Change TUI window commands to be case-sensitive
[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
4 *** Changes since GDB 8.3
5
6 * 'thread-exited' event is now available in the annotations interface.
7
8 * New built-in convenience variables $_gdb_major and $_gdb_minor
9 provide the GDB version. They are handy for conditionally using
10 features available only in or since specific GDB versions, in
11 scripts that should work error-free with many different versions,
12 such as in system-wide init files.
13
14 * GDB now supports Thread Local Storage (TLS) variables on several
15 FreeBSD architectures (amd64, i386, powerpc, riscv). Other
16 architectures require kernel changes. TLS is not yet supported for
17 amd64 and i386 process core dumps.
18
19 * Support for Pointer Authentication (PAC) on AArch64 Linux. Return
20 addresses that required unmasking are shown in the backtrace with the
21 postfix [PAC].
22
23 * Two new convenience functions $_cimag and $_creal that extract the
24 imaginary and real parts respectively from complex numbers.
25
26 * New built-in convenience variables $_shell_exitcode and $_shell_exitsignal
27 provide the exitcode or exit status of the shell commands launched by
28 GDB commands such as "shell", "pipe" and "make".
29
30 * The RX port now supports XML target descriptions.
31
32 * GDB now shows the Ada task names at more places, e.g. in task switching
33 messages.
34
35 * GDB can now be compiled with Python 3 on Windows.
36
37 * Python API
38
39 ** The gdb.Value type has a new method 'format_string' which returns a
40 string representing the value. The formatting is controlled by the
41 optional keyword arguments: 'raw', 'pretty_arrays', 'pretty_structs',
42 'array_indexes', 'symbols', 'unions', 'deref_refs', 'actual_objects',
43 'static_members', 'max_elements', 'repeat_threshold', and 'format'.
44
45 ** gdb.Type has a new property 'objfile' which returns the objfile the
46 type was defined in.
47
48 ** The frame information printed by the python frame filtering code
49 is now consistent with what the 'backtrace' command prints when
50 there are no filters, or when the 'backtrace' '-no-filters' option
51 is given.
52
53 ** The new function gdb.lookup_static_symbol can be used to look up
54 symbols with static linkage.
55
56 ** gdb.Objfile has new methods 'lookup_global_symbol' and
57 'lookup_static_symbol' to lookup a symbol from this objfile only.
58
59 ** gdb.Block now supports the dictionary syntax for accessing symbols in
60 this block (e.g. block['local_variable']).
61
62 * New commands
63
64 | [COMMAND] | SHELL_COMMAND
65 | -d DELIM COMMAND DELIM SHELL_COMMAND
66 pipe [COMMAND] | SHELL_COMMAND
67 pipe -d DELIM COMMAND DELIM SHELL_COMMAND
68 Executes COMMAND and sends its output to SHELL_COMMAND.
69 With no COMMAND, repeat the last executed command
70 and send its output to SHELL_COMMAND.
71
72 with SETTING [VALUE] [-- COMMAND]
73 w SETTING [VALUE] [-- COMMAND]
74 Temporarily set SETTING, run COMMAND, and restore SETTING.
75 Usage: with SETTING -- COMMAND
76 With no COMMAND, repeats the last executed command.
77 SETTING is any GDB setting you can change with the "set"
78 subcommands. For example, 'with language c -- print someobj'
79 temporarily switches to the C language in order to print someobj.
80 Settings can be combined: 'w lang c -- w print elements unlimited --
81 usercmd' switches to the C language and runs usercmd with no limit
82 of array elements to print.
83
84 maint with SETTING [VALUE] [-- COMMAND]
85 Like "with", but works with "maintenance set" settings.
86
87 set may-call-functions [on|off]
88 show may-call-functions
89 This controls whether GDB will attempt to call functions in
90 the program, such as with expressions in the print command. It
91 defaults to on. Calling functions in the program being debugged
92 can have undesired side effects. It is now possible to forbid
93 such function calls. If function calls are forbidden, GDB will throw
94 an error when a command (such as print expression) calls a function
95 in the program.
96
97 set print finish [on|off]
98 show print finish
99 This controls whether the `finish' command will display the value
100 that is returned by the current function. When `off', the value is
101 still entered into the value history, but it is not printed. The
102 default is `on'.
103
104 set print max-depth
105 show print max-depth
106 Allows deeply nested structures to be simplified when printing by
107 replacing deeply nested parts (beyond the max-depth) with ellipses.
108 The default max-depth is 20, but this can be set to unlimited to get
109 the old behavior back.
110
111 set logging debugredirect [on|off]
112 By default, GDB debug output will go to both the terminal and the logfile.
113 Set if you want debug output to go only to the log file.
114
115 set style title foreground COLOR
116 set style title background COLOR
117 set style title intensity VALUE
118 Control the styling of titles.
119
120 set style highlight foreground COLOR
121 set style highlight background COLOR
122 set style highlight intensity VALUE
123 Control the styling of highlightings.
124
125 maint set test-settings KIND
126 maint show test-settings KIND
127 A set of commands used by the testsuite for exercising the settings
128 infrastructure.
129
130 set print frame-info [short-location|location|location-and-address
131 |source-and-location|source-line|auto]
132 show print frame-info
133 This controls what frame information is printed by the commands printing
134 a frame. This setting will e.g. influence the behaviour of 'backtrace',
135 'frame', 'stepi'. The python frame filtering also respect this setting.
136 The 'backtrace' '-frame-info' option can override this global setting.
137
138 * Changed commands
139
140 help
141 The "help" command uses the title style to enhance the
142 readibility of its output by styling the classes and
143 command names.
144
145 apropos [-v] REGEXP
146 Similarly to "help", the "apropos" command also uses the
147 title style for the command names. "apropos" accepts now
148 a flag "-v" (verbose) to show the full documentation
149 of matching commands and to use the highlight style to mark
150 the documentation parts matching REGEXP.
151
152 printf
153 eval
154 The GDB printf and eval commands can now print C-style and Ada-style
155 string convenience variables without calling functions in the program.
156 This allows to do formatted printing of strings without having
157 a running inferior, or when debugging a core dump.
158
159 info sources [-dirname | -basename] [--] [REGEXP]
160 This command has now optional arguments to only print the files
161 whose names match REGEXP. The arguments -dirname and -basename
162 allow to restrict matching respectively to the dirname and basename
163 parts of the files.
164
165 show style
166 The "show style" and its subcommands are now styling
167 a style name in their output using its own style, to help
168 the user visualize the different styles.
169
170 set print frame-arguments
171 The new value 'presence' indicates to only indicate the presence of
172 arguments using ..., instead of printing argument names and values.
173
174 set print raw-frame-arguments
175 show print raw-frame-arguments
176
177 These commands replace the similarly-named "set/show print raw
178 frame-arguments" commands (now with a dash instead of a space). The
179 old commands are now deprecated and may be removed in a future
180 release.
181
182 maint test-options require-delimiter
183 maint test-options unknown-is-error
184 maint test-options unknown-is-operand
185 maint show test-options-completion-result
186 Commands used by the testsuite to validate the command options
187 framework.
188
189 focus, winheight, +, -, >, <
190 These commands are now case-sensitive.
191
192 * New command options, command completion
193
194 GDB now has a standard infrastructure to support dash-style command
195 options ('-OPT'). One benefit is that commands that use it can
196 easily support completion of command line arguments. Try "CMD
197 -[TAB]" or "help CMD" to find options supported by a command. Over
198 time, we intend to migrate most commands to this infrastructure. A
199 number of commands got support for new command options in this
200 release:
201
202 ** The "print" and "compile print" commands now support a number of
203 options that allow overriding relevant global print settings as
204 set by "set print" subcommands:
205
206 -address [on|off]
207 -array [on|off]
208 -array-indexes [on|off]
209 -elements NUMBER|unlimited
210 -null-stop [on|off]
211 -object [on|off]
212 -pretty [on|off]
213 -repeats NUMBER|unlimited
214 -static-members [on|off]
215 -symbol [on|off]
216 -union [on|off]
217 -vtbl [on|off]
218
219 Note that because the "print"/"compile print" commands accept
220 arbitrary expressions which may look like options (including
221 abbreviations), if you specify any command option, then you must
222 use a double dash ("--") to mark the end of argument processing.
223
224 ** The "backtrace" command now supports a number of options that
225 allow overriding relevant global print settings as set by "set
226 backtrace" and "set print" subcommands:
227
228 -entry-values no|only|preferred|if-needed|both|compact|default
229 -frame-arguments all|scalars|none
230 -raw-frame-arguments [on|off]
231 -frame-info auto|source-line|location|source-and-location
232 |location-and-address|short-location
233 -past-main [on|off]
234 -past-entry [on|off]
235
236 In addition, the full/no-filters/hide qualifiers are now also
237 exposed as command options too:
238
239 -full
240 -no-filters
241 -hide
242
243 ** The "frame apply", "tfaas" and "faas" commands similarly now
244 support the following options:
245
246 -past-main [on|off]
247 -past-entry [on|off]
248
249 ** The new "info sources" options -dirname and -basename options
250 are using the standard '-OPT' infrastructure.
251
252 All options above can also be abbreviated. The argument of boolean
253 (on/off) options can be 0/1 too, and also the argument is assumed
254 "on" if omitted. This allows writing compact command invocations,
255 like for example:
256
257 (gdb) p -r -p -o 0 -- *myptr
258
259 The above is equivalent to:
260
261 (gdb) print -raw -pretty -object off -- *myptr
262
263 ** The "info types" command now supports the '-q' flag to disable
264 printing of some header information in a similar fashion to "info
265 variables" and "info functions".
266
267 ** The "info variables", "info functions", and "whereis" commands
268 now take a '-n' flag that excludes non-debug symbols (symbols
269 from the symbol table, not from the debug info such as DWARF)
270 from the results.
271
272 * Completion improvements
273
274 ** GDB can now complete the options of the "thread apply all" and
275 "taas" commands, and their "-ascending" option can now be
276 abbreviated.
277
278 ** GDB can now complete the options of the "info threads", "info
279 functions", "info variables", "info locals", and "info args"
280 commands.
281
282 ** GDB can now complete the options of the "compile file" and
283 "compile code" commands. The "compile file" command now
284 completes on filenames.
285
286 ** GDB can now complete the backtrace command's
287 "full/no-filters/hide" qualifiers.
288
289 * In settings, you can now abbreviate "unlimited".
290
291 E.g., "set print elements u" is now equivalent to "set print
292 elements unlimited".
293
294 * New MI commands
295
296 -complete
297 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
298 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by MI
299 frontends in cases when separate CLI and MI channels cannot be used.
300
301 -catch-throw, -catch-rethrow, and -catch-catch
302 These can be used to catch C++ exceptions in a similar fashion to
303 the CLI commands 'catch throw', 'catch rethrow', and 'catch catch'.
304
305 * Other MI changes
306
307 ** Backtraces and frames include a new optional field addr_flags which is
308 given after the addr field. On AArch64 this contains PAC if the address
309 has been masked in the frame. On all other targets the field is not
310 present.
311
312 * Testsuite
313
314 The testsuite now creates the files gdb.cmd (containing the arguments
315 used to launch GDB) and gdb.in (containing all the commands sent to
316 GDB) in the output directory for each test script. Multiple invocations
317 are appended with .1, .2, .3 etc.
318
319 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires GNU make >= 3.82.
320
321 Using another implementation of the make program or an earlier version of
322 GNU make to build GDB or GDBserver is not supported.
323
324 * Building GDB now requires GNU readline >= 7.0.
325
326 GDB now bundles GNU readline 8.0, but if you choose to use
327 --with-system-readline, only readline >= 7.0 can be used.
328
329 * The TUI SingleKey keymap is now named "SingleKey". This can be used
330 from .inputrc to bind keys in this keymap. This feature is only
331 available when gdb is built against GNU readline 8.0 or later.
332
333 *** Changes in GDB 8.3
334
335 * GDB and GDBserver now support access to additional registers on
336 PowerPC GNU/Linux targets: PPR, DSCR, TAR, EBB/PMU registers, and
337 HTM registers.
338
339 * GDB now has experimental support for the compilation and injection of
340 C++ source code into the inferior. This beta release does not include
341 support for several language features, such as templates, constructors,
342 and operators.
343
344 This feature requires GCC 7.1 or higher built with libcp1.so
345 (the C++ plug-in).
346
347 * GDB and GDBserver now support IPv6 connections. IPv6 addresses
348 can be passed using the '[ADDRESS]:PORT' notation, or the regular
349 'ADDRESS:PORT' method.
350
351 * DWARF index cache: GDB can now automatically save indices of DWARF
352 symbols on disk to speed up further loading of the same binaries.
353
354 * Ada task switching is now supported on aarch64-elf targets when
355 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
356 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
357 in the GDB user manual.
358
359 * GDB in batch mode now exits with status 1 if the last command to be
360 executed failed.
361
362 * The RISC-V target now supports target descriptions.
363
364 * System call catchpoints now support system call aliases on FreeBSD.
365 When the ABI of a system call changes in FreeBSD, this is
366 implemented by leaving a compatibility system call using the old ABI
367 at the existing number and allocating a new system call number for
368 the new ABI. For example, FreeBSD 12 altered the layout of 'struct
369 kevent' used by the 'kevent' system call. As a result, FreeBSD 12
370 kernels ship with both 'kevent' and 'freebsd11_kevent' system calls.
371 The 'freebsd11_kevent' system call is assigned an alias of 'kevent'
372 so that a system call catchpoint for the 'kevent' system call will
373 catch invocations of both the 'kevent' and 'freebsd11_kevent'
374 binaries. This ensures that 'kevent' system calls are caught for
375 binaries using either the old or new ABIs.
376
377 * Terminal styling is now available for the CLI and the TUI. GNU
378 Source Highlight can additionally be used to provide styling of
379 source code snippets. See the "set style" commands, below, for more
380 information.
381
382 * Removed support for old demangling styles arm, edg, gnu, hp and
383 lucid.
384
385 * New commands
386
387 set debug compile-cplus-types
388 show debug compile-cplus-types
389 Control the display of debug output about type conversion in the
390 C++ compile feature. Commands have no effect while compiliong
391 for other languages.
392
393 set debug skip
394 show debug skip
395 Control whether debug output about files/functions skipping is
396 displayed.
397
398 frame apply [all | COUNT | -COUNT | level LEVEL...] [FLAG]... COMMAND
399 Apply a command to some frames.
400 FLAG arguments allow to control what output to produce and how to handle
401 errors raised when applying COMMAND to a frame.
402
403 taas COMMAND
404 Apply a command to all threads (ignoring errors and empty output).
405 Shortcut for 'thread apply all -s COMMAND'.
406
407 faas COMMAND
408 Apply a command to all frames (ignoring errors and empty output).
409 Shortcut for 'frame apply all -s COMMAND'.
410
411 tfaas COMMAND
412 Apply a command to all frames of all threads (ignoring errors and empty
413 output).
414 Shortcut for 'thread apply all -s frame apply all -s COMMAND'.
415
416 maint set dwarf unwinders (on|off)
417 maint show dwarf unwinders
418 Control whether DWARF unwinders can be used.
419
420 info proc files
421 Display a list of open files for a process.
422
423 * Changed commands
424
425 Changes to the "frame", "select-frame", and "info frame" CLI commands.
426 These commands all now take a frame specification which
427 is either a frame level, or one of the keywords 'level', 'address',
428 'function', or 'view' followed by a parameter. Selecting a frame by
429 address, or viewing a frame outside the current backtrace now
430 requires the use of a keyword. Selecting a frame by level is
431 unchanged. The MI comment "-stack-select-frame" is unchanged.
432
433 target remote FILENAME
434 target extended-remote FILENAME
435 If FILENAME is a Unix domain socket, GDB will attempt to connect
436 to this socket instead of opening FILENAME as a character device.
437
438 info args [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
439 info functions [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
440 info locals [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
441 info variables [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
442 These commands can now print only the searched entities
443 matching the provided regexp(s), giving a condition
444 on the entity names or entity types. The flag -q disables
445 printing headers or informations messages.
446
447 info functions
448 info types
449 info variables
450 rbreak
451 These commands now determine the syntax for the shown entities
452 according to the language chosen by `set language'. In particular,
453 `set language auto' means to automatically choose the language of
454 the shown entities.
455
456 thread apply [all | COUNT | -COUNT] [FLAG]... COMMAND
457 The 'thread apply' command accepts new FLAG arguments.
458 FLAG arguments allow to control what output to produce and how to handle
459 errors raised when applying COMMAND to a thread.
460
461 set tui tab-width NCHARS
462 show tui tab-width NCHARS
463 "set tui tab-width" replaces the "tabset" command, which has been deprecated.
464
465 set style enabled [on|off]
466 show style enabled
467 Enable or disable terminal styling. Styling is enabled by default
468 on most hosts, but disabled by default when in batch mode.
469
470 set style sources [on|off]
471 show style sources
472 Enable or disable source code styling. Source code styling is
473 enabled by default, but only takes effect if styling in general is
474 enabled, and if GDB was linked with GNU Source Highlight.
475
476 set style filename foreground COLOR
477 set style filename background COLOR
478 set style filename intensity VALUE
479 Control the styling of file names.
480
481 set style function foreground COLOR
482 set style function background COLOR
483 set style function intensity VALUE
484 Control the styling of function names.
485
486 set style variable foreground COLOR
487 set style variable background COLOR
488 set style variable intensity VALUE
489 Control the styling of variable names.
490
491 set style address foreground COLOR
492 set style address background COLOR
493 set style address intensity VALUE
494 Control the styling of addresses.
495
496 * MI changes
497
498 ** The default version of the MI interpreter is now 3 (-i=mi3).
499
500 ** The '-data-disassemble' MI command now accepts an '-a' option to
501 disassemble the whole function surrounding the given program
502 counter value or function name. Support for this feature can be
503 verified by using the "-list-features" command, which should
504 contain "data-disassemble-a-option".
505
506 ** Command responses and notifications that include a frame now include
507 the frame's architecture in a new "arch" attribute.
508
509 ** The output of information about multi-location breakpoints (which is
510 syntactically incorrect in MI 2) has changed in MI 3. This affects
511 the following commands and events:
512
513 - -break-insert
514 - -break-info
515 - =breakpoint-created
516 - =breakpoint-modified
517
518 The -fix-multi-location-breakpoint-output command can be used to enable
519 this behavior with previous MI versions.
520
521 * New native configurations
522
523 GNU/Linux/RISC-V riscv*-*-linux*
524 FreeBSD/riscv riscv*-*-freebsd*
525
526 * New targets
527
528 GNU/Linux/RISC-V riscv*-*-linux*
529 CSKY ELF csky*-*-elf
530 CSKY GNU/LINUX csky*-*-linux
531 FreeBSD/riscv riscv*-*-freebsd*
532 NXP S12Z s12z-*-elf
533 GNU/Linux/OpenRISC or1k*-*-linux*
534
535 * Removed targets
536
537 GDB no longer supports native debugging on versions of MS-Windows
538 before Windows XP.
539
540 * Python API
541
542 ** GDB no longer supports Python versions less than 2.6.
543
544 ** The gdb.Inferior type has a new 'progspace' property, which is the program
545 space associated to that inferior.
546
547 ** The gdb.Progspace type has a new 'objfiles' method, which returns the list
548 of objfiles associated to that program space.
549
550 ** gdb.SYMBOL_LOC_COMMON_BLOCK, gdb.SYMBOL_MODULE_DOMAIN, and
551 gdb.SYMBOL_COMMON_BLOCK_DOMAIN were added to reflect changes to
552 the gdb core.
553
554 ** gdb.SYMBOL_VARIABLES_DOMAIN, gdb.SYMBOL_FUNCTIONS_DOMAIN, and
555 gdb.SYMBOL_TYPES_DOMAIN are now deprecated. These were never
556 correct and did not work properly.
557
558 ** The gdb.Value type has a new constructor, which is used to construct a
559 gdb.Value from a Python buffer object and a gdb.Type.
560
561 * Configure changes
562
563 --enable-ubsan
564
565 Enable or disable the undefined behavior sanitizer. This is
566 disabled by default, but passing --enable-ubsan=yes or
567 --enable-ubsan=auto to configure will enable it. Enabling this can
568 cause a performance penalty. The undefined behavior sanitizer was
569 first introduced in GCC 4.9.
570
571 *** Changes in GDB 8.2
572
573 * The 'set disassembler-options' command now supports specifying options
574 for the MIPS target.
575
576 * The 'symbol-file' command now accepts an '-o' option to add a relative
577 offset to all sections.
578
579 * Similarly, the 'add-symbol-file' command also accepts an '-o' option to add
580 a relative offset to all sections, but it allows to override the load
581 address of individual sections using '-s'.
582
583 * The 'add-symbol-file' command no longer requires the second argument
584 (address of the text section).
585
586 * The endianness used with the 'set endian auto' mode in the absence of
587 an executable selected for debugging is now the last endianness chosen
588 either by one of the 'set endian big' and 'set endian little' commands
589 or by inferring from the last executable used, rather than the startup
590 default.
591
592 * The pager now allows a "c" response, meaning to disable the pager
593 for the rest of the current command.
594
595 * The commands 'info variables/functions/types' now show the source line
596 numbers of symbol definitions when available.
597
598 * 'info proc' now works on running processes on FreeBSD systems and core
599 files created on FreeBSD systems.
600
601 * C expressions can now use _Alignof, and C++ expressions can now use
602 alignof.
603
604 * Support for SVE on AArch64 Linux. Note that GDB does not detect changes to
605 the vector length while the process is running.
606
607 * New commands
608
609 set debug fbsd-nat
610 show debug fbsd-nat
611 Control display of debugging info regarding the FreeBSD native target.
612
613 set|show varsize-limit
614 This new setting allows the user to control the maximum size of Ada
615 objects being printed when those objects have a variable type,
616 instead of that maximum size being hardcoded to 65536 bytes.
617
618 set|show record btrace cpu
619 Controls the processor to be used for enabling errata workarounds for
620 branch trace decode.
621
622 maint check libthread-db
623 Run integrity checks on the current inferior's thread debugging
624 library
625
626 maint set check-libthread-db (on|off)
627 maint show check-libthread-db
628 Control whether to run integrity checks on inferior specific thread
629 debugging libraries as they are loaded. The default is not to
630 perform such checks.
631
632 * Python API
633
634 ** Type alignment is now exposed via the "align" attribute of a gdb.Type.
635
636 ** The commands attached to a breakpoint can be set by assigning to
637 the breakpoint's "commands" field.
638
639 ** gdb.execute can now execute multi-line gdb commands.
640
641 ** The new functions gdb.convenience_variable and
642 gdb.set_convenience_variable can be used to get and set the value
643 of convenience variables.
644
645 ** A gdb.Parameter will no longer print the "set" help text on an
646 ordinary "set"; instead by default a "set" will be silent unless
647 the get_set_string method returns a non-empty string.
648
649 * New targets
650
651 RiscV ELF riscv*-*-elf
652
653 * Removed targets and native configurations
654
655 m88k running OpenBSD m88*-*-openbsd*
656 SH-5/SH64 ELF sh64-*-elf*, SH-5/SH64 support in sh*
657 SH-5/SH64 running GNU/Linux SH-5/SH64 support in sh*-*-linux*
658 SH-5/SH64 running OpenBSD SH-5/SH64 support in sh*-*-openbsd*
659
660 * Aarch64/Linux hardware watchpoints improvements
661
662 Hardware watchpoints on unaligned addresses are now properly
663 supported when running Linux kernel 4.10 or higher: read and access
664 watchpoints are no longer spuriously missed, and all watchpoints
665 lengths between 1 and 8 bytes are supported. On older kernels,
666 watchpoints set on unaligned addresses are no longer missed, with
667 the tradeoff that there is a possibility of false hits being
668 reported.
669
670 * Configure changes
671
672 --enable-codesign=CERT
673 This can be used to invoke "codesign -s CERT" after building gdb.
674 This option is useful on macOS, where code signing is required for
675 gdb to work properly.
676
677 --disable-gdbcli has been removed
678 This is now silently accepted, but does nothing.
679
680 *** Changes in GDB 8.1
681
682 * GDB now supports dynamically creating arbitrary register groups specified
683 in XML target descriptions. This allows for finer grain grouping of
684 registers on systems with a large amount of registers.
685
686 * The 'ptype' command now accepts a '/o' flag, which prints the
687 offsets and sizes of fields in a struct, like the pahole(1) tool.
688
689 * New "--readnever" command line option instructs GDB to not read each
690 symbol file's symbolic debug information. This makes startup faster
691 but at the expense of not being able to perform symbolic debugging.
692 This option is intended for use cases where symbolic debugging will
693 not be used, e.g., when you only need to dump the debuggee's core.
694
695 * GDB now uses the GNU MPFR library, if available, to emulate target
696 floating-point arithmetic during expression evaluation when the target
697 uses different floating-point formats than the host. At least version
698 3.1 of GNU MPFR is required.
699
700 * GDB now supports access to the guarded-storage-control registers and the
701 software-based guarded-storage broadcast control registers on IBM z14.
702
703 * On Unix systems, GDB now supports transmitting environment variables
704 that are to be set or unset to GDBserver. These variables will
705 affect the environment to be passed to the remote inferior.
706
707 To inform GDB of environment variables that are to be transmitted to
708 GDBserver, use the "set environment" command. Only user set
709 environment variables are sent to GDBserver.
710
711 To inform GDB of environment variables that are to be unset before
712 the remote inferior is started by the GDBserver, use the "unset
713 environment" command.
714
715 * Completion improvements
716
717 ** GDB can now complete function parameters in linespecs and
718 explicit locations without quoting. When setting breakpoints,
719 quoting around functions names to help with TAB-completion is
720 generally no longer necessary. For example, this now completes
721 correctly:
722
723 (gdb) b function(in[TAB]
724 (gdb) b function(int)
725
726 Related, GDB is no longer confused with completing functions in
727 C++ anonymous namespaces:
728
729 (gdb) b (anon[TAB]
730 (gdb) b (anonymous namespace)::[TAB][TAB]
731 (anonymous namespace)::a_function()
732 (anonymous namespace)::b_function()
733
734 ** GDB now has much improved linespec and explicit locations TAB
735 completion support, that better understands what you're
736 completing and offers better suggestions. For example, GDB no
737 longer offers data symbols as possible completions when you're
738 setting a breakpoint.
739
740 ** GDB now TAB-completes label symbol names.
741
742 ** The "complete" command now mimics TAB completion accurately.
743
744 * New command line options (gcore)
745
746 -a
747 Dump all memory mappings.
748
749 * Breakpoints on C++ functions are now set on all scopes by default
750
751 By default, breakpoints on functions/methods are now interpreted as
752 specifying all functions with the given name ignoring missing
753 leading scopes (namespaces and classes).
754
755 For example, assuming a C++ program with symbols named:
756
757 A::B::func()
758 B::func()
759
760 both commands "break func()" and "break B::func()" set a breakpoint
761 on both symbols.
762
763 You can use the new flag "-qualified" to override this. This makes
764 GDB interpret the specified function name as a complete
765 fully-qualified name instead. For example, using the same C++
766 program, the "break -q B::func" command sets a breakpoint on
767 "B::func", only. A parameter has been added to the Python
768 gdb.Breakpoint constructor to achieve the same result when creating
769 a breakpoint from Python.
770
771 * Breakpoints on functions marked with C++ ABI tags
772
773 GDB can now set breakpoints on functions marked with C++ ABI tags
774 (e.g., [abi:cxx11]). See here for a description of ABI tags:
775 https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2015/02/05/gcc5-and-the-c11-abi/
776
777 Functions with a C++11 abi tag are demangled/displayed like this:
778
779 function[abi:cxx11](int)
780 ^^^^^^^^^^^
781
782 You can now set a breakpoint on such functions simply as if they had
783 no tag, like:
784
785 (gdb) b function(int)
786
787 Or if you need to disambiguate between tags, like:
788
789 (gdb) b function[abi:other_tag](int)
790
791 Tab completion was adjusted accordingly as well.
792
793 * Python Scripting
794
795 ** New events gdb.new_inferior, gdb.inferior_deleted, and
796 gdb.new_thread are emitted. See the manual for further
797 description of these.
798
799 ** A new function, "gdb.rbreak" has been added to the Python API.
800 This function allows the setting of a large number of breakpoints
801 via a regex pattern in Python. See the manual for further details.
802
803 ** Python breakpoints can now accept explicit locations. See the
804 manual for a further description of this feature.
805
806
807 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
808
809 ** GDBserver is now able to start inferior processes with a
810 specified initial working directory.
811
812 The user can set the desired working directory to be used from
813 GDB using the new "set cwd" command.
814
815 ** New "--selftest" command line option runs some GDBserver self
816 tests. These self tests are disabled in releases.
817
818 ** On Unix systems, GDBserver now does globbing expansion and variable
819 substitution in inferior command line arguments.
820
821 This is done by starting inferiors using a shell, like GDB does.
822 See "set startup-with-shell" in the user manual for how to disable
823 this from GDB when using "target extended-remote". When using
824 "target remote", you can disable the startup with shell by using the
825 new "--no-startup-with-shell" GDBserver command line option.
826
827 ** On Unix systems, GDBserver now supports receiving environment
828 variables that are to be set or unset from GDB. These variables
829 will affect the environment to be passed to the inferior.
830
831 * When catching an Ada exception raised with a message, GDB now prints
832 the message in the catchpoint hit notification. In GDB/MI mode, that
833 information is provided as an extra field named "exception-message"
834 in the *stopped notification.
835
836 * Trait objects can now be inspected When debugging Rust code. This
837 requires compiler support which will appear in Rust 1.24.
838
839 * New remote packets
840
841 QEnvironmentHexEncoded
842 Inform GDBserver of an environment variable that is to be passed to
843 the inferior when starting it.
844
845 QEnvironmentUnset
846 Inform GDBserver of an environment variable that is to be unset
847 before starting the remote inferior.
848
849 QEnvironmentReset
850 Inform GDBserver that the environment should be reset (i.e.,
851 user-set environment variables should be unset).
852
853 QStartupWithShell
854 Indicates whether the inferior must be started with a shell or not.
855
856 QSetWorkingDir
857 Tell GDBserver that the inferior to be started should use a specific
858 working directory.
859
860 * The "maintenance print c-tdesc" command now takes an optional
861 argument which is the file name of XML target description.
862
863 * The "maintenance selftest" command now takes an optional argument to
864 filter the tests to be run.
865
866 * The "enable", and "disable" commands now accept a range of
867 breakpoint locations, e.g. "enable 1.3-5".
868
869 * New commands
870
871 set|show cwd
872 Set and show the current working directory for the inferior.
873
874 set|show compile-gcc
875 Set and show compilation command used for compiling and injecting code
876 with the 'compile' commands.
877
878 set debug separate-debug-file
879 show debug separate-debug-file
880 Control the display of debug output about separate debug file search.
881
882 set dump-excluded-mappings
883 show dump-excluded-mappings
884 Control whether mappings marked with the VM_DONTDUMP flag should be
885 dumped when generating a core file.
886
887 maint info selftests
888 List the registered selftests.
889
890 starti
891 Start the debugged program stopping at the first instruction.
892
893 set|show debug or1k
894 Control display of debugging messages related to OpenRISC targets.
895
896 set|show print type nested-type-limit
897 Set and show the limit of nesting level for nested types that the
898 type printer will show.
899
900 * TUI Single-Key mode now supports two new shortcut keys: `i' for stepi and
901 `o' for nexti.
902
903 * Safer/improved support for debugging with no debug info
904
905 GDB no longer assumes functions with no debug information return
906 'int'.
907
908 This means that GDB now refuses to call such functions unless you
909 tell it the function's type, by either casting the call to the
910 declared return type, or by casting the function to a function
911 pointer of the right type, and calling that:
912
913 (gdb) p getenv ("PATH")
914 'getenv' has unknown return type; cast the call to its declared return type
915 (gdb) p (char *) getenv ("PATH")
916 $1 = 0x7fffffffe "/usr/local/bin:/"...
917 (gdb) p ((char * (*) (const char *)) getenv) ("PATH")
918 $2 = 0x7fffffffe "/usr/local/bin:/"...
919
920 Similarly, GDB no longer assumes that global variables with no debug
921 info have type 'int', and refuses to print the variable's value
922 unless you tell it the variable's type:
923
924 (gdb) p var
925 'var' has unknown type; cast it to its declared type
926 (gdb) p (float) var
927 $3 = 3.14
928
929 * New native configurations
930
931 FreeBSD/aarch64 aarch64*-*-freebsd*
932 FreeBSD/arm arm*-*-freebsd*
933
934 * New targets
935
936 FreeBSD/aarch64 aarch64*-*-freebsd*
937 FreeBSD/arm arm*-*-freebsd*
938 OpenRISC ELF or1k*-*-elf
939
940 * Removed targets and native configurations
941
942 Solaris 2.0-9 i?86-*-solaris2.[0-9], sparc*-*-solaris2.[0-9]
943
944 *** Changes in GDB 8.0
945
946 * GDB now supports access to the PKU register on GNU/Linux. The register is
947 added by the Memory Protection Keys for Userspace feature which will be
948 available in future Intel CPUs.
949
950 * GDB now supports C++11 rvalue references.
951
952 * Python Scripting
953
954 ** New functions to start, stop and access a running btrace recording.
955 ** Rvalue references are now supported in gdb.Type.
956
957 * GDB now supports recording and replaying rdrand and rdseed Intel 64
958 instructions.
959
960 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires a C++11 compiler.
961
962 For example, GCC 4.8 or later.
963
964 It is no longer possible to build GDB or GDBserver with a C
965 compiler. The --disable-build-with-cxx configure option has been
966 removed.
967
968 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires GNU make >= 3.81.
969
970 It is no longer supported to build GDB or GDBserver with another
971 implementation of the make program or an earlier version of GNU make.
972
973 * Native debugging on MS-Windows supports command-line redirection
974
975 Command-line arguments used for starting programs on MS-Windows can
976 now include redirection symbols supported by native Windows shells,
977 such as '<', '>', '>>', '2>&1', etc. This affects GDB commands such
978 as "run", "start", and "set args", as well as the corresponding MI
979 features.
980
981 * Support for thread names on MS-Windows.
982
983 GDB now catches and handles the special exception that programs
984 running on MS-Windows use to assign names to threads in the
985 debugger.
986
987 * Support for Java programs compiled with gcj has been removed.
988
989 * User commands now accept an unlimited number of arguments.
990 Previously, only up to 10 was accepted.
991
992 * The "eval" command now expands user-defined command arguments.
993
994 This makes it easier to process a variable number of arguments:
995
996 define mycommand
997 set $i = 0
998 while $i < $argc
999 eval "print $arg%d", $i
1000 set $i = $i + 1
1001 end
1002 end
1003
1004 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for sparc32 and sparc64.
1005
1006 * GDB now supports DWARF version 5 (debug information format).
1007 Its .debug_names index is not yet supported.
1008
1009 * New native configurations
1010
1011 FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
1012
1013 * New targets
1014
1015 Synopsys ARC arc*-*-elf32
1016 FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
1017
1018 * Removed targets and native configurations
1019
1020 Alpha running FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
1021 Alpha running GNU/kFreeBSD alpha*-*-kfreebsd*-gnu
1022
1023 * New commands
1024
1025 flash-erase
1026 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target.
1027
1028 maint print arc arc-instruction address
1029 Print internal disassembler information about instruction at a given address.
1030
1031 * New options
1032
1033 set disassembler-options
1034 show disassembler-options
1035 Controls the passing of target specific information to the disassembler.
1036 If it is necessary to specify more than one disassembler option then
1037 multiple options can be placed together into a comma separated list.
1038 The default value is the empty string. Currently, the only supported
1039 targets are ARM, PowerPC and S/390.
1040
1041 * New MI commands
1042
1043 -target-flash-erase
1044 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target. This is
1045 equivalent to the CLI command flash-erase.
1046
1047 -file-list-shared-libraries
1048 List the shared libraries in the program. This is
1049 equivalent to the CLI command "info shared".
1050
1051 -catch-handlers
1052 Catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are
1053 handled. This is equivalent to the CLI command "catch handlers".
1054
1055 *** Changes in GDB 7.12
1056
1057 * GDB and GDBserver now build with a C++ compiler by default.
1058
1059 The --enable-build-with-cxx configure option is now enabled by
1060 default. One must now explicitly configure with
1061 --disable-build-with-cxx in order to build with a C compiler. This
1062 option will be removed in a future release.
1063
1064 * GDBserver now supports recording btrace without maintaining an active
1065 GDB connection.
1066
1067 * GDB now supports a negative repeat count in the 'x' command to examine
1068 memory backward from the given address. For example:
1069
1070 (gdb) bt
1071 #0 Func1 (n=42, p=0x40061c "hogehoge") at main.cpp:4
1072 #1 0x400580 in main (argc=1, argv=0x7fffffffe5c8) at main.cpp:8
1073 (gdb) x/-5i 0x0000000000400580
1074 0x40056a <main(int, char**)+8>: mov %edi,-0x4(%rbp)
1075 0x40056d <main(int, char**)+11>: mov %rsi,-0x10(%rbp)
1076 0x400571 <main(int, char**)+15>: mov $0x40061c,%esi
1077 0x400576 <main(int, char**)+20>: mov $0x2a,%edi
1078 0x40057b <main(int, char**)+25>:
1079 callq 0x400536 <Func1(int, char const*)>
1080
1081 * Fortran: Support structures with fields of dynamic types and
1082 arrays of dynamic types.
1083
1084 * The symbol dumping maintenance commands have new syntax.
1085 maint print symbols [-pc address] [--] [filename]
1086 maint print symbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
1087 maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-pc address] [--] [filename]
1088 maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
1089 maint print msymbols [-objfile objfile] [--] [filename]
1090
1091 * GDB now supports multibit bitfields and enums in target register
1092 descriptions.
1093
1094 * New Python-based convenience function $_as_string(val), which returns
1095 the textual representation of a value. This function is especially
1096 useful to obtain the text label of an enum value.
1097
1098 * Intel MPX bound violation handling.
1099
1100 Segmentation faults caused by a Intel MPX boundary violation
1101 now display the kind of violation (upper or lower), the memory
1102 address accessed and the memory bounds, along with the usual
1103 signal received and code location.
1104
1105 For example:
1106
1107 Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault
1108 Upper bound violation while accessing address 0x7fffffffc3b3
1109 Bounds: [lower = 0x7fffffffc390, upper = 0x7fffffffc3a3]
1110 0x0000000000400d7c in upper () at i386-mpx-sigsegv.c:68
1111
1112 * Rust language support.
1113 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Rust programming
1114 language. See https://www.rust-lang.org/ for more information about
1115 Rust.
1116
1117 * Support for running interpreters on specified input/output devices
1118
1119 GDB now supports a new mechanism that allows frontends to provide
1120 fully featured GDB console views, as a better alternative to
1121 building such views on top of the "-interpreter-exec console"
1122 command. See the new "new-ui" command below. With that command,
1123 frontends can now start GDB in the traditional command-line mode
1124 running in an embedded terminal emulator widget, and create a
1125 separate MI interpreter running on a specified i/o device. In this
1126 way, GDB handles line editing, history, tab completion, etc. in the
1127 console all by itself, and the GUI uses the separate MI interpreter
1128 for its own control and synchronization, invisible to the command
1129 line.
1130
1131 * The "catch syscall" command catches groups of related syscalls.
1132
1133 The "catch syscall" command now supports catching a group of related
1134 syscalls using the 'group:' or 'g:' prefix.
1135
1136 * New commands
1137
1138 skip -file file
1139 skip -gfile file-glob-pattern
1140 skip -function function
1141 skip -rfunction regular-expression
1142 A generalized form of the skip command, with new support for
1143 glob-style file names and regular expressions for function names.
1144 Additionally, a file spec and a function spec may now be combined.
1145
1146 maint info line-table REGEXP
1147 Display the contents of GDB's internal line table data struture.
1148
1149 maint selftest
1150 Run any GDB unit tests that were compiled in.
1151
1152 new-ui INTERP TTY
1153 Start a new user interface instance running INTERP as interpreter,
1154 using the TTY file for input/output.
1155
1156 * Python Scripting
1157
1158 ** gdb.Breakpoint objects have a new attribute "pending", which
1159 indicates whether the breakpoint is pending.
1160 ** Three new breakpoint-related events have been added:
1161 gdb.breakpoint_created, gdb.breakpoint_modified, and
1162 gdb.breakpoint_deleted.
1163
1164 signal-event EVENTID
1165 Signal ("set") the given MS-Windows event object. This is used in
1166 conjunction with the Windows JIT debugging (AeDebug) support, where
1167 the OS suspends a crashing process until a debugger can attach to
1168 it. Resuming the crashing process, in order to debug it, is done by
1169 signalling an event.
1170
1171 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on s390-linux and s390x-linux
1172 was added in GDBserver, including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's
1173 conditional expression bytecode into native code.
1174
1175 * Support for various remote target protocols and ROM monitors has
1176 been removed:
1177
1178 target m32rsdi Remote M32R debugging over SDI
1179 target mips MIPS remote debugging protocol
1180 target pmon PMON ROM monitor
1181 target ddb NEC's DDB variant of PMON for Vr4300
1182 target rockhopper NEC RockHopper variant of PMON
1183 target lsi LSI variant of PMO
1184
1185 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on powerpc-linux,
1186 powerpc64-linux, and powerpc64le-linux was added in GDBserver,
1187 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression
1188 bytecode into native code.
1189
1190 * MI async record =record-started now includes the method and format used for
1191 recording. For example:
1192
1193 =record-started,thread-group="i1",method="btrace",format="bts"
1194
1195 * MI async record =thread-selected now includes the frame field. For example:
1196
1197 =thread-selected,id="3",frame={level="0",addr="0x00000000004007c0"}
1198
1199 * New targets
1200
1201 Andes NDS32 nds32*-*-elf
1202
1203 *** Changes in GDB 7.11
1204
1205 * GDB now supports debugging kernel-based threads on FreeBSD.
1206
1207 * Per-inferior thread numbers
1208
1209 Thread numbers are now per inferior instead of global. If you're
1210 debugging multiple inferiors, GDB displays thread IDs using a
1211 qualified INF_NUM.THR_NUM form. For example:
1212
1213 (gdb) info threads
1214 Id Target Id Frame
1215 1.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8155) (running)
1216 1.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8168) (running)
1217 * 2.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157) (running)
1218 2.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8190) (running)
1219
1220 As consequence, thread numbers as visible in the $_thread
1221 convenience variable and in Python's InferiorThread.num attribute
1222 are no longer unique between inferiors.
1223
1224 GDB now maintains a second thread ID per thread, referred to as the
1225 global thread ID, which is the new equivalent of thread numbers in
1226 previous releases. See also $_gthread below.
1227
1228 For backwards compatibility, MI's thread IDs always refer to global
1229 IDs.
1230
1231 * Commands that accept thread IDs now accept the qualified
1232 INF_NUM.THR_NUM form as well. For example:
1233
1234 (gdb) thread 2.1
1235 [Switching to thread 2.1 (Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157))] (running)
1236 (gdb)
1237
1238 * In commands that accept a list of thread IDs, you can now refer to
1239 all threads of an inferior using a star wildcard. GDB accepts
1240 "INF_NUM.*", to refer to all threads of inferior INF_NUM, and "*" to
1241 refer to all threads of the current inferior. For example, "info
1242 threads 2.*".
1243
1244 * You can use "info threads -gid" to display the global thread ID of
1245 all threads.
1246
1247 * The new convenience variable $_gthread holds the global number of
1248 the current thread.
1249
1250 * The new convenience variable $_inferior holds the number of the
1251 current inferior.
1252
1253 * GDB now displays the ID and name of the thread that hit a breakpoint
1254 or received a signal, if your program is multi-threaded. For
1255 example:
1256
1257 Thread 3 "bar" hit Breakpoint 1 at 0x40087a: file program.c, line 20.
1258 Thread 1 "main" received signal SIGINT, Interrupt.
1259
1260 * Record btrace now supports non-stop mode.
1261
1262 * Support for tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver.
1263
1264 * The 'record instruction-history' command now indicates speculative execution
1265 when using the Intel Processor Trace recording format.
1266
1267 * GDB now allows users to specify explicit locations, bypassing
1268 the linespec parser. This feature is also available to GDB/MI
1269 clients.
1270
1271 * Multi-architecture debugging is supported on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
1272 GDB now is able to debug both AArch64 applications and ARM applications
1273 at the same time.
1274
1275 * Support for fast tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver,
1276 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression bytecode
1277 into native code.
1278
1279 * GDB now supports displaced stepping on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
1280
1281 * "info threads", "info inferiors", "info display", "info checkpoints"
1282 and "maint info program-spaces" now list the corresponding items in
1283 ascending ID order, for consistency with all other "info" commands.
1284
1285 * In Ada, the overloads selection menu has been enhanced to display the
1286 parameter types and the return types for the matching overloaded subprograms.
1287
1288 * New commands
1289
1290 maint set target-non-stop (on|off|auto)
1291 maint show target-non-stop
1292 Control whether GDB targets always operate in non-stop mode even if
1293 "set non-stop" is "off". The default is "auto", meaning non-stop
1294 mode is enabled if supported by the target.
1295
1296 maint set bfd-sharing
1297 maint show bfd-sharing
1298 Control the reuse of bfd objects.
1299
1300 set debug bfd-cache
1301 show debug bfd-cache
1302 Control display of debugging info regarding bfd caching.
1303
1304 set debug fbsd-lwp
1305 show debug fbsd-lwp
1306 Control display of debugging info regarding FreeBSD threads.
1307
1308 set remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
1309 show remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
1310 Set/show the use of the remote protocol multiprocess extensions.
1311
1312 set remote thread-events
1313 show remote thread-events
1314 Set/show the use of thread create/exit events.
1315
1316 set ada print-signatures on|off
1317 show ada print-signatures"
1318 Control whether parameter types and return types are displayed in overloads
1319 selection menus. It is activaled (@code{on}) by default.
1320
1321 set max-value-size
1322 show max-value-size
1323 Controls the maximum size of memory, in bytes, that GDB will
1324 allocate for value contents. Prevents incorrect programs from
1325 causing GDB to allocate overly large buffers. Default is 64k.
1326
1327 * The "disassemble" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
1328 It prints mixed source+disassembly like /m with two differences:
1329 - disassembled instructions are now printed in program order, and
1330 - and source for all relevant files is now printed.
1331 The "/m" option is now considered deprecated: its "source-centric"
1332 output hasn't proved useful in practice.
1333
1334 * The "record instruction-history" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
1335 It behaves exactly like /m and prints mixed source+disassembly.
1336
1337 * The "set scheduler-locking" command supports a new mode "replay".
1338 It behaves like "off" in record mode and like "on" in replay mode.
1339
1340 * Support for various ROM monitors has been removed:
1341
1342 target dbug dBUG ROM monitor for Motorola ColdFire
1343 target picobug Motorola picobug monitor
1344 target dink32 DINK32 ROM monitor for PowerPC
1345 target m32r Renesas M32R/D ROM monitor
1346 target mon2000 mon2000 ROM monitor
1347 target ppcbug PPCBUG ROM monitor for PowerPC
1348
1349 * Support for reading/writing memory and extracting values on architectures
1350 whose memory is addressable in units of any integral multiple of 8 bits.
1351
1352 catch handlers
1353 Allows to break when an Ada exception is handled.
1354
1355 * New remote packets
1356
1357 exec stop reason
1358 Indicates that an exec system call was executed.
1359
1360 exec-events feature in qSupported
1361 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for exec
1362 events using the new 'gdbfeature' exec-event, and the qSupported
1363 response can contain the corresponding 'stubfeature'. Set and
1364 show commands can be used to display whether these features are enabled.
1365
1366 vCtrlC
1367 Equivalent to interrupting with the ^C character, but works in
1368 non-stop mode.
1369
1370 thread created stop reason (T05 create:...)
1371 Indicates that the thread was just created and is stopped at entry.
1372
1373 thread exit stop reply (w exitcode;tid)
1374 Indicates that the thread has terminated.
1375
1376 QThreadEvents
1377 Enables/disables thread create and exit event reporting. For
1378 example, this is used in non-stop mode when GDB stops a set of
1379 threads and synchronously waits for the their corresponding stop
1380 replies. Without exit events, if one of the threads exits, GDB
1381 would hang forever not knowing that it should no longer expect a
1382 stop for that same thread.
1383
1384 N stop reply
1385 Indicates that there are no resumed threads left in the target (all
1386 threads are stopped). The remote stub reports support for this stop
1387 reply to GDB's qSupported query.
1388
1389 QCatchSyscalls
1390 Enables/disables catching syscalls from the inferior process.
1391 The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's qSupported query.
1392
1393 syscall_entry stop reason
1394 Indicates that a syscall was just called.
1395
1396 syscall_return stop reason
1397 Indicates that a syscall just returned.
1398
1399 * Extended-remote exec events
1400
1401 ** GDB now has support for exec events on extended-remote Linux targets.
1402 For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later, this enables
1403 follow-exec-mode and exec catchpoints.
1404
1405 set remote exec-event-feature-packet
1406 show remote exec-event-feature-packet
1407 Set/show the use of the remote exec event feature.
1408
1409 * Thread names in remote protocol
1410
1411 The reply to qXfer:threads:read may now include a name attribute for each
1412 thread.
1413
1414 * Target remote mode fork and exec events
1415
1416 ** GDB now has support for fork and exec events on target remote mode
1417 Linux targets. For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later,
1418 this enables follow-fork-mode, detach-on-fork, follow-exec-mode, and
1419 fork and exec catchpoints.
1420
1421 * Remote syscall events
1422
1423 ** GDB now has support for catch syscall on remote Linux targets,
1424 currently enabled on x86/x86_64 architectures.
1425
1426 set remote catch-syscall-packet
1427 show remote catch-syscall-packet
1428 Set/show the use of the remote catch syscall feature.
1429
1430 * MI changes
1431
1432 ** The -var-set-format command now accepts the zero-hexadecimal
1433 format. It outputs data in hexadecimal format with zero-padding on the
1434 left.
1435
1436 * Python Scripting
1437
1438 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "global_num",
1439 which refers to the thread's global thread ID. The existing
1440 "num" attribute now refers to the thread's per-inferior number.
1441 See "Per-inferior thread numbers" above.
1442 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "inferior", which
1443 is the Inferior object the thread belongs to.
1444
1445 *** Changes in GDB 7.10
1446
1447 * Support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on aarch64*-linux*
1448 targets has been added. GDB now supports recording of A64 instruction set
1449 including advance SIMD instructions.
1450
1451 * Support for Sun's version of the "stabs" debug file format has been removed.
1452
1453 * GDB now honors the content of the file /proc/PID/coredump_filter
1454 (PID is the process ID) on GNU/Linux systems. This file can be used
1455 to specify the types of memory mappings that will be included in a
1456 corefile. For more information, please refer to the manual page of
1457 "core(5)". GDB also has a new command: "set use-coredump-filter
1458 on|off". It allows to set whether GDB will read the content of the
1459 /proc/PID/coredump_filter file when generating a corefile.
1460
1461 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
1462 cpu information :
1463 "info os cpus" Listing of all cpus/cores on the system
1464
1465 * GDB has two new commands: "set serial parity odd|even|none" and
1466 "show serial parity". These allows to set or show parity for the
1467 remote serial I/O.
1468
1469 * The "info source" command now displays the producer string if it was
1470 present in the debug info. This typically includes the compiler version
1471 and may include things like its command line arguments.
1472
1473 * The "info dll", an alias of the "info sharedlibrary" command,
1474 is now available on all platforms.
1475
1476 * Directory names supplied to the "set sysroot" commands may be
1477 prefixed with "target:" to tell GDB to access shared libraries from
1478 the target system, be it local or remote. This replaces the prefix
1479 "remote:". The default sysroot has been changed from "" to
1480 "target:". "remote:" is automatically converted to "target:" for
1481 backward compatibility.
1482
1483 * The system root specified by "set sysroot" will be prepended to the
1484 filename of the main executable (if reported to GDB as absolute by
1485 the operating system) when starting processes remotely, and when
1486 attaching to already-running local or remote processes.
1487
1488 * GDB now supports automatic location and retrieval of executable
1489 files from remote targets. Remote debugging can now be initiated
1490 using only a "target remote" or "target extended-remote" command
1491 (no "set sysroot" or "file" commands are required). See "New remote
1492 packets" below.
1493
1494 * The "dump" command now supports verilog hex format.
1495
1496 * GDB now supports the vector ABI on S/390 GNU/Linux targets.
1497
1498 * On GNU/Linux, GDB and gdbserver are now able to access executable
1499 and shared library files without a "set sysroot" command when
1500 attaching to processes running in different mount namespaces from
1501 the debugger. This makes it possible to attach to processes in
1502 containers as simply as "gdb -p PID" or "gdbserver --attach PID".
1503 See "New remote packets" below.
1504
1505 * The "tui reg" command now provides completion for all of the
1506 available register groups, including target specific groups.
1507
1508 * The HISTSIZE environment variable is no longer read when determining
1509 the size of GDB's command history. GDB now instead reads the dedicated
1510 GDBHISTSIZE environment variable. Setting GDBHISTSIZE to "-1" or to "" now
1511 disables truncation of command history. Non-numeric values of GDBHISTSIZE
1512 are ignored.
1513
1514 * Guile Scripting
1515
1516 ** Memory ports can now be unbuffered.
1517
1518 * Python Scripting
1519
1520 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "username",
1521 which is the name of the objfile as specified by the user,
1522 without, for example, resolving symlinks.
1523 ** You can now write frame unwinders in Python.
1524 ** gdb.Type objects have a new method "optimized_out",
1525 returning optimized out gdb.Value instance of this type.
1526 ** gdb.Value objects have new methods "reference_value" and
1527 "const_value" which return a reference to the value and a
1528 "const" version of the value respectively.
1529
1530 * New commands
1531
1532 maint print symbol-cache
1533 Print the contents of the symbol cache.
1534
1535 maint print symbol-cache-statistics
1536 Print statistics of symbol cache usage.
1537
1538 maint flush-symbol-cache
1539 Flush the contents of the symbol cache.
1540
1541 record btrace bts
1542 record bts
1543 Start branch trace recording using Branch Trace Store (BTS) format.
1544
1545 compile print
1546 Evaluate expression by using the compiler and print result.
1547
1548 tui enable
1549 tui disable
1550 Explicit commands for enabling and disabling tui mode.
1551
1552 show mpx bound
1553 set mpx bound on i386 and amd64
1554 Support for bound table investigation on Intel MPX enabled applications.
1555
1556 record btrace pt
1557 record pt
1558 Start branch trace recording using Intel Processor Trace format.
1559
1560 maint info btrace
1561 Print information about branch tracing internals.
1562
1563 maint btrace packet-history
1564 Print the raw branch tracing data.
1565
1566 maint btrace clear-packet-history
1567 Discard the stored raw branch tracing data.
1568
1569 maint btrace clear
1570 Discard all branch tracing data. It will be fetched and processed
1571 anew by the next "record" command.
1572
1573 * New options
1574
1575 set debug dwarf-die
1576 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-die".
1577 show debug dwarf-die
1578 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-die".
1579
1580 set debug dwarf-read
1581 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-read".
1582 show debug dwarf-read
1583 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-read".
1584
1585 maint set dwarf always-disassemble
1586 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 always-disassemble".
1587 maint show dwarf always-disassemble
1588 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 always-disassemble".
1589
1590 maint set dwarf max-cache-age
1591 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 max-cache-age".
1592 maint show dwarf max-cache-age
1593 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 max-cache-age".
1594
1595 set debug dwarf-line
1596 show debug dwarf-line
1597 Control display of debugging info regarding DWARF line processing.
1598
1599 set max-completions
1600 show max-completions
1601 Set the maximum number of candidates to be considered during
1602 completion. The default value is 200. This limit allows GDB
1603 to avoid generating large completion lists, the computation of
1604 which can cause the debugger to become temporarily unresponsive.
1605
1606 set history remove-duplicates
1607 show history remove-duplicates
1608 Control the removal of duplicate history entries.
1609
1610 maint set symbol-cache-size
1611 maint show symbol-cache-size
1612 Control the size of the symbol cache.
1613
1614 set|show record btrace bts buffer-size
1615 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
1616 BTS format.
1617 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
1618 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
1619
1620 set debug linux-namespaces
1621 show debug linux-namespaces
1622 Control display of debugging info regarding Linux namespaces.
1623
1624 set|show record btrace pt buffer-size
1625 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
1626 Intel Processor Trace format.
1627 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
1628 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
1629
1630 maint set|show btrace pt skip-pad
1631 Set and show whether PAD packets are skipped when computing the
1632 packet history.
1633
1634 * The command 'thread apply all' can now support new option '-ascending'
1635 to call its specified command for all threads in ascending order.
1636
1637 * Python/Guile scripting
1638
1639 ** GDB now supports auto-loading of Python/Guile scripts contained in the
1640 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts'.
1641
1642 * New remote packets
1643
1644 qXfer:btrace-conf:read
1645 Return the branch trace configuration for the current thread.
1646
1647 Qbtrace-conf:bts:size
1648 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in BTS format.
1649
1650 Qbtrace:pt
1651 Enable Intel Procesor Trace-based branch tracing for the current
1652 process. The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's
1653 qSupported query.
1654
1655 Qbtrace-conf:pt:size
1656 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in Intel Processor
1657 Trace format.
1658
1659 swbreak stop reason
1660 Indicates a memory breakpoint instruction was executed, irrespective
1661 of whether it was GDB that planted the breakpoint or the breakpoint
1662 is hardcoded in the program. This is required for correct non-stop
1663 mode operation.
1664
1665 hwbreak stop reason
1666 Indicates the target stopped for a hardware breakpoint. This is
1667 required for correct non-stop mode operation.
1668
1669 vFile:fstat:
1670 Return information about files on the remote system.
1671
1672 qXfer:exec-file:read
1673 Return the full absolute name of the file that was executed to
1674 create a process running on the remote system.
1675
1676 vFile:setfs:
1677 Select the filesystem on which vFile: operations with filename
1678 arguments will operate. This is required for GDB to be able to
1679 access files on remote targets where the remote stub does not
1680 share a common filesystem with the inferior(s).
1681
1682 fork stop reason
1683 Indicates that a fork system call was executed.
1684
1685 vfork stop reason
1686 Indicates that a vfork system call was executed.
1687
1688 vforkdone stop reason
1689 Indicates that a vfork child of the specified process has executed
1690 an exec or exit, allowing the vfork parent to resume execution.
1691
1692 fork-events and vfork-events features in qSupported
1693 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for fork and
1694 vfork events using new 'gdbfeatures' fork-events and vfork-events,
1695 and the qSupported response can contain the corresponding
1696 'stubfeatures'. Set and show commands can be used to display
1697 whether these features are enabled.
1698
1699 * Extended-remote fork events
1700
1701 ** GDB now has support for fork events on extended-remote Linux
1702 targets. For targets with Linux kernels 2.5.60 and later, this
1703 enables follow-fork-mode and detach-on-fork for both fork and
1704 vfork, as well as fork and vfork catchpoints.
1705
1706 * The info record command now shows the recording format and the
1707 branch tracing configuration for the current thread when using
1708 the btrace record target.
1709 For the BTS format, it shows the ring buffer size.
1710
1711 * GDB now has support for DTrace USDT (Userland Static Defined
1712 Tracing) probes. The supported targets are x86_64-*-linux-gnu.
1713
1714 * GDB now supports access to vector registers on S/390 GNU/Linux
1715 targets.
1716
1717 * Removed command line options
1718
1719 -xdb HP-UX XDB compatibility mode.
1720
1721 * Removed targets and native configurations
1722
1723 HP/PA running HP-UX hppa*-*-hpux*
1724 Itanium running HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
1725
1726 * New configure options
1727
1728 --with-intel-pt
1729 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with support for
1730 Intel Processor Trace (default: auto). This requires libipt.
1731
1732 --with-libipt-prefix=PATH
1733 Specify the path to the version of libipt that GDB should use.
1734 $PATH/include should contain the intel-pt.h header and
1735 $PATH/lib should contain the libipt.so library.
1736
1737 *** Changes in GDB 7.9.1
1738
1739 * Python Scripting
1740
1741 ** Xmethods can now specify a result type.
1742
1743 *** Changes in GDB 7.9
1744
1745 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on x86 GNU Hurd.
1746
1747 * Python Scripting
1748
1749 ** You can now access frame registers from Python scripts.
1750 ** New attribute 'producer' for gdb.Symtab objects.
1751 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "progspace",
1752 which is the gdb.Progspace object of the containing program space.
1753 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "owner".
1754 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "build_id",
1755 which is the build ID generated when the file was built.
1756 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new method "add_separate_debug_file".
1757 ** A new event "gdb.clear_objfiles" has been added, triggered when
1758 selecting a new file to debug.
1759 ** You can now add attributes to gdb.Objfile and gdb.Progspace objects.
1760 ** New function gdb.lookup_objfile.
1761
1762 New events which are triggered when GDB modifies the state of the
1763 inferior.
1764
1765 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_pre: Function call is about to be made.
1766 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_post: Function call has just been made.
1767 ** gdb.events.memory_changed: A memory location has been altered.
1768 ** gdb.events.register_changed: A register has been altered.
1769
1770 * New Python-based convenience functions:
1771
1772 ** $_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
1773 ** $_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
1774 ** $_any_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
1775 ** $_any_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
1776
1777 * GDB now supports the compilation and injection of source code into
1778 the inferior. GDB will use GCC 5.0 or higher built with libcc1.so
1779 to compile the source code to object code, and if successful, inject
1780 and execute that code within the current context of the inferior.
1781 Currently the C language is supported. The commands used to
1782 interface with this new feature are:
1783
1784 compile code [-raw|-r] [--] [source code]
1785 compile file [-raw|-r] filename
1786
1787 * New commands
1788
1789 demangle [-l language] [--] name
1790 Demangle "name" in the specified language, or the current language
1791 if elided. This command is renamed from the "maint demangle" command.
1792 The latter is kept as a no-op to avoid "maint demangle" being interpreted
1793 as "maint demangler-warning".
1794
1795 queue-signal signal-name-or-number
1796 Queue a signal to be delivered to the thread when it is resumed.
1797
1798 add-auto-load-scripts-directory directory
1799 Add entries to the list of directories from which to load auto-loaded
1800 scripts.
1801
1802 maint print user-registers
1803 List all currently available "user" registers.
1804
1805 compile code [-r|-raw] [--] [source code]
1806 Compile, inject, and execute in the inferior the executable object
1807 code produced by compiling the provided source code.
1808
1809 compile file [-r|-raw] filename
1810 Compile and inject into the inferior the executable object code
1811 produced by compiling the source code stored in the filename
1812 provided.
1813
1814 * On resume, GDB now always passes the signal the program had stopped
1815 for to the thread the signal was sent to, even if the user changed
1816 threads before resuming. Previously GDB would often (but not
1817 always) deliver the signal to the thread that happens to be current
1818 at resume time.
1819
1820 * Conversely, the "signal" command now consistently delivers the
1821 requested signal to the current thread. GDB now asks for
1822 confirmation if the program had stopped for a signal and the user
1823 switched threads meanwhile.
1824
1825 * "breakpoint always-inserted" modes "off" and "auto" merged.
1826
1827 Now, when 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' is set to "off", GDB
1828 won't remove breakpoints from the target until all threads stop,
1829 even in non-stop mode. The "auto" mode has been removed, and "off"
1830 is now the default mode.
1831
1832 * New options
1833
1834 set debug symbol-lookup
1835 show debug symbol-lookup
1836 Control display of debugging info regarding symbol lookup.
1837
1838 * MI changes
1839
1840 ** The -list-thread-groups command outputs an exit-code field for
1841 inferiors that have exited.
1842
1843 * New targets
1844
1845 MIPS SDE mips*-sde*-elf*
1846
1847 * Removed targets
1848
1849 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
1850
1851 Alpha running OSF/1 (or Tru64) alpha*-*-osf*
1852 SGI Irix-5.x mips-*-irix5*
1853 SGI Irix-6.x mips-*-irix6*
1854 VAX running (4.2 - 4.3 Reno) BSD vax-*-bsd*
1855 VAX running Ultrix vax-*-ultrix*
1856
1857 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
1858 and "assf"), have been removed. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
1859 its alias "share", instead.
1860
1861 *** Changes in GDB 7.8
1862
1863 * New command line options
1864
1865 -D data-directory
1866 This is an alias for the --data-directory option.
1867
1868 * GDB supports printing and modifying of variable length automatic arrays
1869 as specified in ISO C99.
1870
1871 * The ARM simulator now supports instruction level tracing
1872 with or without disassembly.
1873
1874 * Guile scripting
1875
1876 GDB now has support for scripting using Guile. Whether this is
1877 available is determined at configure time.
1878 Guile version 2.0 or greater is required.
1879 Guile version 2.0.9 is well tested, earlier 2.0 versions are not.
1880
1881 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1882
1883 guile [code]
1884 gu [code]
1885 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Guile interpreter.
1886
1887 guile-repl
1888 gr
1889 Start a Guile interactive prompt (or "repl" for "read-eval-print loop").
1890
1891 info auto-load guile-scripts [regexp]
1892 Print the list of automatically loaded Guile scripts.
1893
1894 * The source command is now capable of sourcing Guile scripts.
1895 This feature is dependent on the debugger being built with Guile support.
1896
1897 * New options
1898
1899 set print symbol-loading (off|brief|full)
1900 show print symbol-loading
1901 Control whether to print informational messages when loading symbol
1902 information for a file. The default is "full", but when debugging
1903 programs with large numbers of shared libraries the amount of output
1904 becomes less useful.
1905
1906 set guile print-stack (none|message|full)
1907 show guile print-stack
1908 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Guile script.
1909
1910 set auto-load guile-scripts (on|off)
1911 show auto-load guile-scripts
1912 Control auto-loading of Guile script files.
1913
1914 maint ada set ignore-descriptive-types (on|off)
1915 maint ada show ignore-descriptive-types
1916 Control whether the debugger should ignore descriptive types in Ada
1917 programs. The default is not to ignore the descriptive types. See
1918 the user manual for more details on descriptive types and the intended
1919 usage of this option.
1920
1921 set auto-connect-native-target
1922
1923 Control whether GDB is allowed to automatically connect to the
1924 native target for the run, attach, etc. commands when not connected
1925 to any target yet. See also "target native" below.
1926
1927 set record btrace replay-memory-access (read-only|read-write)
1928 show record btrace replay-memory-access
1929 Control what memory accesses are allowed during replay.
1930
1931 maint set target-async (on|off)
1932 maint show target-async
1933 This controls whether GDB targets operate in synchronous or
1934 asynchronous mode. Normally the default is asynchronous, if it is
1935 available; but this can be changed to more easily debug problems
1936 occurring only in synchronous mode.
1937
1938 set mi-async (on|off)
1939 show mi-async
1940 Control whether MI asynchronous mode is preferred. This supersedes
1941 "set target-async" of previous GDB versions.
1942
1943 * "set target-async" is deprecated as a CLI option and is now an alias
1944 for "set mi-async" (only puts MI into async mode).
1945
1946 * Background execution commands (e.g., "c&", "s&", etc.) are now
1947 possible ``out of the box'' if the target supports them. Previously
1948 the user would need to explicitly enable the possibility with the
1949 "set target-async on" command.
1950
1951 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1952
1953 ** New option --debug-format=option1[,option2,...] allows one to add
1954 additional text to each output. At present only timestamps
1955 are supported: --debug-format=timestamps.
1956 Timestamps can also be turned on with the
1957 "monitor set debug-format timestamps" command from GDB.
1958
1959 * The 'record instruction-history' command now starts counting instructions
1960 at one. This also affects the instruction ranges reported by the
1961 'record function-call-history' command when given the /i modifier.
1962
1963 * The command 'record function-call-history' supports a new modifier '/c' to
1964 indent the function names based on their call stack depth.
1965 The fields for the '/i' and '/l' modifier have been reordered.
1966 The source line range is now prefixed with 'at'.
1967 The instruction range is now prefixed with 'inst'.
1968 Both ranges are now printed as '<from>, <to>' to allow copy&paste to the
1969 "record instruction-history" and "list" commands.
1970
1971 * The ranges given as arguments to the 'record function-call-history' and
1972 'record instruction-history' commands are now inclusive.
1973
1974 * The btrace record target now supports the 'record goto' command.
1975 For locations inside the execution trace, the back trace is computed
1976 based on the information stored in the execution trace.
1977
1978 * The btrace record target supports limited reverse execution and replay.
1979 The target does not record data and therefore does not allow reading
1980 memory or registers.
1981
1982 * The "catch syscall" command now works on s390*-linux* targets.
1983
1984 * The "compare-sections" command is no longer specific to target
1985 remote. It now works with all targets.
1986
1987 * All native targets are now consistently called "native".
1988 Consequently, the "target child", "target GNU", "target djgpp",
1989 "target procfs" (Solaris/Irix/OSF/AIX) and "target darwin-child"
1990 commands have been replaced with "target native". The QNX/NTO port
1991 leaves the "procfs" target in place and adds a "native" target for
1992 consistency with other ports. The impact on users should be minimal
1993 as these commands previously either throwed an error, or were
1994 no-ops. The target's name is visible in the output of the following
1995 commands: "help target", "info target", "info files", "maint print
1996 target-stack".
1997
1998 * The "target native" command now connects to the native target. This
1999 can be used to launch native programs even when "set
2000 auto-connect-native-target" is set to off.
2001
2002 * GDB now supports access to Intel MPX registers on GNU/Linux.
2003
2004 * Support for Intel AVX-512 registers on GNU/Linux.
2005 Support displaying and modifying Intel AVX-512 registers
2006 $zmm0 - $zmm31 and $k0 - $k7 on GNU/Linux.
2007
2008 * New remote packets
2009
2010 qXfer:btrace:read's annex
2011 The qXfer:btrace:read packet supports a new annex 'delta' to read
2012 branch trace incrementally.
2013
2014 * Python Scripting
2015
2016 ** Valid Python operations on gdb.Value objects representing
2017 structs/classes invoke the corresponding overloaded operators if
2018 available.
2019 ** New `Xmethods' feature in the Python API. Xmethods are
2020 additional methods or replacements for existing methods of a C++
2021 class. This feature is useful for those cases where a method
2022 defined in C++ source code could be inlined or optimized out by
2023 the compiler, making it unavailable to GDB.
2024
2025 * New targets
2026 PowerPC64 GNU/Linux little-endian powerpc64le-*-linux*
2027
2028 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
2029 and "assf"), have been deprecated. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
2030 its alias "share", instead.
2031
2032 * The commands "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" are no longer
2033 supported. Use "set serial baud" and "show serial baud" (respectively)
2034 instead.
2035
2036 * MI changes
2037
2038 ** A new option "-gdb-set mi-async" replaces "-gdb-set
2039 target-async". The latter is left as a deprecated alias of the
2040 former for backward compatibility. If the target supports it,
2041 CLI background execution commands are now always possible by
2042 default, independently of whether the frontend stated a
2043 preference for asynchronous execution with "-gdb-set mi-async".
2044 Previously "-gdb-set target-async off" affected both MI execution
2045 commands and CLI execution commands.
2046
2047 *** Changes in GDB 7.7
2048
2049 * Improved support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on
2050 arm*-linux* targets. Support for thumb32 and syscall instruction
2051 recording has been added.
2052
2053 * GDB now supports SystemTap SDT probes on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
2054
2055 * GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
2056 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
2057
2058 * New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
2059 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
2060 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
2061 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
2062 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
2063 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
2064 "void".
2065
2066 * The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
2067
2068 * The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
2069
2070 * GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
2071 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
2072 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
2073 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
2074
2075 (gdb) p $rax
2076 $1 = <not saved>
2077
2078 (gdb) info registers rax
2079 rax <not saved>
2080
2081 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
2082 "*value not available*".
2083
2084 * New script contrib/gdb-add-index.sh for adding .gdb_index sections
2085 to binaries.
2086
2087 * Python scripting
2088
2089 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
2090 ** Temporary breakpoints are now supported.
2091 ** Line tables representation has been added.
2092 ** New attribute 'parent_type' for gdb.Field objects.
2093 ** gdb.Field objects can be used as subscripts on gdb.Value objects.
2094 ** New attribute 'name' for gdb.Type objects.
2095
2096 * New targets
2097
2098 Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
2099 Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
2100 Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
2101
2102 * Removed native configurations
2103
2104 Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
2105 been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
2106
2107 arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2108 i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2109 i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
2110 i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
2111 m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2112 sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2113 vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2114
2115 * New commands:
2116 catch rethrow
2117 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
2118 maint check-psymtabs
2119 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
2120 maint check-symtabs
2121 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
2122 maint expand-symtabs
2123 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
2124
2125 show configuration
2126 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
2127
2128 maint set|show per-command
2129 maint set|show per-command space
2130 maint set|show per-command time
2131 maint set|show per-command symtab
2132 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
2133
2134 remove-symbol-file FILENAME
2135 remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
2136 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
2137 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
2138 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
2139
2140 info exceptions
2141 info exceptions REGEXP
2142 Display the list of Ada exceptions defined in the program being
2143 debugged. If provided, only the exceptions whose names match REGEXP
2144 are listed.
2145
2146 * New options
2147
2148 set debug symfile off|on
2149 show debug symfile
2150 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
2151 symbol tables within those files
2152
2153 set print raw frame-arguments
2154 show print raw frame-arguments
2155 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
2156 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
2157
2158 set remote trace-status-packet
2159 show remote trace-status-packet
2160 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
2161
2162 set debug nios2
2163 show debug nios2
2164 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
2165
2166 set range-stepping
2167 show range-stepping
2168 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
2169
2170 set startup-with-shell
2171 show startup-with-shell
2172 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
2173 directly.
2174
2175 set code-cache
2176 show code-cache
2177 Use the target memory cache for accesses to the code segment. This
2178 improves performance of remote debugging (particularly disassembly).
2179
2180 * You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
2181 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
2182 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
2183 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
2184 "set height 0".
2185
2186 * The "set debug symtab-create" debugging option of GDB has been changed to
2187 accept a verbosity level. 0 means "off", 1 provides basic debugging
2188 output, and values of 2 or greater provides more verbose output.
2189
2190 * New command-line options
2191 --configuration
2192 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
2193
2194 * The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
2195 buffer in Common Trace Format.
2196
2197 * Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
2198 GDB command gcore.
2199
2200 * GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
2201
2202 * The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
2203 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
2204
2205 * The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
2206 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
2207
2208 * The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
2209 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
2210 due to an uncaught signal.
2211
2212 * MI changes
2213
2214 ** All MI commands now accept an optional "--language" option.
2215 Support for this feature can be verified by using the "-list-features"
2216 command, which should contain "language-option".
2217
2218 ** The new command -info-gdb-mi-command allows the user to determine
2219 whether a GDB/MI command is supported or not.
2220
2221 ** The "^error" result record returned when trying to execute an undefined
2222 GDB/MI command now provides a variable named "code" whose content is the
2223 "undefined-command" error code. Support for this feature can be verified
2224 by using the "-list-features" command, which should contain
2225 "undefined-command-error-code".
2226
2227 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
2228 Trace Format now.
2229
2230 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
2231
2232 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
2233 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
2234 are displayed.
2235
2236 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
2237 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
2238
2239 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
2240 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
2241 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
2242
2243 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
2244 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
2245 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
2246 main subprogram. Support for this feature can be verified using
2247 the "-list-features" command, which should contain
2248 "exec-run-start-option".
2249
2250 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
2251 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
2252
2253 ** The new command -info-ada-exceptions provides the equivalent of
2254 the new "info exceptions" command.
2255
2256 * New system-wide configuration scripts
2257 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
2258 configuration scripts for the following systems:
2259 ** ElinOS
2260 ** Wind River Linux
2261
2262 * GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
2263 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
2264 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
2265 below.
2266
2267 * GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
2268 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
2269
2270 * On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
2271 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
2272 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
2273
2274 * New remote packets
2275
2276 vCont;r
2277
2278 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
2279 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
2280 involvemement at each single-step.
2281
2282 qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
2283 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
2284 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
2285 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
2286 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
2287 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
2288 speedup.
2289
2290 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2291
2292 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
2293 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
2294
2295 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
2296 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
2297 trace state variables.
2298
2299 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
2300 target.
2301
2302 * New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
2303 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
2304
2305 * GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
2306
2307 * The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
2308 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
2309 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
2310 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
2311
2312 *** Changes in GDB 7.6
2313
2314 * Target record has been renamed to record-full.
2315 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
2316 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
2317 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
2318
2319 set|show record full insn-number-max
2320 set|show record full stop-at-limit
2321 set|show record full memory-query
2322
2323 * A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
2324 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
2325 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
2326 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
2327 This new recording method can be enabled using:
2328
2329 record btrace
2330
2331 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
2332 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
2333
2334 * Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
2335 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
2336 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
2337
2338 record instruction-history prints the execution history at
2339 instruction granularity
2340
2341 record function-call-history prints the execution history at
2342 function granularity
2343
2344 * New native configurations
2345
2346 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
2347 FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
2348 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
2349 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
2350
2351 * New targets
2352
2353 ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
2354 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
2355 Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
2356 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
2357 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
2358
2359 * If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
2360 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
2361 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
2362 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
2363 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
2364 --data-directory command-line option.
2365
2366 * New command line options:
2367
2368 -nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
2369 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
2370
2371 * Removed command line options
2372
2373 -epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
2374 Emacs.
2375
2376 * The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
2377 type formatting.
2378
2379 * 'info proc' now works on some core files.
2380
2381 * Python scripting
2382
2383 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
2384
2385 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
2386
2387 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
2388
2389 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
2390
2391 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
2392 of architecture in the Python API.
2393
2394 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
2395 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
2396
2397 * New Python-based convenience functions:
2398
2399 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
2400 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
2401 ** $_strlen(str)
2402 ** $_regex(str, regex)
2403
2404 * The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
2405 given an argument.
2406
2407 * The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
2408 default for GCC since November 2000.
2409
2410 * The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
2411
2412 * The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
2413 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
2414
2415 * New configure options
2416
2417 --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
2418 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
2419 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
2420 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
2421 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
2422 options allow the user to override that default.
2423 --with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
2424 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
2425 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
2426
2427 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2428
2429 catch signal
2430 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
2431 conditions to be attached.
2432
2433 maint info bfds
2434 List the BFDs known to GDB.
2435
2436 python-interactive [command]
2437 pi [command]
2438 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
2439 and print the result of expressions.
2440
2441 py [command]
2442 "py" is a new alias for "python".
2443
2444 enable type-printer [name]...
2445 disable type-printer [name]...
2446 Enable or disable type printers.
2447
2448 * Removed commands
2449
2450 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
2451 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
2452 instead.
2453
2454 * New options
2455
2456 set print type methods (on|off)
2457 show print type methods
2458 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
2459 The default is to show them.
2460
2461 set print type typedefs (on|off)
2462 show print type typedefs
2463 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
2464 The default is to show them.
2465
2466 set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
2467 show filename-display
2468 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
2469 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
2470
2471 set trace-buffer-size
2472 show trace-buffer-size
2473 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
2474
2475 set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
2476 show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
2477 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
2478
2479 set debug aarch64
2480 show debug aarch64
2481 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
2482 The default is off.
2483
2484 set debug coff-pe-read
2485 show debug coff-pe-read
2486 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
2487 exported symbols.
2488
2489 set debug mach-o
2490 show debug mach-o
2491 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
2492 processing.
2493
2494 set debug notification
2495 show debug notification
2496 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
2497
2498 * MI changes
2499
2500 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
2501 "=cmd-param-changed".
2502 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
2503 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
2504 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
2505 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
2506 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
2507 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
2508 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
2509 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
2510 "=memory-changed".
2511 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
2512 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
2513 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
2514 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
2515 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
2516 library load/unload events.
2517 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
2518 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
2519 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
2520 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
2521 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
2522 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
2523 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
2524 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
2525
2526 * GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
2527 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
2528 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
2529 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
2530
2531 * New remote packets
2532
2533 QTBuffer:size
2534 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
2535 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
2536
2537 Qbtrace:bts
2538 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
2539 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
2540 qSupported query.
2541
2542 Qbtrace:off
2543 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
2544 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
2545
2546 qXfer:btrace:read
2547 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
2548 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
2549
2550 *** Changes in GDB 7.5
2551
2552 * GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
2553 for more x32 ABI info.
2554
2555 * GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
2556
2557 * GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
2558
2559 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
2560 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
2561 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
2562 "info os files" lists file descriptors
2563 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
2564 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
2565 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
2566 "info os msg" lists message queues
2567 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
2568
2569 * GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
2570 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
2571 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
2572 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
2573 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
2574 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
2575
2576 * GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
2577 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
2578 record/replay support.
2579
2580 * The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
2581
2582 * Python scripting
2583
2584 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
2585 "gdb.COMMAND_USER".
2586
2587 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
2588
2589 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
2590 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
2591
2592 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
2593
2594 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
2595 the source at which the symbol was defined.
2596
2597 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
2598 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
2599 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
2600 symbol's value.
2601
2602 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
2603 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
2604
2605 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
2606 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
2607 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
2608
2609 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
2610 object associated with a PC value.
2611
2612 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
2613 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
2614
2615 * Go language support.
2616 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
2617 language.
2618
2619 * GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
2620 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
2621
2622 * The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
2623 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
2624
2625 * GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
2626 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
2627 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
2628 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
2629 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
2630 $1 = (ONE | TWO)
2631
2632 * The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
2633 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
2634 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
2635 build/libcpp/expr.c.
2636
2637 * The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
2638 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
2639
2640 * The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
2641 since December 2007.
2642
2643 * The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
2644 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
2645 command does. For instance:
2646
2647 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
2648
2649 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
2650 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
2651 created, using the "condition" command.
2652
2653 * The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
2654 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
2655
2656 * GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
2657
2658 * The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
2659 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
2660 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
2661 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
2662 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
2663 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
2664 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
2665 files with older .gdb_index sections.
2666
2667 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
2668 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
2669 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
2670 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
2671 the .gdb_index section.
2672
2673 * Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
2674
2675 * GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
2676 target.
2677
2678 * MI changes
2679
2680 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
2681
2682 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
2683
2684 * New commands
2685
2686 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
2687 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
2688 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
2689
2690 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
2691 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
2692
2693 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
2694 several hits.
2695
2696 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
2697 C++ and Java objects.
2698
2699 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
2700 can be used to recursively explore values and types of
2701 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
2702 configured with '--with-python'.
2703
2704 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
2705 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
2706 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
2707 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
2708 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
2709 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
2710 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
2711
2712 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
2713 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
2714 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
2715 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
2716
2717 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
2718 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
2719 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
2720 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
2721
2722 ** "set print symbol"
2723 "show print symbol"
2724 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
2725 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
2726 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
2727
2728 * Deprecated commands
2729
2730 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
2731 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
2732
2733 * New targets
2734
2735 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
2736 HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
2737
2738 * GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
2739 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
2740 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
2741 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
2742 evaluates to true.
2743
2744 * New options
2745
2746 set mips compression
2747 show mips compression
2748 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
2749 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
2750 mips16
2751 micromips
2752 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
2753
2754 set breakpoint condition-evaluation
2755 show breakpoint condition-evaluation
2756 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
2757 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
2758 available mode.
2759 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
2760 target.
2761
2762 set auto-load off
2763 Disable auto-loading globally.
2764
2765 show auto-load
2766 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
2767
2768 set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
2769 show auto-load gdb-scripts
2770 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
2771
2772 set auto-load python-scripts on|off
2773 show auto-load python-scripts
2774 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
2775
2776 set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
2777 show auto-load local-gdbinit
2778 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
2779
2780 set auto-load libthread-db on|off
2781 show auto-load libthread-db
2782 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
2783
2784 set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
2785 show auto-load scripts-directory
2786 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
2787 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
2788 of the directories listed by this option.
2789 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
2790
2791 set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
2792 show auto-load safe-path
2793 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
2794 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
2795
2796 set debug auto-load on|off
2797 show debug auto-load
2798 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
2799
2800 set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
2801 show dprintf-style
2802 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
2803 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
2804 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
2805 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
2806
2807 set dprintf-function <expr>
2808 show dprintf-function
2809 set dprintf-channel <expr>
2810 show dprintf-channel
2811 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
2812 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
2813
2814 set disconnected-dprintf on|off
2815 show disconnected-dprintf
2816 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
2817 after GDB disconnects.
2818
2819 * New configure options
2820
2821 --with-auto-load-dir
2822 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
2823 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
2824 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
2825 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
2826 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
2827
2828 --with-auto-load-safe-path
2829 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
2830 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
2831
2832 --without-auto-load-safe-path
2833 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
2834 security feature.
2835
2836 * New remote packets
2837
2838 z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
2839
2840 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
2841 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
2842 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
2843 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
2844
2845 QProgramSignals:
2846
2847 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
2848 program without GDB involvement.
2849
2850 * New command line options
2851
2852 --init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
2853 before loading inferior.
2854 --init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
2855 execute it before loading inferior.
2856
2857 *** Changes in GDB 7.4
2858
2859 * GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
2860 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
2861 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
2862 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
2863 inferior changes.
2864
2865 * GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
2866 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
2867
2868 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
2869 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
2870 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
2871 target hardware watchpoint.
2872
2873 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
2874 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
2875 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
2876 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
2877
2878 * Python scripting
2879
2880 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
2881 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
2882 existing one.
2883
2884 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
2885 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
2886 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
2887 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
2888 now "message", which just prints the error message without
2889 the stack trace.
2890
2891 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
2892 Python API.
2893
2894 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
2895 modules library. This module provides functionality for
2896 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
2897 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
2898 corresponding value.
2899
2900 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
2901 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
2902 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
2903 on GDB start-up.
2904
2905 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
2906 static_block will return the global and static blocks
2907 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
2908 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
2909
2910 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
2911
2912 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
2913 "gdb.breakpoints".
2914
2915 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
2916 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
2917 available in the CLI.
2918
2919 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
2920 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
2921 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
2922 "some_type.items()".
2923
2924 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
2925 new object file.
2926
2927 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
2928 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
2929 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
2930 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
2931 any anonymous fields.
2932
2933 * MI changes
2934
2935 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
2936 "solib-event".
2937
2938 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
2939 "=breakpoint-modified".
2940
2941 ** New command -ada-task-info.
2942
2943 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
2944 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
2945 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
2946 lives.
2947
2948 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
2949 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
2950 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
2951 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
2952 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
2953
2954 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
2955 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
2956
2957 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
2958 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
2959 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
2960 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
2961 use this option to specify where to find it.
2962
2963 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
2964 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
2965 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
2966 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
2967 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
2968 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
2969 section in the user manual for more details.
2970
2971 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
2972 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
2973 become available after that.
2974
2975 * New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
2976
2977 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
2978 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
2979 gcc version 4.7.
2980
2981 * New commands
2982
2983 !SHELL COMMAND
2984 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
2985 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
2986
2987 * Changed commands
2988
2989 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
2990 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
2991 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
2992
2993 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
2994 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
2995 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
2996
2997 info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
2998 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
2999 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
3000 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
3001 name starts with a hyphen.
3002
3003 collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
3004 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
3005 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
3006 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
3007 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
3008 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
3009 number of bytes that will be collected.
3010
3011 tstart [NOTES]
3012 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
3013 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
3014 setting the variable trace-notes.
3015
3016 tstop [NOTES]
3017 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
3018 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
3019 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
3020 trace-stop-notes.
3021
3022 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
3023 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
3024 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
3025 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
3026 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
3027 is running.
3028
3029 * Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
3030 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
3031 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
3032
3033 * New options
3034
3035 set debug dwarf2-read
3036 show debug dwarf2-read
3037 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
3038 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
3039
3040 set debug symtab-create
3041 show debug symtab-create
3042 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
3043 creation. The default is off.
3044
3045 set extended-prompt
3046 show extended-prompt
3047 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
3048 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
3049 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
3050 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
3051 prompt is displayed.
3052
3053 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
3054 show print entry-values
3055 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
3056 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
3057 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
3058
3059 set debug entry-values
3060 show debug entry-values
3061 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
3062 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
3063
3064 set basenames-may-differ
3065 show basenames-may-differ
3066 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
3067 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
3068 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
3069 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
3070 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
3071 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
3072 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
3073 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
3074
3075 set trace-user
3076 show trace-user
3077 set trace-notes
3078 show trace-notes
3079 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
3080 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
3081 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
3082 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
3083
3084 set trace-stop-notes
3085 show trace-stop-notes
3086 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
3087 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
3088 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
3089 started by someone else.
3090
3091 * New remote packets
3092
3093 QTEnable
3094
3095 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
3096
3097 QTDisable
3098
3099 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
3100
3101 QTNotes
3102
3103 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
3104
3105 qTP
3106
3107 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
3108
3109 qTMinFTPILen
3110
3111 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
3112 be placed.
3113
3114 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
3115 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
3116
3117 * New targets
3118
3119 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
3120
3121 * New Simulators
3122
3123 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
3124
3125 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
3126
3127 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
3128
3129 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
3130
3131 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
3132 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
3133 matches the given regular expression.
3134
3135 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
3136
3137 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
3138 dumping the instruction opcodes.
3139
3140 * New command line options
3141
3142 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
3143 This is mostly for testing purposes.
3144
3145 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
3146 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
3147
3148 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
3149 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
3150 source path list instead of augmenting it.
3151
3152 * GDB now understands thread names.
3153
3154 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
3155 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
3156
3157 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
3158 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
3159
3160 * OpenCL C
3161 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
3162 has been integrated into GDB.
3163
3164 * Python scripting
3165
3166 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
3167 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
3168 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
3169
3170 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
3171 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
3172 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
3173 and allows for more dynamic content.
3174
3175 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
3176 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
3177 have an is_valid method.
3178
3179 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
3180 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
3181 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
3182
3183 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
3184
3185 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
3186 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
3187 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
3188 that function like so:
3189
3190 result = some_value (10,20)
3191
3192 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
3193 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
3194 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
3195
3196 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
3197 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
3198 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
3199 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
3200 New function: register_pretty_printer.
3201
3202 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
3203 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
3204
3205 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
3206
3207 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
3208 selected thread.
3209
3210 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
3211 holds the thread's name.
3212
3213 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
3214 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
3215 occurring in the process being debugged.
3216 The following events are currently supported:
3217 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
3218 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
3219 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
3220
3221 * C++ Improvements:
3222
3223 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
3224 instantiation. For example, if you have:
3225
3226 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
3227
3228 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
3229 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
3230 was added to GCC 4.5.
3231
3232 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
3233 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
3234 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
3235 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
3236 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
3237 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
3238
3239 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
3240 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
3241 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
3242 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
3243 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
3244
3245 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
3246 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
3247 execution to a label.
3248
3249 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
3250 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
3251 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
3252 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
3253
3254 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
3255 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
3256 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
3257 of scope.
3258
3259 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
3260
3261 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
3262 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
3263 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
3264 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
3265 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
3266 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
3267
3268 (gdb) info threads
3269 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
3270
3271 While now you see this:
3272
3273 (gdb) info threads
3274 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
3275
3276 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
3277 dumps.
3278
3279 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
3280 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
3281 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
3282 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
3283
3284 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
3285 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
3286 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
3287 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
3288 section in the user manual for more details.
3289
3290 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
3291
3292 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
3293 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
3294
3295 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
3296
3297 * New native configurations
3298
3299 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
3300
3301 * New targets:
3302
3303 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
3304
3305 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
3306 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
3307 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
3308 in the GDB user manual.
3309
3310 * Guile support was removed.
3311
3312 * New features in the GNU simulator
3313
3314 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
3315
3316 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
3317
3318 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
3319
3320 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
3321
3322 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
3323 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
3324 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
3325 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
3326 was always disabled for such configurations.
3327
3328 * C++ Improvements:
3329
3330 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
3331
3332 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
3333 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
3334 For example:
3335 namespace A
3336 {
3337 class B { };
3338 void foo (B) { }
3339 }
3340 ...
3341 A::B b
3342 foo(b)
3343 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
3344 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
3345 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
3346
3347 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
3348
3349 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
3350 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
3351 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
3352 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
3353 entry.
3354 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
3355 mentioned flavors of operators.
3356
3357 ** static const class members
3358
3359 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
3360 class definition has been fixed.
3361
3362 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
3363
3364 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
3365 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
3366 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
3367 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
3368 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
3369 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
3370
3371 * Static tracepoints
3372
3373 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
3374 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
3375 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
3376 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
3377 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
3378 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
3379 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
3380 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
3381 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
3382 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
3383 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
3384 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
3385 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
3386 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
3387 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
3388 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
3389 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
3390 the "New remote packets" section below.
3391
3392 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
3393
3394 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
3395 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
3396 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
3397 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
3398
3399 * Observer mode
3400
3401 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
3402 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
3403 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
3404 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
3405 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
3406 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
3407 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
3408
3409 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
3410 current thread.
3411
3412 * New remote packets
3413
3414 qGetTIBAddr
3415
3416 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
3417
3418 qRelocInsn
3419
3420 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
3421 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
3422 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
3423 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
3424 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
3425 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
3426
3427 qTfSTM, qTsSTM
3428
3429 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
3430
3431 qTSTMat
3432
3433 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
3434 program.
3435
3436 qXfer:statictrace:read
3437
3438 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
3439 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
3440 to gdb's qSupported query.
3441
3442 QAllow
3443
3444 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
3445
3446 QTDPsrc
3447
3448 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
3449 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
3450
3451 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
3452 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
3453 a directory.
3454
3455 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
3456
3457 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
3458 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
3459 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
3460 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
3461
3462 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
3463 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
3464 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
3465 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
3466 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
3467 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
3468 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
3469
3470 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
3471 for static tracepoints support.
3472
3473 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
3474
3475 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
3476 it understands register description.
3477
3478 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
3479
3480 * X86 general purpose registers
3481
3482 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
3483 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
3484 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
3485 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
3486 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
3487
3488 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
3489 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
3490 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
3491 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
3492 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
3493 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
3494
3495 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
3496 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
3497 in the specified file.
3498
3499 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
3500 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
3501 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
3502 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
3503 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
3504 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
3505 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
3506 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
3507 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
3508 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
3509
3510 * New commands
3511
3512 eval template, expressions...
3513 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
3514 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
3515
3516 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
3517 show target-file-system-kind
3518 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
3519 names.
3520
3521 save breakpoints <filename>
3522 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
3523 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
3524 definitions, use the `source' command.
3525
3526 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
3527 is now deprecated.
3528
3529 info static-tracepoint-markers
3530 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
3531
3532 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
3533 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
3534 function, line, address, or marker ID.
3535
3536 set observer on|off
3537 show observer
3538 Enable and disable observer mode.
3539
3540 set may-write-registers on|off
3541 set may-write-memory on|off
3542 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
3543 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
3544 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
3545 set may-interrupt on|off
3546 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
3547 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
3548 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
3549 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
3550 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
3551 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
3552 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
3553
3554 set record memory-query on|off
3555 show record memory-query
3556 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
3557 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
3558
3559 * Changed commands
3560
3561 disassemble
3562 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
3563
3564 * Python scripting
3565
3566 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
3567 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
3568 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
3569 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
3570 GDB using Python' in the manual.
3571
3572 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
3573 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
3574 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
3575 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
3576
3577 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
3578 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
3579
3580 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
3581
3582 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
3583
3584 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
3585
3586 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
3587 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
3588 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
3589
3590 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
3591 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
3592 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
3593 regular breakpoints.
3594
3595 * New targets
3596
3597 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
3598
3599 * D language support.
3600 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
3601 language.
3602
3603 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
3604 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
3605 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
3606 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
3607 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
3608
3609 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
3610 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
3611 conditions of the form:
3612
3613 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
3614
3615 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
3616 interface mentioned above.
3617
3618 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
3619
3620 * C++ Improvements
3621
3622 ** Namespace Support
3623
3624 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
3625 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
3626 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
3627 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
3628 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
3629
3630 ** Bug Fixes
3631
3632 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
3633 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
3634 qualified name.
3635
3636 ** Cast Operators
3637
3638 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
3639 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
3640
3641 * New targets
3642
3643 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
3644 Renesas RX rx-*-elf
3645
3646 * New Simulators
3647
3648 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
3649 Renesas RX rx
3650
3651 * Multi-program debugging.
3652
3653 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
3654 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
3655 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
3656 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
3657 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
3658 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
3659 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
3660 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
3661
3662 * New tracing features
3663
3664 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
3665
3666 ** Trace state variables
3667
3668 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
3669 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
3670 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
3671 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
3672 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
3673 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
3674 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
3675 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
3676 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
3677 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
3678
3679 ** Fast tracepoints
3680
3681 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
3682 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
3683 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
3684 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
3685 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
3686 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
3687 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
3688 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
3689 the regular trace command.
3690
3691 ** Disconnected tracing
3692
3693 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
3694 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
3695 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
3696 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
3697 connection is lost unexpectedly.
3698
3699 ** Trace files
3700
3701 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
3702 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
3703 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
3704 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
3705 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
3706 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
3707 <name>".
3708
3709 ** Circular trace buffer
3710
3711 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
3712 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
3713 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
3714 not be available for all target agents.
3715
3716 * Changed commands
3717
3718 disassemble
3719 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
3720 the arguments to be comma-separated.
3721
3722 info variables
3723 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
3724 which only declare a variable are not shown.
3725
3726 source
3727 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
3728 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
3729 support.
3730
3731 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
3732 "set script-extension" (see below).
3733
3734 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
3735
3736 record save [<FILENAME>]
3737 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
3738 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
3739
3740 record restore <FILENAME>
3741 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
3742 earlier time, for replay debugging.
3743
3744 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
3745 Add a new inferior.
3746
3747 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
3748 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
3749 inferior has loaded.
3750
3751 remove-inferior ID
3752 Remove an inferior.
3753
3754 maint info program-spaces
3755 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
3756
3757 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
3758 show remote interrupt-sequence
3759 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
3760 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
3761 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
3762 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
3763 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
3764
3765 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
3766 show remote interrupt-on-connect
3767 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
3768 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
3769 Linux kernel.
3770
3771 set remotebreak [on | off]
3772 show remotebreak
3773 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
3774
3775 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
3776 Create or modify a trace state variable.
3777
3778 info tvariables
3779 List trace state variables and their values.
3780
3781 delete tvariable $NAME ...
3782 Delete one or more trace state variables.
3783
3784 teval EXPR, ...
3785 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
3786 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
3787
3788 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
3789 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
3790
3791 * New expression syntax
3792
3793 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
3794 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
3795
3796 * New options
3797
3798 set follow-exec-mode new|same
3799 show follow-exec-mode
3800 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
3801 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
3802 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
3803
3804 set default-collect EXPR, ...
3805 show default-collect
3806 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
3807 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
3808 such as registers or a critical global variable.
3809
3810 set disconnected-tracing
3811 show disconnected-tracing
3812 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
3813 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
3814 upon disconnection.
3815
3816 set circular-trace-buffer
3817 show circular-trace-buffer
3818 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
3819 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
3820 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
3821 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
3822
3823 set script-extension off|soft|strict
3824 show script-extension
3825 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
3826 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
3827 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
3828 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
3829 evaluation failed.
3830 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
3831
3832 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
3833 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
3834 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
3835 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
3836 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
3837 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
3838 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
3839 is on.
3840
3841 * Python API Improvements
3842
3843 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
3844 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
3845 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
3846
3847 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
3848 `is_base_class' attribute.
3849
3850 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
3851
3852 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
3853 evaluate an expression.
3854
3855 * New remote packets
3856
3857 QTDV
3858 Define a trace state variable.
3859
3860 qTV
3861 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
3862
3863 QTDisconnected
3864 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
3865
3866 QTBuffer:circular
3867 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
3868
3869 qTfP, qTsP
3870 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
3871
3872 * Bug fixes
3873
3874 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
3875
3876 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
3877 much more reliable. In particular:
3878 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
3879 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
3880 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
3881 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
3882 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
3883 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
3884 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
3885 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
3886 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
3887 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
3888 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
3889 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
3890 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
3891 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
3892 non-threaded programs.
3893
3894 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
3895 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
3896 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
3897 executable program.
3898
3899 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
3900
3901 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
3902 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
3903 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
3904 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
3905 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
3906
3907 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
3908 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
3909 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
3910 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
3911 for tracepoint actions.
3912
3913 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
3914 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
3915 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
3916
3917 * Process record and replay
3918
3919 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
3920 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
3921 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
3922 execute commands.
3923
3924 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
3925 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
3926 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
3927 reverse execution.
3928
3929 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
3930 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
3931 2.6.28 or later.
3932
3933 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
3934 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
3935 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
3936 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
3937 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
3938 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
3939 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
3940 the installation instructions for more information.
3941
3942 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
3943 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
3944 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
3945 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
3946
3947 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
3948 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
3949
3950 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
3951 now complete on file names.
3952
3953 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
3954 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
3955 For instance, consider:
3956
3957 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
3958 # struct example variable;
3959 (gdb) p variable.
3960
3961 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
3962 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
3963
3964 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
3965 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
3966
3967 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
3968 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
3969 macros.
3970
3971 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
3972 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
3973 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
3974
3975 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
3976 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
3977 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
3978 and simulator targets may also provide them.
3979
3980 * New remote packets
3981
3982 qSearch:memory:
3983 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
3984
3985 QStartNoAckMode
3986 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
3987 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
3988 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
3989
3990 vKill
3991 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
3992 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
3993
3994 qXfer:osdata:read
3995 Obtains additional operating system information
3996
3997 qXfer:siginfo:read
3998 qXfer:siginfo:write
3999 Read or write additional signal information.
4000
4001 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
4002
4003 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
4004 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
4005 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
4006
4007 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
4008 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
4009
4010 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
4011 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
4012 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
4013
4014 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
4015 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
4016
4017 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
4018
4019 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
4020
4021 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
4022 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
4023
4024 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
4025 list of section offsets.
4026
4027 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
4028 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
4029 have also been fixed.
4030
4031 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
4032 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
4033 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
4034
4035 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
4036 example, given:
4037
4038 template<typename T> class C { };
4039 C<char const *> c;
4040
4041 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
4042
4043 ptype C<char const *>
4044 ptype C<char const*>
4045 ptype C<const char *>
4046 ptype C<const char*>
4047
4048 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
4049
4050 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
4051 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
4052
4053 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
4054 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
4055 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
4056
4057 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
4058 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
4059
4060 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
4061 gdbserver.
4062
4063 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
4064 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
4065
4066 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
4067 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
4068 as appropriate.
4069
4070 * Python scripting
4071
4072 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
4073 available is determined at configure time.
4074
4075 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
4076
4077 * Ada tasking support
4078
4079 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
4080 been introduced:
4081
4082 info tasks
4083 Print the list of Ada tasks.
4084 info task N
4085 Print detailed information about task number N.
4086 task
4087 Print the task number of the current task.
4088 task N
4089 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
4090
4091 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
4092 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
4093
4094 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
4095
4096 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
4097 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
4098 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
4099 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
4100 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
4101 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
4102 below.
4103
4104 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
4105 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
4106 information.
4107
4108 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
4109 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
4110 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
4111 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
4112 more information.
4113
4114 * Multi-architecture debugging.
4115
4116 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
4117 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
4118 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
4119 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
4120 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
4121
4122 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
4123 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
4124 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
4125 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
4126 --enable-targets configure option.
4127
4128 * Non-stop mode debugging.
4129
4130 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
4131 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
4132 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
4133 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
4134 section in the user manual for more information.
4135
4136 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
4137 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
4138 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
4139 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
4140 extensions on linux targets.
4141
4142 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
4143
4144 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
4145 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
4146 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
4147 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
4148 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
4149 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
4150 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
4151 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
4152 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
4153
4154 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
4155 val1 [, val2, ...]
4156 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
4157
4158 maint set python print-stack
4159 maint show python print-stack
4160 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
4161
4162 python [CODE]
4163 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
4164
4165 macro define
4166 macro list
4167 macro undef
4168 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
4169 interactively.
4170
4171 info os processes
4172 Show operating system information about processes.
4173
4174 info inferiors
4175 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
4176
4177 inferior NUM
4178 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
4179
4180 detach inferior NUM
4181 Detach from inferior number NUM.
4182
4183 kill inferior NUM
4184 Kill inferior number NUM.
4185
4186 * New options
4187
4188 set spu stop-on-load
4189 show spu stop-on-load
4190 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
4191
4192 set spu auto-flush-cache
4193 show spu auto-flush-cache
4194 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
4195 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
4196
4197 set sh calling-convention
4198 show sh calling-convention
4199 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
4200
4201 set debug timestamp
4202 show debug timestamp
4203 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
4204
4205 set disassemble-next-line
4206 show disassemble-next-line
4207 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
4208 the debuggee stops.
4209
4210 set remote noack-packet
4211 show remote noack-packet
4212 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
4213 under "New remote packets."
4214
4215 set remote query-attached-packet
4216 show remote query-attached-packet
4217 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
4218
4219 set remote read-siginfo-object
4220 show remote read-siginfo-object
4221 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
4222 packet.
4223
4224 set remote write-siginfo-object
4225 show remote write-siginfo-object
4226 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
4227 packet.
4228
4229 set remote reverse-continue
4230 show remote reverse-continue
4231 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
4232
4233 set remote reverse-step
4234 show remote reverse-step
4235 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
4236
4237 set displaced-stepping
4238 show displaced-stepping
4239 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
4240 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
4241 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
4242
4243 set debug displaced
4244 show debug displaced
4245 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
4246
4247 maint set internal-error
4248 maint show internal-error
4249 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
4250
4251 maint set internal-warning
4252 maint show internal-warning
4253 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
4254
4255 set exec-wrapper
4256 show exec-wrapper
4257 unset exec-wrapper
4258 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
4259
4260 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
4261 show multiple-symbols
4262 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
4263 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
4264 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
4265
4266 set breakpoint always-inserted
4267 show breakpoint always-inserted
4268 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
4269 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
4270 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
4271
4272 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
4273 show arm fallback-mode
4274 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
4275 show arm force-mode
4276 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
4277 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
4278 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
4279 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
4280
4281 set disable-randomization
4282 show disable-randomization
4283 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
4284 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
4285 multiple debugging sessions.
4286
4287 set non-stop
4288 show non-stop
4289 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
4290 a breakpoint.
4291
4292 set target-async
4293 show target-async
4294 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
4295 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
4296 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
4297 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
4298
4299 set target-wide-charset
4300 show target-wide-charset
4301 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
4302 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
4303
4304 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
4305 show tcp auto-retry
4306 set tcp connect-timeout
4307 show tcp connect-timeout
4308 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
4309 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
4310 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
4311
4312 set libthread-db-search-path
4313 show libthread-db-search-path
4314 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
4315 libthread_db.
4316
4317 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
4318 show schedule-multiple
4319 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
4320 the current process.
4321
4322 set stack-cache
4323 show stack-cache
4324 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
4325 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
4326 affecting correctness.
4327
4328 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
4329 show interactive-mode
4330 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
4331 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
4332 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
4333 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
4334 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
4335
4336 * Removed commands
4337
4338 info forks
4339 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
4340 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
4341 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
4342 command.
4343
4344 fork NUM
4345 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
4346 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
4347 alias for the `fork' command.
4348
4349 process PID
4350 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
4351 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
4352 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
4353
4354 delete fork NUM
4355 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
4356 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
4357 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
4358 fork' command.
4359
4360 detach fork NUM
4361 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
4362 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
4363 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
4364 fork' command.
4365
4366 * New native configurations
4367
4368 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
4369
4370 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
4371
4372 * New targets
4373
4374 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
4375 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
4376 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
4377 S+core 3 score-*-*
4378
4379 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
4380 (mingw32ce) debugging.
4381
4382 * Removed commands
4383
4384 catch load
4385 catch unload
4386 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
4387
4388 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
4389
4390 * New native configurations
4391
4392 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
4393 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
4394
4395 * New targets
4396
4397 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
4398 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
4399
4400 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
4401
4402 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
4403 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
4404 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
4405 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
4406
4407 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
4408 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
4409
4410 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
4411 is resolved.
4412
4413 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
4414 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
4415 and in inlined functions.
4416
4417 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
4418 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
4419 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
4420
4421 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
4422
4423 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
4424 registers on PowerPC targets.
4425
4426 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
4427 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
4428
4429 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
4430 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
4431
4432 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
4433 extended-remote mode.
4434
4435 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
4436 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
4437 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
4438 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
4439
4440 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
4441 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
4442 target architectures.
4443
4444 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
4445 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
4446 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
4447 stored in two consecutive float registers.
4448
4449 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
4450 breakpoints now.
4451
4452 * Improved support for debugging Ada
4453 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
4454 include:
4455 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
4456 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
4457 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
4458 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
4459 of an assignment
4460 - Improved command completion in Ada
4461 - Several bug fixes
4462
4463 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
4464 process.
4465
4466 * New commands
4467
4468 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
4469 show print frame-arguments
4470 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
4471 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
4472
4473 remote put
4474 remote get
4475 remote delete
4476 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
4477
4478 * New MI commands
4479
4480 -target-file-put
4481 -target-file-get
4482 -target-file-delete
4483 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
4484
4485 * New remote packets
4486
4487 vFile:open:
4488 vFile:close:
4489 vFile:pread:
4490 vFile:pwrite:
4491 vFile:unlink:
4492 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
4493
4494 vAttach
4495 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
4496 mode.
4497
4498 vRun
4499 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
4500
4501 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
4502
4503 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
4504 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
4505 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
4506
4507 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
4508 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
4509 -Bsymbolic linker option.
4510
4511 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
4512 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
4513 is not supported.
4514
4515 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
4516 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
4517
4518 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
4519 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
4520
4521 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
4522
4523 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
4524 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
4525 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
4526
4527 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
4528 automatically displayed as character or string data.
4529
4530 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
4531 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
4532 as strings.
4533
4534 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
4535 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
4536 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
4537
4538 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
4539 iWMMXt coprocessor.
4540
4541 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
4542 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
4543 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
4544
4545 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
4546
4547 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
4548
4549 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
4550 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
4551 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
4552
4553 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
4554 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
4555
4556 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
4557 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
4558 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
4559 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
4560 Windows and SymbianOS).
4561
4562 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
4563 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
4564
4565 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
4566 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
4567
4568 * New commands
4569
4570 set remoteflow
4571 show remoteflow
4572 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
4573 when debugging using remote targets.
4574
4575 set mem inaccessible-by-default
4576 show mem inaccessible-by-default
4577 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
4578 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
4579 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
4580 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
4581 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
4582
4583 set breakpoint auto-hw
4584 show breakpoint auto-hw
4585 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
4586 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
4587 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
4588 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
4589 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
4590 including "next" and "finish".
4591
4592 catch exception
4593 catch exception unhandled
4594 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
4595
4596 catch assert
4597 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
4598
4599 set sysroot
4600 show sysroot
4601 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
4602 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
4603 an alias to "set sysroot".
4604
4605 info spu
4606 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
4607 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
4608 architecture.
4609
4610 * New native configurations
4611
4612 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
4613
4614 set tdesc filename
4615 unset tdesc filename
4616 show tdesc filename
4617 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
4618 not query the target for its built-in description.
4619
4620 * New targets
4621
4622 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
4623 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
4624 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
4625
4626 * New remote packets
4627
4628 QPassSignals:
4629 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
4630 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
4631
4632 qXfer:features:read:
4633 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
4634 features.
4635
4636 qXfer:spu:read:
4637 qXfer:spu:write:
4638 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
4639 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
4640
4641 qXfer:libraries:read:
4642 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
4643 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
4644 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
4645 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
4646
4647 * Removed targets
4648
4649 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
4650
4651 alpha*-*-osf1*
4652 alpha*-*-osf2*
4653 d10v-*-*
4654 hppa*-*-hiux*
4655 i[34567]86-ncr-*
4656 i[34567]86-*-dgux*
4657 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
4658 i[34567]86-*-netware*
4659 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
4660 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
4661 i[34567]86-*-sco*
4662 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
4663 i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
4664 i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
4665 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
4666 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
4667 i[34567]86-*-sysv*
4668 i[34567]86-*-isc*
4669 m68*-cisco*-*
4670 m68*-tandem-*
4671 mips*-*-pe
4672 rs6000-*-lynxos*
4673 sh*-*-pe
4674
4675 * Other removed features
4676
4677 target abug
4678 target cpu32bug
4679 target est
4680 target rom68k
4681
4682 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
4683
4684 target hms
4685 target e7000
4686 target sh3
4687 target sh3e
4688
4689 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
4690 H8/300.
4691
4692 target ocd
4693
4694 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
4695 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
4696 interfaces.
4697
4698 DWARF 1 support
4699
4700 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
4701 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
4702
4703 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
4704
4705 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
4706 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
4707 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
4708 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
4709
4710 MIPS ".pdr" sections
4711
4712 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
4713 in debugging information.
4714
4715 Scheme support
4716
4717 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
4718 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
4719
4720 set mips stack-arg-size
4721 set mips saved-gpreg-size
4722
4723 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
4724
4725 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
4726
4727 * New targets
4728
4729 Xtensa xtensa-elf
4730 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
4731
4732 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
4733 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
4734 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
4735
4736 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
4737 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
4738 supported.
4739
4740 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
4741 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
4742
4743 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
4744 stub provides the required support.
4745
4746 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
4747 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
4748
4749 * New commands
4750
4751 set substitute-path
4752 unset substitute-path
4753 show substitute-path
4754 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
4755 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
4756 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
4757 between compilation and debugging.
4758
4759 set trace-commands
4760 show trace-commands
4761 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
4762 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
4763 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
4764
4765 * REMOVED features
4766
4767 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
4768
4769 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
4770 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
4771
4772 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
4773
4774 * New remote packets
4775
4776 qSupported:
4777 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
4778 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
4779 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
4780 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
4781 target.
4782
4783 qXfer:auxv:read:
4784 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
4785 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
4786
4787 qXfer:memory-map:read:
4788 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
4789 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
4790
4791 vFlashErase:
4792 vFlashWrite:
4793 vFlashDone:
4794 Erase and program a flash memory device.
4795
4796 * Removed remote packets
4797
4798 qPart:auxv:read:
4799 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
4800 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
4801
4802 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
4803
4804 * New targets
4805
4806 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
4807
4808 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
4809
4810 * New commands
4811
4812 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
4813 only if it doesn't already have a value.
4814
4815 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
4816
4817 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
4818
4819 restart <n> Return the program state to a
4820 previously saved state.
4821
4822 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
4823
4824 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
4825
4826 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
4827 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
4828
4829 info forks List forks of the user program that
4830 are available to be debugged.
4831
4832 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
4833 forks of the user program that are
4834 available to be debugged.
4835
4836 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
4837 that are available to be debugged (and
4838 kill the forked process).
4839
4840 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
4841 that are available to be debugged (and
4842 allow the process to continue).
4843
4844 * New architecture
4845
4846 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
4847
4848 * Improved Windows host support
4849
4850 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
4851 native console support, and remote communications using either
4852 network sockets or serial ports.
4853
4854 * Improved Modula-2 language support
4855
4856 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
4857 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
4858 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
4859 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
4860 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
4861 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
4862
4863 * REMOVED features
4864
4865 The ARM rdi-share module.
4866
4867 The Netware NLM debug server.
4868
4869 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
4870
4871 * New native configurations
4872
4873 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
4874 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
4875
4876 * New targets
4877
4878 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
4879
4880 * New command line options
4881
4882 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
4883 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
4884 the child (debugged) program exited with.
4885 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
4886 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
4887 specified multiple times and in conjunction
4888 with the --command (-x) option.
4889
4890 * Deprecated commands removed
4891
4892 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
4893 removed:
4894
4895 Command Replacement
4896 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
4897 othernames set arm disassembler
4898 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
4899 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
4900 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
4901 regs info registers
4902
4903 * New BSD user-level threads support
4904
4905 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
4906 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
4907 configurations are:
4908
4909 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
4910 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
4911 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
4912
4913 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
4914 are not yet supported.
4915
4916 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
4917 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
4918
4919 * REMOVED configurations and files
4920
4921 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
4922 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
4923 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
4924
4925 * New "set print array-indexes" command
4926
4927 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
4928 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
4929 behavior.
4930
4931 * VAX floating point support
4932
4933 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
4934
4935 * User-defined command support
4936
4937 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
4938 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
4939 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
4940
4941 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
4942
4943 * New command line option
4944
4945 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
4946 debugging.
4947
4948 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
4949
4950 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
4951 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
4952 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
4953 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
4954 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
4955
4956 * Internationalization
4957
4958 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
4959 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
4960 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
4961
4962 * Ada
4963
4964 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
4965 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
4966 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
4967
4968 * New native configurations
4969
4970 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
4971
4972 * Remote 'p' packet
4973
4974 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
4975 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
4976
4977 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
4978
4979 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
4980 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
4981 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
4982 i386 application).
4983
4984 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
4985 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
4986 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
4987 configurations:
4988
4989 hppa-*-hpux
4990 ia64-*-aix
4991 mips-*-irix*
4992 *-*-lynx
4993 mips-*-linux-gnu
4994 sds protocol
4995 xdr protocol
4996 powerpc bdm protocol
4997
4998 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
4999 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
5000
5001 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5002
5003 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5004 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5005 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5006 permanently REMOVED.
5007
5008 h8300-*-*
5009 mcore-*-*
5010 mn10300-*-*
5011 ns32k-*-*
5012 sh64-*-*
5013 v850-*-*
5014
5015 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
5016
5017 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
5018
5019 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
5020 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
5021 been fixed.
5022
5023 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
5024
5025 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
5026 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
5027 IRIX long double values).
5028
5029 * VAX and "next"
5030
5031 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
5032 command. This problem has been fixed.
5033
5034 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
5035
5036 * Fix for ``many threads''
5037
5038 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
5039 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
5040 error message:
5041
5042 ptrace: No such process.
5043 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
5044
5045 This problem has been fixed.
5046
5047 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
5048
5049 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
5050 GDB to dump core).
5051
5052 * New ``start'' command.
5053
5054 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
5055
5056 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
5057
5058 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
5059 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
5060 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
5061
5062 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
5063 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
5064 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
5065 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
5066 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
5067 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
5068 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
5069 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
5070 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
5071
5072 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
5073
5074 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
5075 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
5076 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
5077 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
5078 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
5079
5080 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
5081 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
5082 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
5083
5084 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
5085
5086 * New native configurations
5087
5088 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
5089 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
5090 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
5091 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
5092 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
5093 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
5094 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
5095
5096 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
5097
5098 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
5099 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
5100 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
5101 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
5102 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
5103 work, was also included.
5104
5105 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
5106 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
5107
5108 h8300-*-*
5109 mcore-*-*
5110 mn10300-*-*
5111 ns32k-*-*
5112 sh64-*-*
5113 v850-*-*
5114 xstormy16-*-*
5115
5116 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
5117 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
5118
5119 * REMOVED configurations and files
5120
5121 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
5122 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
5123 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
5124 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
5125 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
5126 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
5127 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
5128 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
5129 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
5130 sonymips mips-sony-*
5131 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5132
5133 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
5134
5135 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
5136
5137 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
5138 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
5139 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
5140 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
5141 with GDB".
5142
5143 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
5144
5145 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
5146 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
5147 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
5148 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
5149 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
5150 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
5151 are created.
5152
5153 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
5154
5155 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
5156
5157 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
5158 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
5159 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
5160
5161 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
5162
5163 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
5164 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
5165
5166 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
5167
5168 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
5169 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
5170 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
5171
5172 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
5173
5174 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
5175 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
5176
5177 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
5178
5179 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
5180 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
5181 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
5182
5183 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
5184
5185 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
5186 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
5187 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
5188
5189 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
5190
5191 * Removed --with-mmalloc
5192
5193 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
5194 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
5195
5196 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
5197
5198 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
5199 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
5200 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
5201 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
5202
5203 * Revised SPARC target
5204
5205 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
5206 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
5207 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
5208 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
5209 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
5210
5211 * New C++ demangler
5212
5213 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
5214 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
5215 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
5216 programs.
5217
5218 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
5219
5220 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
5221 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
5222 encountered these.
5223
5224 * C++ nested types and namespaces
5225
5226 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
5227 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
5228 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
5229 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
5230 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
5231 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
5232 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
5233 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
5234 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
5235
5236 * New native configurations
5237
5238 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
5239 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
5240 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
5241 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
5242 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
5243
5244 * New debugging protocols
5245
5246 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
5247
5248 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
5249
5250 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
5251 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
5252 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
5253
5254 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5255
5256 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5257 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5258 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5259 permanently REMOVED.
5260
5261 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
5262 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
5263 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
5264 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
5265 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
5266 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
5267 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
5268 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
5269 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
5270 sonymips mips-sony-*
5271 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5272
5273 * REMOVED configurations and files
5274
5275 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
5276 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
5277 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
5278 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
5279 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
5280 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
5281 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
5282 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
5283 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
5284 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
5285 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
5286 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
5287 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
5288 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
5289 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
5290 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5291 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
5292
5293 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
5294
5295 * Objective-C
5296
5297 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
5298 integrated into GDB.
5299
5300 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
5301
5302 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
5303 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
5304 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
5305 backtraces.
5306
5307 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
5308 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
5309 DWARF 2 CFI support.
5310
5311 * Hosted file I/O.
5312
5313 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
5314 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
5315 remote protocol documentation for details.
5316
5317 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
5318
5319 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
5320 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
5321 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
5322 ppc32 on ppc64).
5323
5324 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
5325
5326 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
5327 per-thread variables.
5328
5329 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
5330
5331 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
5332 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
5333
5334 * Separate debug info.
5335
5336 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
5337 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
5338 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
5339 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
5340 and optional debug files.
5341
5342 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
5343
5344 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
5345 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
5346 debugger.
5347
5348 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
5349 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
5350
5351 * Java
5352
5353 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
5354 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
5355 considered "useable".
5356
5357 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
5358
5359 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
5360 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
5361 kernel.
5362
5363 * GDB supports logging output to a file
5364
5365 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
5366 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
5367
5368 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
5369
5370 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
5371 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
5372 command.
5373
5374 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5375
5376 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
5377 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
5378
5379 * Profiling support
5380
5381 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
5382 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
5383 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
5384 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
5385 data, for more informative profiling results.
5386
5387 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
5388
5389 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
5390 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
5391 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
5392
5393 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
5394 removed.
5395
5396 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
5397 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
5398 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
5399 in a subsequent -var-update.
5400
5401 * New native configurations.
5402
5403 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
5404
5405 * Multi-arched targets.
5406
5407 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
5408 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
5409
5410 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5411
5412 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5413 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5414 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5415 permanently REMOVED.
5416
5417 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
5418 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
5419 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
5420 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
5421 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
5422 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
5423 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
5424 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
5425 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
5426 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
5427 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5428 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
5429
5430 * REMOVED configurations and files
5431
5432 V850EA ISA
5433 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5434 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
5435 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
5436 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
5437 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
5438 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
5439 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
5440 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
5441 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
5442 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
5443 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
5444 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
5445 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5446
5447 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
5448
5449 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
5450 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
5451 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
5452 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
5453 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
5454
5455 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
5456
5457 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
5458
5459 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
5460 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
5461 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
5462 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
5463 shared libs like mad''.
5464
5465 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
5466
5467 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
5468 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
5469 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
5470 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
5471
5472 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
5473
5474 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
5475 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
5476 they expand.
5477
5478 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
5479 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
5480
5481 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
5482 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
5483
5484 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
5485 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
5486 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
5487 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
5488
5489 * Multi-arched targets.
5490
5491 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
5492 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
5493 NEC V850 v850-*-*
5494 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
5495 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
5496 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
5497
5498 * New targets.
5499
5500 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
5501
5502
5503 * New native configurations
5504
5505 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
5506 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
5507 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
5508 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
5509
5510 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5511
5512 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5513 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5514 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5515 permanently REMOVED.
5516
5517 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
5518 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
5519 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
5520 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
5521 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5522 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
5523 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
5524 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
5525 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
5526 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
5527 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
5528 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
5529 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5530
5531 * OBSOLETE languages
5532
5533 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
5534
5535 * REMOVED configurations and files
5536
5537 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
5538 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
5539 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5540 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5541 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5542
5543 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
5544
5545 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
5546
5547 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
5548 commands. The default is 1024.
5549
5550 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
5551
5552 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
5553
5554 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
5555
5556 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
5557 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
5558 from a file into memory (restore).
5559
5560 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
5561
5562 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
5563 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
5564 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
5565
5566 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
5567
5568 * New targets.
5569
5570 Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
5571
5572 * Bug fixes
5573
5574 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
5575 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
5576 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
5577
5578 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
5579 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
5580 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
5581
5582 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
5583 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
5584 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
5585
5586 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
5587 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
5588 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
5589
5590 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
5591
5592 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
5593
5594 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
5595 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
5596 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
5597 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
5598 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
5599 (notably embedded) targets.
5600
5601 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
5602
5603 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
5604 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
5605 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
5606 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
5607
5608 * New command line option
5609
5610 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
5611
5612 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
5613
5614 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
5615 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
5616 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
5617 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
5618 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
5619 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
5620 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
5621 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
5622 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
5623 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
5624
5625 * Changes in ARM configurations.
5626
5627 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
5628 configuration is fully multi-arch.
5629
5630 * New native configurations
5631
5632 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
5633 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
5634 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
5635 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
5636
5637 * New targets
5638
5639 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
5640
5641 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5642
5643 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5644 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5645 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5646 permanently REMOVED.
5647
5648 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
5649 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
5650 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5651 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5652 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5653
5654 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
5655
5656 * REMOVED configurations and files
5657
5658 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
5659 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
5660 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
5661 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
5662 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5663 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
5664 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
5665 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
5666 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
5667 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
5668 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
5669 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
5670 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
5671
5672 * Changes to command line processing
5673
5674 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
5675 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
5676
5677 * Changes to key bindings
5678
5679 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
5680
5681 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
5682
5683 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
5684
5685 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
5686 corrupted.
5687
5688 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
5689
5690 Numerous documentation fixes.
5691
5692 Numerous testsuite fixes.
5693
5694 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
5695
5696 * New native configurations
5697
5698 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
5699 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
5700 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
5701 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
5702 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
5703 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
5704
5705 * New targets
5706
5707 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
5708 CRIS cris-axis
5709 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
5710
5711 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5712
5713 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
5714 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
5715 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
5716 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
5717 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
5718 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
5719 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
5720 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
5721 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
5722 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5723 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
5724 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
5725 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
5726 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
5727
5728 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
5729 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
5730
5731 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5732 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5733 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5734 permanently REMOVED.
5735
5736 * REMOVED configurations and files
5737
5738 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
5739 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
5740 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
5741 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
5742 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
5743 ser-ocd.c *-*-*
5744
5745 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
5746
5747 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
5748 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
5749 present.
5750
5751 * Other news:
5752
5753 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
5754
5755 * The MI enabled by default.
5756
5757 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
5758 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
5759 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
5760 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
5761 which is now deprecated.
5762
5763 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
5764
5765 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
5766 main features are supported:
5767
5768 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
5769
5770 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
5771 extension;
5772
5773 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
5774
5775 - a Pascal expression parser.
5776
5777 However, some important features are not yet supported.
5778
5779 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
5780
5781 - there are some problems with boolean types;
5782
5783 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
5784 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
5785
5786 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
5787
5788 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
5789
5790 * Changes in completion.
5791
5792 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
5793 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
5794 users expect at the shell prompt.
5795
5796 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
5797 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
5798 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
5799 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
5800 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
5801 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
5802 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
5803
5804 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
5805
5806 * New platform-independent commands:
5807
5808 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
5809 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
5810 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
5811
5812 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
5813
5814 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
5815 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
5816 many threads as your system allows you to have.
5817
5818 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
5819
5820 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
5821 multi-threaded programs though.
5822
5823 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
5824
5825 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
5826
5827 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
5828 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
5829 supported.)
5830
5831 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
5832
5833 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
5834 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
5835 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
5836 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
5837 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
5838 registers.
5839
5840 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
5841 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
5842 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
5843
5844 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
5845
5846 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
5847 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
5848
5849 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
5850 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
5851 IDT.
5852
5853 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
5854 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
5855 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
5856 a given linear address.
5857
5858 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
5859 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
5860 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
5861
5862 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
5863
5864 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
5865
5866 * Changes in documentation.
5867
5868 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
5869 Documentation License.
5870
5871 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
5872 manual.
5873
5874 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
5875
5876 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
5877 manual.
5878
5879 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
5880 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
5881 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
5882
5883 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
5884
5885 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
5886 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
5887 contents of this file.
5888
5889 * gdba.el deleted
5890
5891 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
5892
5893 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
5894
5895 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
5896
5897 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
5898 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
5899 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
5900 greater level of detail.
5901
5902 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
5903
5904 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
5905 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
5906 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
5907 written.
5908
5909 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
5910
5911 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
5912 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
5913 machines ``out of the box''.
5914
5915 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
5916 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
5917 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
5918 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
5919 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
5920
5921 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
5922 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
5923 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
5924 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
5925 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
5926
5927 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
5928 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
5929 also works.
5930
5931 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
5932 GDB.
5933
5934 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
5935 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
5936 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
5937 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
5938
5939 * New native configurations
5940
5941 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
5942 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
5943
5944 * New targets
5945
5946 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
5947 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
5948 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
5949 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
5950
5951 * OBSOLETE configurations
5952
5953 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
5954 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
5955 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
5956 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
5957 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
5958
5959 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
5960 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
5961 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
5962 be permanently REMOVED.
5963
5964 * Gould support removed
5965
5966 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
5967
5968 * New features for SVR4
5969
5970 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
5971 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
5972 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
5973
5974 * Many C++ enhancements
5975
5976 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
5977 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
5978
5979 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
5980
5981 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
5982 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
5983 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
5984 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
5985
5986 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
5987 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
5988
5989 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
5990
5991 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
5992 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
5993 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
5994
5995 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
5996 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
5997
5998 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
5999
6000 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
6001 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
6002 include ``set remote P-packet''.
6003
6004 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
6005
6006 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
6007 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
6008 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
6009
6010 * ``apropos'' command added.
6011
6012 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
6013 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
6014 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
6015
6016 * New MI interface
6017
6018 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
6019 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
6020 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
6021 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
6022 enabled by configuring with:
6023
6024 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
6025
6026 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
6027
6028 * New native configurations
6029
6030 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
6031 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
6032 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
6033
6034 * New targets
6035
6036 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
6037 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
6038 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
6039
6040 * OBSOLETE configurations
6041
6042 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
6043
6044 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
6045 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
6046 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
6047 be permanently REMOVED.
6048
6049 * ANSI/ISO C
6050
6051 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
6052 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
6053 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
6054 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
6055 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
6056 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
6057 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
6058 already.
6059
6060 * Readline 2.2
6061
6062 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
6063
6064 * set extension-language
6065
6066 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
6067 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
6068 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
6069 set extension-language .c c++
6070 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
6071 and their associated languages.
6072
6073 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
6074
6075 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
6076 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
6077 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
6078
6079 set processor NAME
6080
6081 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
6082 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
6083
6084 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
6085 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
6086 403 IBM PowerPC 403
6087 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
6088 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
6089 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
6090 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
6091 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
6092 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
6093 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
6094 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
6095
6096 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
6097 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
6098 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
6099 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
6100
6101 * HP-UX support
6102
6103 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
6104 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
6105 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
6106 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
6107 for xdb and dbx commands.
6108
6109 * Catchpoints
6110
6111 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
6112 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
6113 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
6114
6115 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
6116 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
6117 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
6118
6119 * Debugging across forks
6120
6121 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
6122 in the inferior.
6123
6124 * TUI
6125
6126 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
6127 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
6128 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
6129
6130 * GDB remote protocol additions
6131
6132 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
6133 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
6134 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
6135 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
6136
6137 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
6138 full 64-bit address. The command
6139
6140 set remoteaddresssize 32
6141
6142 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
6143 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
6144 will be discarded.
6145
6146 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
6147 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
6148
6149 maint packet heythere
6150
6151 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
6152 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
6153 time.
6154
6155 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
6156 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
6157 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
6158
6159 * Tracing can collect general expressions
6160
6161 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
6162 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
6163 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
6164
6165 * mask-address variable for Mips
6166
6167 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
6168 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
6169 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
6170
6171 * Higher serial baud rates
6172
6173 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
6174 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
6175 to achieve all of these rates.)
6176
6177 * i960 simulator
6178
6179 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
6180 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
6181
6182
6183 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
6184
6185 * New native configurations
6186
6187 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
6188 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
6189 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
6190 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
6191 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
6192 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
6193 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
6194
6195 * New targets
6196
6197 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
6198 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
6199 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
6200 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
6201 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
6202 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
6203 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
6204 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
6205 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6206 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
6207 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
6208
6209 * New debugging protocols
6210
6211 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
6212 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
6213 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
6214 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
6215 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
6216 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
6217
6218 * DWARF 2
6219
6220 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
6221 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
6222 information.
6223
6224 * Java frontend
6225
6226 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
6227 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
6228
6229 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
6230
6231 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
6232 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
6233 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
6234
6235 * Live range splitting
6236
6237 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
6238 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
6239 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
6240
6241 * Hurd support
6242
6243 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
6244 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
6245
6246 * ARM Thumb support
6247
6248 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
6249 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
6250 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
6251 accordingly.
6252
6253 * MIPS16 support
6254
6255 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
6256 instruction set.
6257
6258 * Overlay support
6259
6260 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
6261 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
6262 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
6263 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
6264 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
6265 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
6266
6267 * info symbol
6268
6269 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
6270 the symbol at the specified address.
6271
6272 * Trace support
6273
6274 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
6275 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
6276 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
6277 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
6278 file tracepoint.c for more details.
6279
6280 * MIPS simulator
6281
6282 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
6283 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
6284 of most MIPS variants.
6285
6286 * Sparc simulator
6287
6288 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
6289 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
6290 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
6291
6292 * set architecture
6293
6294 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
6295 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
6296 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
6297 the possible architectures.
6298
6299 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
6300
6301 * New native configurations
6302
6303 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
6304 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
6305 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
6306 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
6307 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
6308 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
6309
6310 * New targets
6311
6312 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
6313 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
6314 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
6315 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
6316 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
6317 Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
6318 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
6319
6320 * PowerPC simulator
6321
6322 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
6323 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
6324 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
6325 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
6326 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
6327
6328 * Solaris 2.5
6329
6330 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
6331
6332 * Windows 95/NT native
6333
6334 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
6335 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
6336 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
6337 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
6338 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
6339
6340 * dont-repeat command
6341
6342 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
6343 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
6344 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
6345 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
6346
6347 * Send break instead of ^C
6348
6349 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
6350 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
6351 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
6352
6353 * Remote protocol timeout
6354
6355 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
6356 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
6357 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
6358
6359 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
6360
6361 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
6362 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
6363 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
6364 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
6365 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
6366
6367 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
6368 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
6369 automatically on hpux10.
6370
6371 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
6372
6373 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
6374
6375 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
6376
6377 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
6378 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
6379 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
6380 every character. The default value is 1050.
6381
6382 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
6383
6384 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
6385 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
6386 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
6387 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
6388 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
6389 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
6390
6391 * Speedups for remote debugging
6392
6393 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
6394 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
6395 and more efficient S-record downloading.
6396
6397 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
6398
6399 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
6400 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
6401
6402 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
6403
6404 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
6405
6406 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
6407 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
6408
6409 * Remote targets use caching
6410
6411 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
6412 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
6413 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
6414 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
6415 off' turns the the data cache off.
6416
6417 * Remote targets may have threads
6418
6419 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
6420 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
6421 gdb/remote.c for details.
6422
6423 * NetROM support
6424
6425 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
6426 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
6427 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
6428 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
6429 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
6430 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
6431 sequence is something like
6432
6433 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
6434 load <prog>
6435 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
6436
6437 * Macintosh host
6438
6439 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
6440 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
6441 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
6442 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
6443 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
6444 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
6445 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
6446 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
6447
6448 * Autoconf
6449
6450 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
6451 but does simplify configuration and building.
6452
6453 * hpux10
6454
6455 GDB now supports hpux10.
6456
6457 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
6458
6459 * New native configurations
6460
6461 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
6462 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
6463 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
6464 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
6465
6466 * New targets
6467
6468 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
6469 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
6470 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
6471 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
6472 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
6473
6474 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
6475
6476 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
6477 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
6478 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
6479 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
6480 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
6481
6482 * Arguments to user-defined commands
6483
6484 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
6485 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
6486 trivial example:
6487 define adder
6488 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
6489
6490 To execute the command use:
6491 adder 1 2 3
6492
6493 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
6494 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
6495 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
6496
6497 * New `if' and `while' commands
6498
6499 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
6500 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
6501 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
6502 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
6503 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
6504 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
6505 if the expression is zero.
6506
6507 * Fortran source language mode
6508
6509 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
6510 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
6511 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
6512 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
6513 Fortran compilers.
6514
6515 * Better HPUX support
6516
6517 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
6518 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
6519 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
6520 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
6521 that behavior do the following before running the program:
6522
6523 adb -w a.out
6524 __dld_flags?W 0x5
6525 control-d
6526
6527 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
6528 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
6529
6530 adb -w a.out
6531 __dld_flags?W 0x4
6532 control-d
6533
6534 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
6535 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
6536 external linkage.
6537
6538 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
6539 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
6540
6541 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
6542
6543 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
6544 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
6545 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
6546 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
6547 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
6548 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
6549
6550 * New DOS host serial code
6551
6552 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
6553 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
6554 a PC's serial port.
6555
6556 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
6557
6558 * New "complete" command
6559
6560 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
6561 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
6562
6563 * Trailing space optional in prompt
6564
6565 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
6566 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
6567
6568 * Breakpoint hit counts
6569
6570 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
6571 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
6572 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
6573 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
6574 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
6575 that breakpoint.
6576
6577 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
6578
6579 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
6580 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
6581 arrays actually contain only short strings.
6582
6583 * Shared library breakpoints
6584
6585 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
6586 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
6587
6588 * Hardware watchpoints
6589
6590 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
6591 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
6592
6593 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
6594
6595 * Annotations
6596
6597 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
6598 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
6599
6600 * Improved Irix 5 support
6601
6602 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
6603
6604 * Improved HPPA support
6605
6606 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
6607
6608 * New native configurations
6609
6610 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
6611 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
6612 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
6613 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
6614
6615 * New targets
6616
6617 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
6618 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
6619 Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
6620
6621 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
6622
6623 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
6624 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
6625
6626 * Fixes
6627
6628 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
6629 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
6630
6631 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
6632
6633 * Irix 5 is now supported
6634
6635 * HPPA support
6636
6637 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
6638 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
6639 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
6640 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
6641 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
6642
6643
6644 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
6645
6646 * User visible changes:
6647
6648 * Remote Debugging
6649
6650 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
6651 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
6652 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
6653 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
6654 debugging info for the mips target).
6655
6656 * DEC Alpha native support
6657
6658 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
6659 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
6660 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
6661 Alpha-specific notes.
6662
6663 * Preliminary thread implementation
6664
6665 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
6666
6667 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
6668
6669 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
6670 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
6671 for details).
6672
6673 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
6674
6675 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
6676 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
6677 call methods, ...etc.
6678
6679 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
6680
6681 * User visible changes:
6682
6683 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
6684 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
6685 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
6686 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
6687
6688 Filename completion now works.
6689
6690 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
6691 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
6692 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
6693
6694 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
6695 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
6696 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
6697 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
6698 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
6699
6700 * DEC alpha support
6701
6702 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
6703 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
6704
6705
6706 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
6707
6708 * Testsuite
6709
6710 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
6711 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
6712 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
6713
6714 * C++ demangling
6715
6716 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
6717 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
6718 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
6719 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
6720 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
6721
6722 * Simulators
6723
6724 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
6725 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
6726 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
6727
6728 * New targets supported
6729
6730 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
6731 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
6732 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
6733 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
6734 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
6735
6736 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
6737 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
6738 GO32 memory extender.
6739
6740 * New remote protocols
6741
6742 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
6743
6744 * New source languages supported
6745
6746 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
6747 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
6748 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
6749
6750
6751 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
6752
6753 * HP Precision Architecture supported
6754
6755 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
6756 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
6757 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
6758 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
6759 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
6760 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
6761
6762 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
6763
6764 * Faster and better demangling
6765
6766 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
6767 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
6768 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
6769 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
6770 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
6771 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
6772 symbol lookups.
6773
6774 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
6775 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
6776 compiler does not actually implement.
6777
6778 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
6779
6780 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
6781 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
6782 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
6783 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
6784 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
6785 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
6786 fix.
6787
6788 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
6789 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
6790
6791 * Improved configure script
6792
6793 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
6794 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
6795 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
6796 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
6797
6798 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
6799 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
6800 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
6801 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
6802 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
6803 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
6804
6805 * Documentation improvements
6806
6807 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
6808 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
6809 before submitting changes.
6810
6811 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
6812 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
6813 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
6814 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
6815 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
6816
6817 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
6818 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
6819 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
6820 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
6821 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
6822 around this problem.
6823
6824 * New features
6825
6826 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
6827 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
6828 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
6829 the target program.
6830
6831 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
6832 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
6833
6834 * New native hosts supported
6835
6836 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
6837 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
6838
6839 * New targets supported
6840
6841 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
6842
6843 * New file formats supported
6844
6845 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
6846 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
6847
6848 * Major bug fixes
6849
6850 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
6851
6852 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
6853 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
6854
6855 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
6856 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
6857 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
6858
6859 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
6860 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
6861
6862 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
6863 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
6864 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
6865 libraries.
6866
6867 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
6868 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
6869 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
6870 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
6871 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
6872
6873 * Internal improvements
6874
6875 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
6876 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
6877
6878 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
6879 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
6880 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
6881 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
6882 shared code that handles any of them.
6883
6884 * New command line options
6885
6886 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
6887
6888 * Mmalloc licensing
6889
6890 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
6891 General Public License.
6892
6893 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
6894
6895 * Host/native/target split
6896
6897 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
6898 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
6899 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
6900 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
6901 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
6902
6903 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
6904 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
6905 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
6906 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
6907 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
6908 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
6909 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
6910
6911 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
6912 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
6913 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
6914
6915 * New hosts supported
6916
6917 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
6918 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
6919 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
6920
6921 * New targets supported
6922
6923 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
6924 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
6925
6926 * New native hosts supported
6927
6928 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
6929 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
6930 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
6931
6932 * New file formats supported
6933
6934 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
6935 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
6936 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
6937
6938 * New commands
6939
6940 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
6941 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
6942 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
6943
6944 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
6945
6946 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
6947 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
6948 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
6949 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
6950
6951 * C++ improvements
6952
6953 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
6954 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
6955 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
6956
6957 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
6958
6959 * Major bug fixes
6960
6961 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
6962 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
6963 by the compiler.
6964
6965 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
6966 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
6967
6968 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
6969 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
6970 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
6971 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
6972 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
6973 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
6974
6975 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
6976 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
6977 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
6978 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
6979
6980 * AMD 29k support
6981
6982 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
6983 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
6984 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
6985 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
6986 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
6987
6988 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
6989 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
6990 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
6991 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
6992
6993 * Remote interfaces
6994
6995 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
6996 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
6997 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
6998 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
6999 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
7000 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
7001 each instruction being stepped through.
7002
7003 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
7004 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
7005
7006 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
7007 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
7008 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
7009 processor with a serial port.
7010
7011 * Configuration
7012
7013 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
7014 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
7015 supported, and what files each one uses.
7016
7017 * Library changes
7018
7019 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
7020 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
7021 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
7022 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
7023
7024 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
7025 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
7026 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
7027 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
7028
7029 * Documentation
7030
7031 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
7032 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
7033 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
7034 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
7035 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
7036 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
7037
7038 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
7039
7040
7041 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
7042
7043 * Better support for C++ function names
7044
7045 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
7046 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
7047 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
7048 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
7049 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
7050
7051 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
7052 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
7053 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
7054 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
7055 for the list of formats.
7056
7057 * G++ symbol mangling problem
7058
7059 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
7060 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
7061 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
7062 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
7063 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
7064 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
7065 this problem.)
7066
7067 * New 'maintenance' command
7068
7069 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
7070 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
7071 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
7072
7073 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
7074 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
7075 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
7076 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
7077 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
7078 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
7079
7080 The following commands are new:
7081
7082 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
7083 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
7084 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
7085
7086 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
7087
7088 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
7089 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
7090 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
7091 read after argv processing.
7092
7093 * New hosts supported
7094
7095 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
7096
7097 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
7098
7099 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
7100 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
7101 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
7102 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
7103 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
7104 It costs extra.
7105
7106 * New targets supported
7107
7108 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
7109
7110 * More smarts about finding #include files
7111
7112 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
7113 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
7114 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
7115 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
7116 the one that contains your sources.
7117
7118 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
7119 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
7120 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
7121
7122 * Interesting infernals change
7123
7124 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
7125 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
7126 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
7127 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
7128
7129 * Bug fixes (of course!)
7130
7131 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
7132 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
7133 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
7134
7135 See the ChangeLog for details.
7136
7137 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
7138
7139 * New machines supported (host and target)
7140
7141 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
7142
7143 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
7144
7145 * New malloc package
7146
7147 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
7148 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
7149 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
7150 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
7151 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
7152 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
7153
7154 * info proc
7155
7156 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
7157 'help info proc' for details.
7158
7159 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
7160
7161 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
7162 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
7163 possible.
7164
7165 * File name changes for MS-DOS
7166
7167 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
7168 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
7169 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
7170 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
7171 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
7172 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
7173
7174 * Cross byte order fixes
7175
7176 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
7177 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
7178
7179 * New -mapped and -readnow options
7180
7181 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
7182 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
7183 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
7184 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
7185 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
7186 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
7187 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
7188 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
7189 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
7190 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
7191
7192 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
7193 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
7194 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
7195 slower, but makes future operations faster.
7196
7197 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
7198 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
7199 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
7200 use is:
7201
7202 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
7203
7204 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
7205 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
7206 shared across multiple host platforms.
7207
7208 * longjmp() handling
7209
7210 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
7211 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
7212 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
7213 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
7214
7215 * Solaris 2.0
7216
7217 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
7218 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
7219 reading symbols.
7220
7221 * Bug fixes
7222
7223 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
7224 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
7225 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
7226
7227 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
7228
7229 * New machines supported (host and target)
7230
7231 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
7232 (except core files)
7233 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
7234 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
7235
7236 * New machines supported (target)
7237
7238 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
7239
7240 * C++ support
7241
7242 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
7243 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
7244 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
7245
7246 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
7247 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
7248 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
7249 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
7250 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
7251 released.
7252
7253 * New features for SVR4
7254
7255 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
7256 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
7257 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
7258
7259 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
7260 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
7261 it prints the address mappings of the process.
7262
7263 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
7264 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
7265
7266 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
7267
7268 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
7269 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
7270 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
7271 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
7272 same code linked statically.
7273
7274 * New Getopt
7275
7276 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
7277 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
7278 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
7279 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
7280 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
7281 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
7282
7283 * Bugs fixed
7284
7285 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
7286 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
7287 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
7288
7289
7290 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
7291
7292 * New machines supported (host and target)
7293
7294 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
7295 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
7296 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
7297
7298 * Almost SCO Unix support
7299
7300 We had hoped to support:
7301 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
7302 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
7303 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
7304 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
7305
7306 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
7307
7308 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
7309 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
7310 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
7311 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
7312 reqired (if any).
7313
7314 * New Readline
7315
7316 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
7317 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
7318 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
7319
7320 * Bugs fixed
7321
7322 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
7323 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
7324 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
7325
7326 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
7327
7328 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
7329 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
7330 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
7331
7332 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
7333 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
7334 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
7335 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
7336 version 2.
7337
7338 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
7339 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
7340 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
7341 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
7342 situation somewhat.
7343
7344 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
7345 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
7346 methods.
7347
7348 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
7349 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
7350 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
7351
7352
7353 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
7354
7355 * Improved configuration
7356
7357 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
7358 Porting BFD is simpler.
7359
7360 * Stepping improved
7361
7362 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
7363 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
7364 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
7365 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
7366
7367 * Bug fixing
7368
7369 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
7370
7371 * New host supported (not target)
7372
7373 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
7374
7375
7376 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
7377
7378 * Multiple source language support
7379
7380 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
7381 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
7382 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
7383 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
7384 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
7385 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
7386
7387 * GDB and Modula-2
7388
7389 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
7390 currently under development at the State University of New York at
7391 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
7392 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
7393
7394 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
7395 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
7396 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
7397
7398 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
7399 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
7400
7401 * set write on/off
7402
7403 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
7404 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
7405 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
7406 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
7407 effect immediately.
7408
7409 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
7410
7411 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
7412 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
7413 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
7414 examining core files.
7415
7416 * set listsize
7417
7418 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
7419 The default is 10.
7420
7421 * New machines supported (host and target)
7422
7423 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
7424 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
7425 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
7426
7427 * New hosts supported (not targets)
7428
7429 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
7430
7431 * New targets supported (not hosts)
7432
7433 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
7434 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
7435 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
7436
7437 * New remote interfaces
7438
7439 AMD 29000 Adapt
7440 AMD 29000 Minimon
7441
7442
7443 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
7444
7445 * New Facilities
7446
7447 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
7448
7449 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
7450 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
7451 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
7452 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
7453 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
7454 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
7455 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
7456 stub on the target system.
7457
7458 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
7459
7460 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
7461 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
7462 object file types such as a.out and coff.
7463
7464 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
7465 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
7466
7467
7468 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
7469
7470 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
7471 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
7472
7473 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
7474 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
7475 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
7476
7477 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
7478 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
7479 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
7480 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
7481
7482 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
7483 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
7484 it is already running. Default is ON.
7485
7486 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
7487 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
7488 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
7489 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
7490 Default is ON.
7491
7492 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
7493 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
7494 or the value of the environment variable
7495 GDBHISTFILE.
7496
7497 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
7498 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
7499 HISTSIZE.
7500
7501 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
7502 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
7503 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
7504
7505 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
7506 history expansion will be performed on
7507 command line input. The default is OFF.
7508
7509 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
7510 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
7511 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
7512
7513 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
7514 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
7515 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
7516 variable TERM.
7517
7518 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
7519 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
7520 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
7521 variable TERM.
7522
7523 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
7524 ``set width'' instead.
7525
7526 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
7527 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
7528 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
7529 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
7530
7531 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
7532 is OFF.
7533
7534 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
7535 "raw" form if off.
7536
7537 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
7538 like instructions.
7539
7540 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
7541
7542
7543 * Support for Epoch Environment.
7544
7545 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
7546 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
7547 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
7548 window.
7549
7550
7551 * Support for Shared Libraries
7552
7553 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
7554 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
7555 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
7556 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
7557 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
7558 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
7559 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
7560 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
7561
7562 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
7563 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
7564 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
7565
7566 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
7567
7568
7569 * Watchpoints
7570
7571 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
7572 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
7573 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
7574 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
7575 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
7576 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
7577
7578 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
7579
7580 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
7581
7582 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
7583 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
7584 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
7585
7586
7587 * C++ multiple inheritance
7588
7589 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
7590 for C++ programs.
7591
7592 * C++ exception handling
7593
7594 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
7595 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
7596 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
7597 handler's context).
7598
7599 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
7600 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
7601 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
7602
7603 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
7604 current stack frame.
7605
7606
7607 * Minor command changes
7608
7609 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
7610 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
7611 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
7612
7613 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
7614 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
7615 frames without printing.
7616
7617 * New directory command
7618
7619 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
7620 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
7621 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
7622 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
7623 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
7624
7625 * Configuring GDB for compilation
7626
7627 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
7628 for more details.
7629
7630 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
7631 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
7632 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
7633 where the program that you are debugging will run.
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