1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 7.2
8 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
9 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
10 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
11 that function like so:
13 result = some_value (10,20)
15 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
16 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
17 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
21 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
22 instantiation. For example, if you have:
24 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
26 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
27 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
30 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
31 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
34 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
35 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
36 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
37 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
39 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
40 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
41 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
44 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
46 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
47 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
48 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
49 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
50 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
51 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
54 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
56 While now you see this:
59 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
61 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
64 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
65 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
66 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
67 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
69 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
71 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
72 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
74 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
75 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
76 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
77 in the GDB user manual.
79 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
81 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
83 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
84 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
85 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
86 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
87 was always disabled for such configurations.
91 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
93 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
94 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
104 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
105 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
106 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
108 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
110 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
111 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
112 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
113 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
115 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
116 mentioned flavors of operators.
118 ** static const class members
120 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
121 class definition has been fixed.
123 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
125 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
126 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
127 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
128 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
129 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
130 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
134 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
135 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
136 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
137 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
138 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
139 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
140 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
141 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
142 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
143 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
144 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
145 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
146 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
147 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
148 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
149 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
150 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
151 the "New remote packets" section below.
153 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
155 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
156 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
157 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
158 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
162 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
163 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
164 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
165 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
166 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
167 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
168 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
170 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
177 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
181 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
182 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
183 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
184 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
185 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
186 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
190 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
194 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
197 qXfer:statictrace:read
199 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
200 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
201 to gdb's qSupported query.
205 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
209 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
210 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
212 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
213 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
216 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
218 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
219 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
220 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
221 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
223 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
224 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
225 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
226 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
227 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
228 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
229 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
231 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
232 for static tracepoints support.
234 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
236 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
237 it understands register description.
239 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
241 * X86 general purpose registers
243 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
244 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
245 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
246 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
247 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
249 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
250 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
251 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
252 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
253 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
254 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
256 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
257 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
258 in the specified file.
260 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
261 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
262 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
263 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
264 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
265 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
266 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
267 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
268 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
269 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
273 eval template, expressions...
274 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
275 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
277 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
278 show target-file-system-kind
279 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
282 save breakpoints <filename>
283 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
284 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
285 definitions, use the `source' command.
287 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
290 info static-tracepoint-markers
291 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
293 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
294 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
295 function, line, address, or marker ID.
299 Enable and disable observer mode.
301 set may-write-registers on|off
302 set may-write-memory on|off
303 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
304 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
305 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
306 set may-interrupt on|off
307 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
308 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
309 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
310 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
311 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
312 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
313 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
315 set record memory-query on|off
316 show record memory-query
317 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
318 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
323 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
327 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
328 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
329 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
330 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
331 GDB using Python' in the manual.
333 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
334 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
335 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
336 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
338 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
339 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
341 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
343 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
345 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
347 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
348 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
349 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
351 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
352 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
353 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
358 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
360 * D language support.
361 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
364 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
365 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
366 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
367 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
368 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
370 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
371 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
372 conditions of the form:
374 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
376 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
377 interface mentioned above.
379 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
385 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
386 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
387 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
388 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
389 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
393 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
394 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
399 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
400 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
404 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
409 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
412 * Multi-program debugging.
414 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
415 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
416 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
417 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
418 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
419 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
420 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
421 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
423 * New tracing features
425 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
427 ** Trace state variables
429 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
430 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
431 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
432 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
433 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
434 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
435 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
436 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
437 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
438 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
442 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
443 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
444 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
445 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
446 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
447 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
448 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
449 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
450 the regular trace command.
452 ** Disconnected tracing
454 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
455 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
456 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
457 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
458 connection is lost unexpectedly.
462 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
463 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
464 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
465 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
466 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
467 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
470 ** Circular trace buffer
472 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
473 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
474 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
475 not be available for all target agents.
480 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
481 the arguments to be comma-separated.
484 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
485 which only declare a variable are not shown.
488 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
489 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
492 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
493 "set script-extension" (see below).
495 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
497 record save [<FILENAME>]
498 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
499 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
501 record restore <FILENAME>
502 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
503 earlier time, for replay debugging.
505 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
508 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
509 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
515 maint info program-spaces
516 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
518 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
519 show remote interrupt-sequence
520 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
521 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
522 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
523 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
524 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
526 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
527 show remote interrupt-on-connect
528 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
529 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
532 set remotebreak [on | off]
534 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
536 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
537 Create or modify a trace state variable.
540 List trace state variables and their values.
542 delete tvariable $NAME ...
543 Delete one or more trace state variables.
546 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
547 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
549 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
550 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
552 * New expression syntax
554 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
555 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
559 set follow-exec-mode new|same
560 show follow-exec-mode
561 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
562 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
563 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
565 set default-collect EXPR, ...
567 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
568 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
569 such as registers or a critical global variable.
571 set disconnected-tracing
572 show disconnected-tracing
573 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
574 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
577 set circular-trace-buffer
578 show circular-trace-buffer
579 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
580 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
581 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
582 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
584 set script-extension off|soft|strict
585 show script-extension
586 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
587 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
588 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
589 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
591 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
593 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
594 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
595 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
596 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
597 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
598 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
599 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
602 * Python API Improvements
604 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
605 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
606 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
608 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
609 `is_base_class' attribute.
611 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
613 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
614 evaluate an expression.
619 Define a trace state variable.
622 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
625 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
628 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
631 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
635 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
637 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
638 much more reliable. In particular:
639 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
640 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
641 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
642 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
643 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
644 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
645 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
646 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
647 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
648 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
649 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
650 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
651 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
652 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
653 non-threaded programs.
655 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
656 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
657 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
660 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
662 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
663 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
664 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
665 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
666 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
668 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
669 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
670 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
671 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
672 for tracepoint actions.
674 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
675 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
676 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
678 * Process record and replay
680 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
681 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
682 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
685 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
686 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
687 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
690 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
691 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
694 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
695 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
696 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
697 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
698 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
699 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
700 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
701 the installation instructions for more information.
703 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
704 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
705 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
706 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
708 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
709 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
711 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
712 now complete on file names.
714 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
715 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
716 For instance, consider:
718 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
719 # struct example variable;
722 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
723 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
725 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
726 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
728 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
729 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
732 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
733 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
734 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
736 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
737 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
738 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
739 and simulator targets may also provide them.
744 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
747 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
748 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
749 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
752 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
753 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
756 Obtains additional operating system information
760 Read or write additional signal information.
762 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
764 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
765 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
766 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
768 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
769 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
771 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
772 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
773 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
775 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
776 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
778 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
780 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
782 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
783 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
785 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
786 list of section offsets.
788 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
789 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
790 have also been fixed.
792 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
793 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
794 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
796 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
799 template<typename T> class C { };
802 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
804 ptype C<char const *>
806 ptype C<const char *>
809 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
811 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
812 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
814 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
815 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
816 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
818 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
819 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
821 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
824 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
825 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
827 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
828 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
833 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
834 available is determined at configure time.
836 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
838 * Ada tasking support
840 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
844 Print the list of Ada tasks.
846 Print detailed information about task number N.
848 Print the task number of the current task.
850 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
852 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
853 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
855 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
857 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
858 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
859 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
860 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
861 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
862 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
865 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
866 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
869 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
870 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
871 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
872 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
875 * Multi-architecture debugging.
877 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
878 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
879 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
880 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
881 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
883 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
884 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
885 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
886 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
887 --enable-targets configure option.
889 * Non-stop mode debugging.
891 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
892 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
893 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
894 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
895 section in the user manual for more information.
897 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
898 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
899 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
900 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
901 extensions on linux targets.
903 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
905 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
906 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
907 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
908 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
909 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
910 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
911 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
912 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
913 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
915 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
917 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
919 maint set python print-stack
920 maint show python print-stack
921 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
924 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
929 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
933 Show operating system information about processes.
936 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
939 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
942 Detach from inferior number NUM.
945 Kill inferior number NUM.
950 show spu stop-on-load
951 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
953 set spu auto-flush-cache
954 show spu auto-flush-cache
955 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
956 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
958 set sh calling-convention
959 show sh calling-convention
960 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
964 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
966 set disassemble-next-line
967 show disassemble-next-line
968 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
971 set remote noack-packet
972 show remote noack-packet
973 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
974 under "New remote packets."
976 set remote query-attached-packet
977 show remote query-attached-packet
978 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
980 set remote read-siginfo-object
981 show remote read-siginfo-object
982 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
985 set remote write-siginfo-object
986 show remote write-siginfo-object
987 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
990 set remote reverse-continue
991 show remote reverse-continue
992 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
994 set remote reverse-step
995 show remote reverse-step
996 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
998 set displaced-stepping
999 show displaced-stepping
1000 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
1001 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
1002 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
1005 show debug displaced
1006 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
1008 maint set internal-error
1009 maint show internal-error
1010 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
1012 maint set internal-warning
1013 maint show internal-warning
1014 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
1019 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
1021 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
1022 show multiple-symbols
1023 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
1024 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
1025 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
1027 set breakpoint always-inserted
1028 show breakpoint always-inserted
1029 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
1030 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
1031 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
1033 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
1034 show arm fallback-mode
1035 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
1037 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
1038 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
1039 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
1040 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
1042 set disable-randomization
1043 show disable-randomization
1044 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
1045 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
1046 multiple debugging sessions.
1050 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
1055 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
1056 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
1057 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
1058 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
1060 set target-wide-charset
1061 show target-wide-charset
1062 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
1063 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
1065 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
1067 set tcp connect-timeout
1068 show tcp connect-timeout
1069 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
1070 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
1071 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
1073 set libthread-db-search-path
1074 show libthread-db-search-path
1075 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
1078 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
1079 show schedule-multiple
1080 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
1081 the current process.
1085 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
1086 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
1087 affecting correctness.
1089 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
1090 show interactive-mode
1091 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
1092 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
1093 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
1094 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
1095 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
1100 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
1101 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
1102 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
1106 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
1107 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
1108 alias for the `fork' command.
1111 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
1112 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
1113 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
1116 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
1117 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
1118 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
1122 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
1123 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
1124 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
1127 * New native configurations
1129 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
1131 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
1135 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
1136 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
1137 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
1140 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
1141 (mingw32ce) debugging.
1147 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
1149 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
1151 * New native configurations
1153 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
1154 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
1158 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
1159 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
1161 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
1163 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
1164 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
1165 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
1166 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
1168 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
1169 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
1171 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
1174 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
1175 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
1176 and in inlined functions.
1178 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
1179 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
1180 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
1182 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
1184 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
1185 registers on PowerPC targets.
1187 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
1188 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
1190 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
1191 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
1193 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
1194 extended-remote mode.
1196 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
1197 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
1198 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
1199 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
1201 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
1202 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
1203 target architectures.
1205 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
1206 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
1207 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
1208 stored in two consecutive float registers.
1210 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
1213 * Improved support for debugging Ada
1214 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
1216 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
1217 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
1218 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
1219 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
1221 - Improved command completion in Ada
1224 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
1229 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
1230 show print frame-arguments
1231 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
1232 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
1237 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
1244 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
1246 * New remote packets
1253 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
1256 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
1260 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
1262 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
1264 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
1265 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
1266 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
1268 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
1269 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
1270 -Bsymbolic linker option.
1272 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
1273 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
1276 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
1277 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
1279 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
1280 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
1282 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
1284 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
1285 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
1286 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
1288 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
1289 automatically displayed as character or string data.
1291 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
1292 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
1295 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
1296 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
1297 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
1299 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
1302 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
1303 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
1304 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
1306 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
1308 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
1310 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
1311 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
1312 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
1314 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
1315 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
1317 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
1318 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
1319 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
1320 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
1321 Windows and SymbianOS).
1323 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
1324 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
1326 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
1327 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
1333 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
1334 when debugging using remote targets.
1336 set mem inaccessible-by-default
1337 show mem inaccessible-by-default
1338 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1339 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1340 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
1341 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
1342 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
1344 set breakpoint auto-hw
1345 show breakpoint auto-hw
1346 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1347 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1348 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
1349 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
1350 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
1351 including "next" and "finish".
1354 catch exception unhandled
1355 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
1358 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
1362 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
1363 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
1364 an alias to "set sysroot".
1367 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
1368 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
1371 * New native configurations
1373 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
1376 unset tdesc filename
1378 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
1379 not query the target for its built-in description.
1383 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
1384 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
1385 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
1387 * New remote packets
1390 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
1391 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
1393 qXfer:features:read:
1394 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
1399 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
1400 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
1402 qXfer:libraries:read:
1403 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
1404 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
1405 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
1406 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
1410 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
1418 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
1419 i[34567]86-*-netware*
1420 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
1421 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
1423 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
1426 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
1427 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
1436 * Other removed features
1443 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
1450 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
1455 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
1456 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
1461 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
1462 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
1464 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
1466 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
1467 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
1468 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
1469 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
1471 MIPS ".pdr" sections
1473 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
1474 in debugging information.
1478 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
1479 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
1481 set mips stack-arg-size
1482 set mips saved-gpreg-size
1484 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
1486 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
1491 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
1493 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
1494 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
1495 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
1497 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
1498 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
1501 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
1502 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
1504 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
1505 stub provides the required support.
1507 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
1508 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
1513 unset substitute-path
1514 show substitute-path
1515 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
1516 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
1517 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
1518 between compilation and debugging.
1522 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
1523 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
1524 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
1528 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
1530 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
1531 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
1533 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
1535 * New remote packets
1538 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
1539 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
1540 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
1541 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
1545 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
1546 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
1548 qXfer:memory-map:read:
1549 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
1550 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
1555 Erase and program a flash memory device.
1557 * Removed remote packets
1560 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
1561 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
1563 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
1567 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
1569 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
1573 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
1574 only if it doesn't already have a value.
1576 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
1578 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
1580 restart <n> Return the program state to a
1581 previously saved state.
1583 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
1585 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
1587 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
1588 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
1590 info forks List forks of the user program that
1591 are available to be debugged.
1593 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
1594 forks of the user program that are
1595 available to be debugged.
1597 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
1598 that are available to be debugged (and
1599 kill the forked process).
1601 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
1602 that are available to be debugged (and
1603 allow the process to continue).
1607 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
1609 * Improved Windows host support
1611 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
1612 native console support, and remote communications using either
1613 network sockets or serial ports.
1615 * Improved Modula-2 language support
1617 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
1618 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
1619 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
1620 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
1621 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
1622 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
1626 The ARM rdi-share module.
1628 The Netware NLM debug server.
1630 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
1632 * New native configurations
1634 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
1635 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
1639 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
1641 * New command line options
1643 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
1644 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
1645 the child (debugged) program exited with.
1646 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
1647 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
1648 specified multiple times and in conjunction
1649 with the --command (-x) option.
1651 * Deprecated commands removed
1653 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
1657 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
1658 othernames set arm disassembler
1659 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
1660 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
1661 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
1664 * New BSD user-level threads support
1666 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
1667 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
1670 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1671 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
1672 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
1674 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
1675 are not yet supported.
1677 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
1678 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
1680 * REMOVED configurations and files
1682 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
1683 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
1684 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
1686 * New "set print array-indexes" command
1688 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
1689 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
1692 * VAX floating point support
1694 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
1696 * User-defined command support
1698 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
1699 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
1700 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
1702 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
1704 * New command line option
1706 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
1709 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
1711 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
1712 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
1713 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
1714 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
1715 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
1717 * Internationalization
1719 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
1720 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
1721 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
1725 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
1726 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
1727 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
1729 * New native configurations
1731 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
1735 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
1736 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
1738 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
1740 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
1741 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
1742 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
1745 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
1746 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
1747 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
1757 powerpc bdm protocol
1759 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
1760 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
1762 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1764 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1765 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1766 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1767 permanently REMOVED.
1776 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
1778 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
1780 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
1781 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
1784 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
1786 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
1787 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
1788 IRIX long double values).
1792 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
1793 command. This problem has been fixed.
1795 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
1797 * Fix for ``many threads''
1799 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
1800 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
1803 ptrace: No such process.
1804 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
1806 This problem has been fixed.
1808 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
1810 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
1813 * New ``start'' command.
1815 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
1817 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
1819 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
1820 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
1821 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
1823 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1824 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
1825 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
1826 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
1827 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
1828 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
1829 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
1830 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
1831 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
1833 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
1835 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
1836 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
1837 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
1838 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
1839 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
1841 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
1842 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
1843 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
1845 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
1847 * New native configurations
1849 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
1850 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
1851 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
1852 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
1853 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
1854 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
1855 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
1857 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
1859 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
1860 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
1861 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
1862 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
1863 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
1864 work, was also included.
1866 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
1867 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
1877 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
1878 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
1880 * REMOVED configurations and files
1882 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
1883 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
1884 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
1885 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
1886 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
1887 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
1888 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
1889 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
1890 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
1891 sonymips mips-sony-*
1892 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
1894 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
1896 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
1898 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
1899 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
1900 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
1901 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
1904 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
1906 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
1907 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
1908 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
1909 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
1910 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
1911 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
1914 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
1916 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
1918 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
1919 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
1920 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
1922 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
1924 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
1925 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
1927 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
1929 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
1930 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
1931 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
1933 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
1935 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
1936 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
1938 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
1940 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
1941 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
1942 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
1944 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
1946 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
1947 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
1948 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
1950 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
1952 * Removed --with-mmalloc
1954 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
1955 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
1957 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
1959 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
1960 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
1961 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
1962 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
1964 * Revised SPARC target
1966 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
1967 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
1968 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
1969 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
1970 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
1974 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
1975 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
1976 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
1979 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
1981 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
1982 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
1985 * C++ nested types and namespaces
1987 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
1988 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
1989 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
1990 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
1991 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
1992 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
1993 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
1994 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
1995 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
1997 * New native configurations
1999 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
2000 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2001 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
2002 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2003 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
2005 * New debugging protocols
2007 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
2009 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
2011 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
2012 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
2013 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
2015 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2017 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2018 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2019 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2020 permanently REMOVED.
2022 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
2023 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
2024 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
2025 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
2026 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
2027 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
2028 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
2029 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
2030 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
2031 sonymips mips-sony-*
2032 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
2034 * REMOVED configurations and files
2036 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2037 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2038 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2039 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2040 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2041 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
2042 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2043 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
2044 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2045 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
2046 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
2047 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
2048 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
2049 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
2050 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
2051 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2052 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
2054 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
2058 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
2059 integrated into GDB.
2061 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
2063 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
2064 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
2065 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
2068 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
2069 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
2070 DWARF 2 CFI support.
2074 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
2075 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
2076 remote protocol documentation for details.
2078 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
2080 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
2081 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
2082 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
2085 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
2087 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
2088 per-thread variables.
2090 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
2092 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
2093 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
2095 * Separate debug info.
2097 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
2098 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
2099 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
2100 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
2101 and optional debug files.
2103 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
2105 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
2106 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
2109 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
2110 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
2114 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
2115 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
2116 considered "useable".
2118 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
2120 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
2121 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
2124 * GDB supports logging output to a file
2126 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
2127 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
2129 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
2131 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
2132 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
2135 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
2137 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
2138 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
2142 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
2143 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
2144 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
2145 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
2146 data, for more informative profiling results.
2148 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
2150 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
2151 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
2152 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
2154 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
2157 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
2158 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
2159 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
2160 in a subsequent -var-update.
2162 * New native configurations.
2164 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2166 * Multi-arched targets.
2168 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
2169 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
2171 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2173 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2174 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2175 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2176 permanently REMOVED.
2178 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2179 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2180 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2181 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
2182 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2183 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
2184 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2185 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
2186 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
2187 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
2188 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2189 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
2191 * REMOVED configurations and files
2194 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2195 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
2196 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
2197 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
2198 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
2199 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
2201 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
2202 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2203 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
2204 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
2205 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2206 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
2208 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
2210 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
2211 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
2212 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
2213 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
2214 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
2216 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
2218 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
2220 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
2221 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
2222 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
2223 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
2224 shared libs like mad''.
2226 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
2228 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
2229 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
2230 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
2231 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
2233 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
2235 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
2236 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
2239 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
2240 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
2242 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
2243 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
2245 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
2246 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
2247 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
2248 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
2250 * Multi-arched targets.
2252 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
2253 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2255 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
2256 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
2257 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2261 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
2264 * New native configurations
2266 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
2267 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
2268 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
2269 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
2271 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2273 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2274 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2275 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2276 permanently REMOVED.
2278 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
2279 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2280 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
2281 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
2282 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2283 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2284 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
2285 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
2286 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
2287 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
2289 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
2290 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
2292 * OBSOLETE languages
2294 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
2296 * REMOVED configurations and files
2298 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2299 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2300 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2301 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2302 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2304 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
2306 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
2308 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
2309 commands. The default is 1024.
2311 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
2313 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
2315 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
2317 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
2318 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
2319 from a file into memory (restore).
2321 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
2323 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
2324 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
2325 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
2327 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
2335 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
2336 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
2337 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
2339 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
2340 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
2341 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
2343 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
2344 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
2345 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
2347 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
2348 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
2349 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
2351 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
2353 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
2355 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
2356 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
2357 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
2358 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
2359 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
2360 (notably embedded) targets.
2362 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
2364 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
2365 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
2366 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
2367 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
2369 * New command line option
2371 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
2373 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2375 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
2376 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
2377 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
2378 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
2379 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
2380 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
2381 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
2382 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
2383 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
2384 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
2386 * Changes in ARM configurations.
2388 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
2389 configuration is fully multi-arch.
2391 * New native configurations
2393 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
2394 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
2395 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
2396 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
2400 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
2402 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2404 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2405 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2406 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2407 permanently REMOVED.
2409 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2410 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2411 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2412 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2413 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2415 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
2417 * REMOVED configurations and files
2419 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2421 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2422 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2423 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
2424 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
2425 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2426 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
2427 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
2428 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
2429 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2430 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
2431 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
2433 * Changes to command line processing
2435 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
2436 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
2438 * Changes to key bindings
2440 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
2442 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
2444 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
2446 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
2449 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
2451 Numerous documentation fixes.
2453 Numerous testsuite fixes.
2455 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
2457 * New native configurations
2459 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
2460 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
2461 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
2462 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
2463 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
2464 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
2468 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
2470 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
2472 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2474 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
2475 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
2476 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2477 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
2478 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2480 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
2481 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2482 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2483 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
2484 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
2485 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2486 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
2487 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
2489 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
2490 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
2492 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2493 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2494 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2495 permanently REMOVED.
2497 * REMOVED configurations and files
2499 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
2500 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
2502 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
2506 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
2508 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
2509 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
2514 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
2516 * The MI enabled by default.
2518 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
2519 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
2520 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
2521 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
2522 which is now deprecated.
2524 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
2526 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
2527 main features are supported:
2529 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
2531 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
2534 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
2536 - a Pascal expression parser.
2538 However, some important features are not yet supported.
2540 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
2542 - there are some problems with boolean types;
2544 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
2545 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
2547 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
2549 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
2551 * Changes in completion.
2553 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
2554 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
2555 users expect at the shell prompt.
2557 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
2558 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
2559 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
2560 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
2561 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
2562 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
2563 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
2565 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
2567 * New platform-independent commands:
2569 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
2570 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
2571 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
2573 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
2575 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
2576 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
2577 many threads as your system allows you to have.
2579 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
2581 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
2582 multi-threaded programs though.
2584 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
2586 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
2588 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
2589 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
2592 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
2594 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
2595 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
2596 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
2597 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
2598 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
2601 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
2602 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
2603 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
2605 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
2607 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
2608 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
2610 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
2611 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
2614 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
2615 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
2616 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
2617 a given linear address.
2619 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
2620 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
2621 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
2623 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
2625 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
2627 * Changes in documentation.
2629 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
2630 Documentation License.
2632 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
2635 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
2637 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
2640 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
2641 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
2642 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
2644 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
2646 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
2647 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
2648 contents of this file.
2652 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
2654 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
2656 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
2658 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
2659 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
2660 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
2661 greater level of detail.
2663 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
2665 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
2666 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
2667 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
2670 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
2672 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
2673 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
2674 machines ``out of the box''.
2676 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
2677 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
2678 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
2679 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
2680 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
2682 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
2683 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
2684 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
2685 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
2686 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
2688 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
2689 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
2692 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
2695 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
2696 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
2697 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
2698 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
2700 * New native configurations
2702 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
2703 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
2707 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
2708 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
2709 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
2710 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2712 * OBSOLETE configurations
2714 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
2715 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
2717 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
2720 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
2721 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
2722 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
2723 be permanently REMOVED.
2725 * Gould support removed
2727 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
2729 * New features for SVR4
2731 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
2732 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
2733 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
2735 * Many C++ enhancements
2737 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
2738 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
2740 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
2742 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
2743 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
2744 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
2745 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
2747 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
2748 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
2750 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
2752 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
2753 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
2754 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
2756 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
2757 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
2759 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
2761 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
2762 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
2763 include ``set remote P-packet''.
2765 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
2767 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
2768 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
2769 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
2771 * ``apropos'' command added.
2773 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
2774 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
2775 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
2779 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
2780 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
2781 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
2782 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
2783 enabled by configuring with:
2785 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
2787 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
2789 * New native configurations
2791 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
2792 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
2793 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
2797 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
2798 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
2799 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
2801 * OBSOLETE configurations
2803 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
2805 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
2806 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
2807 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
2808 be permanently REMOVED.
2812 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
2813 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
2814 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
2815 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
2816 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
2817 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
2818 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
2823 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
2825 * set extension-language
2827 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
2828 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
2829 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
2830 set extension-language .c c++
2831 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
2832 and their associated languages.
2834 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
2836 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
2837 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
2838 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
2842 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
2843 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
2845 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
2846 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
2848 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
2849 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
2850 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
2851 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
2852 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
2853 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
2854 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
2855 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
2857 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
2858 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
2859 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
2860 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
2864 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
2865 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
2866 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
2867 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
2868 for xdb and dbx commands.
2872 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
2873 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
2874 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
2876 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
2877 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
2878 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
2880 * Debugging across forks
2882 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
2887 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
2888 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
2889 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
2891 * GDB remote protocol additions
2893 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
2894 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
2895 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
2896 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
2898 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
2899 full 64-bit address. The command
2901 set remoteaddresssize 32
2903 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
2904 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
2907 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
2908 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
2910 maint packet heythere
2912 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
2913 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
2916 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
2917 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
2918 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
2920 * Tracing can collect general expressions
2922 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
2923 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
2924 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
2926 * mask-address variable for Mips
2928 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
2929 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
2930 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
2932 * Higher serial baud rates
2934 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
2935 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
2936 to achieve all of these rates.)
2940 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
2941 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
2944 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
2946 * New native configurations
2948 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
2949 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
2950 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
2951 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
2952 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2953 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
2954 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
2958 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2959 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
2960 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2961 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
2962 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
2963 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
2964 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
2965 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
2966 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
2967 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2968 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
2970 * New debugging protocols
2972 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
2973 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
2974 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
2975 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2976 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2977 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2981 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
2982 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
2987 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
2988 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
2990 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
2992 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
2993 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
2994 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
2996 * Live range splitting
2998 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
2999 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
3000 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
3004 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
3005 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
3009 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
3010 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
3011 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
3016 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
3021 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
3022 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
3023 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
3024 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
3025 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
3026 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
3030 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
3031 the symbol at the specified address.
3035 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
3036 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
3037 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
3038 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
3039 file tracepoint.c for more details.
3043 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
3044 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
3045 of most MIPS variants.
3049 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
3050 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
3051 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
3055 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
3056 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
3057 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
3058 the possible architectures.
3060 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
3062 * New native configurations
3064 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
3065 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
3066 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
3067 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
3068 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3069 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
3073 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
3074 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3075 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
3076 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
3077 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
3079 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3083 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
3084 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
3085 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
3086 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
3087 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
3091 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
3093 * Windows 95/NT native
3095 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
3096 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
3097 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
3098 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
3099 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
3101 * dont-repeat command
3103 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
3104 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
3105 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
3106 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
3108 * Send break instead of ^C
3110 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
3111 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
3112 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
3114 * Remote protocol timeout
3116 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
3117 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
3118 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
3120 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
3122 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
3123 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
3124 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
3125 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
3126 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
3128 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
3129 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
3130 automatically on hpux10.
3132 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
3134 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
3136 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
3138 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
3139 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
3140 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
3141 every character. The default value is 1050.
3143 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
3145 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
3146 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
3147 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
3148 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
3149 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
3150 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
3152 * Speedups for remote debugging
3154 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
3155 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
3156 and more efficient S-record downloading.
3158 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
3160 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
3161 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
3163 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
3165 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
3167 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
3168 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
3170 * Remote targets use caching
3172 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
3173 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
3174 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
3175 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
3176 off' turns the the data cache off.
3178 * Remote targets may have threads
3180 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
3181 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
3182 gdb/remote.c for details.
3186 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
3187 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
3188 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
3189 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
3190 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
3191 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
3192 sequence is something like
3194 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
3196 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
3200 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
3201 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
3202 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
3203 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
3204 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
3205 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
3206 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
3207 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
3211 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
3212 but does simplify configuration and building.
3216 GDB now supports hpux10.
3218 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
3220 * New native configurations
3222 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
3223 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
3224 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
3225 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
3229 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3230 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
3231 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
3232 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
3235 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
3237 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
3238 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
3239 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
3240 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
3241 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
3243 * Arguments to user-defined commands
3245 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
3246 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
3249 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
3251 To execute the command use:
3254 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
3255 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
3256 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
3258 * New `if' and `while' commands
3260 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
3261 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
3262 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
3263 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
3264 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
3265 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
3266 if the expression is zero.
3268 * Fortran source language mode
3270 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
3271 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
3272 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
3273 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
3276 * Better HPUX support
3278 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
3279 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
3280 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
3281 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
3282 that behavior do the following before running the program:
3288 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
3289 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
3295 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
3296 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
3299 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
3300 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
3302 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
3304 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
3305 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
3306 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
3307 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
3308 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
3309 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
3311 * New DOS host serial code
3313 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
3314 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
3317 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
3319 * New "complete" command
3321 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
3322 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
3324 * Trailing space optional in prompt
3326 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
3327 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
3329 * Breakpoint hit counts
3331 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
3332 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
3333 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
3334 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
3335 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
3338 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
3340 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
3341 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
3342 arrays actually contain only short strings.
3344 * Shared library breakpoints
3346 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
3347 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
3349 * Hardware watchpoints
3351 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
3352 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
3354 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
3358 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
3359 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
3361 * Improved Irix 5 support
3363 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
3365 * Improved HPPA support
3367 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
3369 * New native configurations
3371 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
3372 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3373 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
3374 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
3378 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3379 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
3382 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
3384 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
3385 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
3389 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
3390 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
3392 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
3394 * Irix 5 is now supported
3398 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
3399 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
3400 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
3401 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
3402 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
3405 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
3407 * User visible changes:
3411 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
3412 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
3413 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
3414 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
3415 debugging info for the mips target).
3417 * DEC Alpha native support
3419 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
3420 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
3421 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
3422 Alpha-specific notes.
3424 * Preliminary thread implementation
3426 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
3428 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
3430 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
3431 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
3434 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
3436 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
3437 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
3438 call methods, ...etc.
3440 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
3442 * User visible changes:
3444 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
3445 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
3446 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
3447 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
3449 Filename completion now works.
3451 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
3452 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
3453 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
3455 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
3456 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
3457 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
3458 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
3459 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
3463 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
3464 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
3467 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
3471 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
3472 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
3473 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
3477 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
3478 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
3479 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
3480 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
3481 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
3485 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
3486 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
3487 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
3489 * New targets supported
3491 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
3492 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3493 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
3494 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3495 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
3497 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
3498 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
3499 GO32 memory extender.
3501 * New remote protocols
3503 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
3505 * New source languages supported
3507 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
3508 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
3509 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
3512 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
3514 * HP Precision Architecture supported
3516 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
3517 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
3518 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
3519 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
3520 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
3521 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
3523 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
3525 * Faster and better demangling
3527 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
3528 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
3529 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
3530 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
3531 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
3532 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
3535 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
3536 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
3537 compiler does not actually implement.
3539 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
3541 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
3542 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
3543 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
3544 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
3545 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
3546 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
3549 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
3550 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
3552 * Improved configure script
3554 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
3555 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
3556 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
3557 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
3559 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
3560 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
3561 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
3562 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
3563 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
3564 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
3566 * Documentation improvements
3568 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
3569 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
3570 before submitting changes.
3572 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
3573 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
3574 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
3575 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
3576 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
3578 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
3579 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
3580 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
3581 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
3582 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
3583 around this problem.
3587 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
3588 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
3589 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
3592 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
3593 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
3595 * New native hosts supported
3597 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
3598 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
3600 * New targets supported
3602 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
3604 * New file formats supported
3606 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
3607 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
3611 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
3613 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
3614 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
3616 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
3617 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
3618 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
3620 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
3621 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
3623 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
3624 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
3625 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
3628 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
3629 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
3630 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
3631 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
3632 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
3634 * Internal improvements
3636 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
3637 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
3639 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
3640 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
3641 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
3642 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
3643 shared code that handles any of them.
3645 * New command line options
3647 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
3651 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
3652 General Public License.
3654 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
3656 * Host/native/target split
3658 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
3659 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
3660 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
3661 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
3662 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
3664 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
3665 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
3666 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
3667 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
3668 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
3669 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
3670 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
3672 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
3673 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
3674 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
3676 * New hosts supported
3678 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
3679 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
3680 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
3682 * New targets supported
3684 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
3685 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
3687 * New native hosts supported
3689 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
3690 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
3691 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
3693 * New file formats supported
3695 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
3696 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
3697 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
3701 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
3702 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
3703 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
3705 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
3707 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
3708 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
3709 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
3710 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
3714 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
3715 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
3716 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
3718 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
3722 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
3723 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
3726 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
3727 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
3729 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
3730 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
3731 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
3732 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
3733 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
3734 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
3736 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
3737 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
3738 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
3739 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
3743 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
3744 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
3745 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
3746 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
3747 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
3749 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
3750 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
3751 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
3752 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
3756 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
3757 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
3758 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
3759 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
3760 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
3761 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
3762 each instruction being stepped through.
3764 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
3765 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
3767 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
3768 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
3769 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
3770 processor with a serial port.
3774 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
3775 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
3776 supported, and what files each one uses.
3780 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
3781 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
3782 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
3783 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
3785 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
3786 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
3787 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
3788 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
3792 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
3793 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
3794 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
3795 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
3796 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
3797 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
3799 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
3802 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
3804 * Better support for C++ function names
3806 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
3807 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
3808 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
3809 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
3810 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
3812 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
3813 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
3814 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
3815 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
3816 for the list of formats.
3818 * G++ symbol mangling problem
3820 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
3821 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
3822 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
3823 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
3824 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
3825 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
3828 * New 'maintenance' command
3830 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
3831 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
3832 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
3834 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
3835 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
3836 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
3837 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
3838 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
3839 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
3841 The following commands are new:
3843 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
3844 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
3845 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
3847 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
3849 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
3850 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
3851 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
3852 read after argv processing.
3854 * New hosts supported
3856 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
3858 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
3860 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
3861 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
3862 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
3863 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
3864 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
3867 * New targets supported
3869 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
3871 * More smarts about finding #include files
3873 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
3874 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
3875 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
3876 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
3877 the one that contains your sources.
3879 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
3880 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
3881 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
3883 * Interesting infernals change
3885 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
3886 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
3887 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
3888 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
3890 * Bug fixes (of course!)
3892 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
3893 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
3894 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
3896 See the ChangeLog for details.
3898 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
3900 * New machines supported (host and target)
3902 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
3904 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
3906 * New malloc package
3908 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
3909 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
3910 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
3911 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
3912 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
3913 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
3917 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
3918 'help info proc' for details.
3920 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
3922 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
3923 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
3926 * File name changes for MS-DOS
3928 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
3929 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
3930 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
3931 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
3932 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
3933 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
3935 * Cross byte order fixes
3937 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
3938 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
3940 * New -mapped and -readnow options
3942 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
3943 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
3944 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
3945 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
3946 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
3947 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
3948 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
3949 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
3950 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
3951 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
3953 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
3954 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
3955 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
3956 slower, but makes future operations faster.
3958 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
3959 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
3960 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
3963 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
3965 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
3966 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
3967 shared across multiple host platforms.
3969 * longjmp() handling
3971 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
3972 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
3973 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
3974 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
3978 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
3979 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
3984 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
3985 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
3986 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
3988 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
3990 * New machines supported (host and target)
3992 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
3994 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
3995 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
3997 * New machines supported (target)
3999 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4003 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
4004 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
4005 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
4007 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
4008 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
4009 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
4010 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
4011 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
4014 * New features for SVR4
4016 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
4017 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
4018 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
4020 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
4021 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
4022 it prints the address mappings of the process.
4024 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
4025 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
4027 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
4029 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
4030 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
4031 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
4032 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
4033 same code linked statically.
4037 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
4038 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
4039 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
4040 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
4041 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
4042 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
4046 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
4047 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
4048 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
4051 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
4053 * New machines supported (host and target)
4055 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
4056 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
4057 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4059 * Almost SCO Unix support
4061 We had hoped to support:
4062 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
4063 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
4064 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
4065 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
4067 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
4069 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
4070 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
4071 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
4072 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
4077 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
4078 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
4079 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
4083 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
4084 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
4085 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
4087 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
4089 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
4090 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
4091 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
4093 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
4094 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
4095 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
4096 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
4099 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
4100 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
4101 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
4102 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
4105 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
4106 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
4109 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
4110 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
4111 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
4114 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
4116 * Improved configuration
4118 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
4119 Porting BFD is simpler.
4123 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
4124 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
4125 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
4126 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
4130 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
4132 * New host supported (not target)
4134 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
4137 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
4139 * Multiple source language support
4141 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
4142 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
4143 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
4144 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
4145 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
4146 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
4150 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
4151 currently under development at the State University of New York at
4152 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
4153 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
4155 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
4156 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
4157 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
4159 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
4160 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
4164 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
4165 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
4166 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
4167 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
4170 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
4172 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
4173 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
4174 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
4175 examining core files.
4179 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
4182 * New machines supported (host and target)
4184 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4185 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
4186 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
4188 * New hosts supported (not targets)
4190 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
4192 * New targets supported (not hosts)
4194 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4195 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4196 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
4198 * New remote interfaces
4204 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
4208 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
4210 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
4211 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
4212 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
4213 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
4214 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
4215 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
4216 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
4217 stub on the target system.
4219 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
4221 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
4222 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
4223 object file types such as a.out and coff.
4225 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
4226 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
4229 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
4231 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
4232 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
4234 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
4235 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
4236 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
4238 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
4239 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
4240 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
4241 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
4243 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
4244 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
4245 it is already running. Default is ON.
4247 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
4248 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
4249 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
4250 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
4253 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
4254 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
4255 or the value of the environment variable
4258 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
4259 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
4262 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
4263 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
4264 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
4266 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
4267 history expansion will be performed on
4268 command line input. The default is OFF.
4270 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
4271 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
4272 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
4274 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
4275 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
4276 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
4279 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
4280 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
4281 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
4284 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
4285 ``set width'' instead.
4287 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
4288 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
4289 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
4290 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
4292 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
4295 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
4298 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
4301 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
4304 * Support for Epoch Environment.
4306 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
4307 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
4308 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
4312 * Support for Shared Libraries
4314 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
4315 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
4316 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
4317 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
4318 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
4319 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
4320 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
4321 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
4323 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
4324 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
4325 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
4327 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
4332 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
4333 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
4334 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
4335 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
4336 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
4337 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
4339 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
4341 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
4343 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4344 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4345 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4348 * C++ multiple inheritance
4350 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
4353 * C++ exception handling
4355 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
4356 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
4357 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
4360 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
4361 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
4362 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
4364 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
4365 current stack frame.
4368 * Minor command changes
4370 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
4371 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
4372 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
4374 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
4375 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
4376 frames without printing.
4378 * New directory command
4380 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
4381 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
4382 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
4383 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
4384 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
4386 * Configuring GDB for compilation
4388 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
4391 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
4392 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
4393 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
4394 where the program that you are debugging will run.