downloading.
1614 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
1616 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
1617 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
1619 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
1621 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
1623 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
1624 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
1626 * Remote targets use caching
1628 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
1629 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
1630 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
1631 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
1632 off' turns the the data cache off.
1634 * Remote targets may have threads
1636 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
1637 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
1638 gdb/remote.c for details.
1642 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
1643 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
1644 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
1645 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
1646 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
1647 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
1648 sequence is something like
1650 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
1652 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
1656 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
1657 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
1658 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
1659 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
1660 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
1661 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
1662 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
1663 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
1667 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
1668 but does simplify configuration and building.
1672 GDB now supports hpux10.
1674 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
1676 * New native configurations
1678 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
1679 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
1680 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
1681 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
1685 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1686 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
1687 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
1688 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
1691 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
1693 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
1694 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
1695 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
1696 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
1697 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
1699 * Arguments to user-defined commands
1701 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
1702 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
1705 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
1707 To execute the command use:
1710 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
1711 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
1712 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
1714 * New `if' and `while' commands
1716 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
1717 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
1718 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
1719 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
1720 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
1721 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
1722 if the expression is zero.
1724 * Fortran source language mode
1726 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
1727 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
1728 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
1729 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
1732 * Better HPUX support
1734 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
1735 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
1736 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
1737 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
1738 that behavior do the following before running the program:
1744 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
1745 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
1751 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
1752 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
1755 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
1756 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
1758 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
1760 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
1761 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
1762 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
1763 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
1764 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
1765 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
1767 * New DOS host serial code
1769 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
1770 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
1773 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
1775 * New "complete" command
1777 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
1778 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
1780 * Trailing space optional in prompt
1782 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
1783 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
1785 * Breakpoint hit counts
1787 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
1788 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
1789 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
1790 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
1791 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
1794 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
1796 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
1797 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
1798 arrays actually contain only short strings.
1800 * Shared library breakpoints
1802 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
1803 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
1805 * Hardware watchpoints
1807 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
1808 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
1810 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
1814 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
1815 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
1817 * Improved Irix 5 support
1819 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
1821 * Improved HPPA support
1823 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
1825 * New native configurations
1827 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
1828 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1829 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
1830 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
1834 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1835 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
1838 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
1840 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
1841 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
1845 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
1846 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
1848 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
1850 * Irix 5 is now supported
1854 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
1855 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
1856 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
1857 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
1858 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
1861 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
1863 * User visible changes:
1867 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
1868 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
1869 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
1870 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
1871 debugging info for the mips target).
1873 * DEC Alpha native support
1875 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
1876 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
1877 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
1878 Alpha-specific notes.
1880 * Preliminary thread implementation
1882 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
1884 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
1886 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
1887 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
1890 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
1892 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
1893 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
1894 call methods, ...etc.
1896 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
1898 * User visible changes:
1900 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
1901 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
1902 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
1903 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
1905 Filename completion now works.
1907 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
1908 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
1909 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
1911 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
1912 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
1913 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
1914 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
1915 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
1919 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
1920 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
1923 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
1927 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
1928 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
1929 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
1933 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
1934 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
1935 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
1936 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
1937 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
1941 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
1942 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
1943 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
1945 * New targets supported
1947 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1948 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1949 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
1950 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1951 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
1953 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
1954 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
1955 GO32 memory extender.
1957 * New remote protocols
1959 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
1961 * New source languages supported
1963 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
1964 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
1965 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
1968 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
1970 * HP Precision Architecture supported
1972 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
1973 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
1974 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
1975 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
1976 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
1977 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
1979 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
1981 * Faster and better demangling
1983 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
1984 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
1985 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
1986 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
1987 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
1988 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
1991 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
1992 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
1993 compiler does not actually implement.
1995 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
1997 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
1998 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
1999 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
2000 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
2001 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
2002 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
2005 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
2006 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
2008 * Improved configure script
2010 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
2011 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
2012 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
2013 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
2015 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
2016 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
2017 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
2018 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
2019 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
2020 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
2022 * Documentation improvements
2024 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
2025 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
2026 before submitting changes.
2028 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
2029 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
2030 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
2031 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
2032 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
2034 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
2035 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
2036 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
2037 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
2038 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
2039 around this problem.
2043 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
2044 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
2045 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
2048 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
2049 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
2051 * New native hosts supported
2053 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
2054 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
2056 * New targets supported
2058 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
2060 * New file formats supported
2062 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
2063 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
2067 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
2069 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
2070 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
2072 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
2073 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
2074 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
2076 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
2077 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
2079 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
2080 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
2081 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
2084 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
2085 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
2086 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
2087 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
2088 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
2090 * Internal improvements
2092 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
2093 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
2095 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
2096 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
2097 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
2098 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
2099 shared code that handles any of them.
2101 * New command line options
2103 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
2107 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
2108 General Public License.
2110 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
2112 * Host/native/target split
2114 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
2115 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
2116 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
2117 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
2118 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
2120 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
2121 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
2122 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
2123 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
2124 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
2125 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
2126 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
2128 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
2129 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
2130 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
2132 * New hosts supported
2134 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
2135 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2136 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
2138 * New targets supported
2140 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
2141 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
2143 * New native hosts supported
2145 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2146 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
2147 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
2149 * New file formats supported
2151 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
2152 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
2153 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
2157 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
2158 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
2159 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
2161 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
2163 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
2164 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
2165 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
2166 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
2170 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
2171 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
2172 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
2174 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
2178 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
2179 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
2182 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
2183 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
2185 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
2186 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
2187 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
2188 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
2189 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
2190 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
2192 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
2193 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
2194 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
2195 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
2199 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
2200 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
2201 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
2202 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
2203 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
2205 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
2206 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
2207 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
2208 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
2212 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
2213 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
2214 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
2215 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
2216 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
2217 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
2218 each instruction being stepped through.
2220 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
2221 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
2223 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
2224 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
2225 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
2226 processor with a serial port.
2230 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
2231 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
2232 supported, and what files each one uses.
2236 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
2237 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
2238 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
2239 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
2241 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
2242 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
2243 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
2244 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
2248 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
2249 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
2250 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
2251 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
2252 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
2253 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
2255 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
2258 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
2260 * Better support for C++ function names
2262 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
2263 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
2264 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
2265 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
2266 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
2268 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
2269 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
2270 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
2271 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
2272 for the list of formats.
2274 * G++ symbol mangling problem
2276 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
2277 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
2278 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
2279 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
2280 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
2281 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
2284 * New 'maintenance' command
2286 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
2287 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
2288 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
2290 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
2291 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
2292 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
2293 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
2294 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
2295 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
2297 The following commands are new:
2299 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
2300 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
2301 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
2303 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
2305 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
2306 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
2307 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
2308 read after argv processing.
2310 * New hosts supported
2312 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
2314 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
2316 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
2317 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
2318 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
2319 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
2320 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
2323 * New targets supported
2325 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2327 * More smarts about finding #include files
2329 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
2330 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
2331 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
2332 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
2333 the one that contains your sources.
2335 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
2336 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
2337 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
2339 * Interesting infernals change
2341 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
2342 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
2343 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
2344 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
2346 * Bug fixes (of course!)
2348 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
2349 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
2350 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
2352 See the ChangeLog for details.
2354 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
2356 * New machines supported (host and target)
2358 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
2360 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2362 * New malloc package
2364 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
2365 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
2366 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
2367 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
2368 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
2369 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
2373 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
2374 'help info proc' for details.
2376 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
2378 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
2379 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
2382 * File name changes for MS-DOS
2384 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
2385 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
2386 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
2387 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
2388 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
2389 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
2391 * Cross byte order fixes
2393 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
2394 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
2396 * New -mapped and -readnow options
2398 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
2399 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
2400 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
2401 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
2402 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
2403 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
2404 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
2405 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
2406 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
2407 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
2409 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
2410 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
2411 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
2412 slower, but makes future operations faster.
2414 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
2415 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
2416 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
2419 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
2421 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
2422 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
2423 shared across multiple host platforms.
2425 * longjmp() handling
2427 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
2428 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
2429 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
2430 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
2434 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
2435 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
2440 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
2441 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
2442 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
2444 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
2446 * New machines supported (host and target)
2448 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2450 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
2451 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
2453 * New machines supported (target)
2455 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2459 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
2460 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
2461 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
2463 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
2464 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
2465 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
2466 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
2467 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
2470 * New features for SVR4
2472 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
2473 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
2474 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
2476 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
2477 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
2478 it prints the address mappings of the process.
2480 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
2481 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
2483 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
2485 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
2486 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
2487 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
2488 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
2489 same code linked statically.
2493 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
2494 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
2495 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
2496 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
2497 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
2498 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
2502 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2503 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2504 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2507 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
2509 * New machines supported (host and target)
2511 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
2512 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
2513 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2515 * Almost SCO Unix support
2517 We had hoped to support:
2518 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2519 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
2520 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
2521 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
2523 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
2525 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
2526 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
2527 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
2528 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
2533 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
2534 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
2535 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
2539 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2540 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2541 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2543 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
2545 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
2546 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
2547 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
2549 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
2550 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
2551 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
2552 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
2555 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
2556 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
2557 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
2558 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
2561 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
2562 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
2565 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
2566 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
2567 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
2570 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
2572 * Improved configuration
2574 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
2575 Porting BFD is simpler.
2579 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
2580 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
2581 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
2582 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
2586 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
2588 * New host supported (not target)
2590 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
2593 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
2595 * Multiple source language support
2597 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
2598 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
2599 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
2600 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
2601 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
2602 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
2606 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
2607 currently under development at the State University of New York at
2608 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
2609 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
2611 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
2612 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
2613 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
2615 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
2616 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
2620 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
2621 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
2622 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
2623 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
2626 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
2628 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
2629 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
2630 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
2631 examining core files.
2635 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
2638 * New machines supported (host and target)
2640 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2641 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
2642 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
2644 * New hosts supported (not targets)
2646 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
2648 * New targets supported (not hosts)
2650 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2651 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2652 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
2654 * New remote interfaces
2660 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
2664 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
2666 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
2667 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
2668 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
2669 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
2670 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
2671 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
2672 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
2673 stub on the target system.
2675 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
2677 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
2678 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
2679 object file types such as a.out and coff.
2681 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
2682 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
2685 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
2687 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
2688 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
2690 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
2691 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
2692 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
2694 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
2695 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
2696 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
2697 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
2699 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
2700 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
2701 it is already running. Default is ON.
2703 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
2704 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
2705 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
2706 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
2709 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
2710 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
2711 or the value of the environment variable
2714 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
2715 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
2718 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
2719 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
2720 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
2722 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
2723 history expansion will be performed on
2724 command line input. The default is OFF.
2726 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
2727 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
2728 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
2730 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
2731 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
2732 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2735 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
2736 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
2737 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2740 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
2741 ``set width'' instead.
2743 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
2744 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
2745 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
2746 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
2748 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
2751 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
2754 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
2757 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
2760 * Support for Epoch Environment.
2762 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
2763 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
2764 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
2768 * Support for Shared Libraries
2770 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
2771 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
2772 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
2773 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
2774 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
2775 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
2776 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
2777 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
2779 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
2780 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
2781 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
2783 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
2788 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
2789 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
2790 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
2791 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
2792 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
2793 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
2795 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
2797 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
2799 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2800 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2801 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2804 * C++ multiple inheritance
2806 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
2809 * C++ exception handling
2811 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
2812 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
2813 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
2816 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
2817 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
2818 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
2820 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
2821 current stack frame.
2824 * Minor command changes
2826 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
2827 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
2828 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
2830 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
2831 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
2832 frames without printing.
2834 * New directory command
2836 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
2837 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
2838 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
2839 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
2840 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
2842 * Configuring GDB for compilation
2844 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
2847 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
2848 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
2849 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
2850 where the program that you are debugging will run.
projects / deliverable / binutils-gdb.git / blob