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