* gdb-add-index.sh: Really remove.
[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
4 *** Changes since GDB 7.2
5
6 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
7 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
8 source path list instead of augmenting it.
9
10 * OpenCL C
11 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
12 has been integrated into GDB.
13
14 * Python scripting
15
16 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
17 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
18 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
19 that function like so:
20
21 result = some_value (10,20)
22
23 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
24 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
25 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
26
27 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
28 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
29 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
30 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
31 New function: register_pretty_printer.
32
33 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
34 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
35
36 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
37
38 * C++ Improvements:
39
40 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
41 instantiation. For example, if you have:
42
43 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
44
45 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
46 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
47 was added to GCC 4.5.
48
49 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
50 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
51 execution to a label.
52
53 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
54 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
55 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
56 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
57
58 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
59 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
60 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
61 of scope.
62
63 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
64
65 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
66 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
67 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
68 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
69 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
70 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
71
72 (gdb) info threads
73 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
74
75 While now you see this:
76
77 (gdb) info threads
78 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
79
80 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
81 dumps.
82
83 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
84 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
85 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
86 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
87
88 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
89
90 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
91 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
92
93 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
94 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
95 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
96 in the GDB user manual.
97
98 * Guile support was removed.
99
100 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
101
102 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
103
104 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
105 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
106 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
107 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
108 was always disabled for such configurations.
109
110 * C++ Improvements:
111
112 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
113
114 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
115 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
116 For example:
117 namespace A
118 {
119 class B { };
120 void foo (B) { }
121 }
122 ...
123 A::B b
124 foo(b)
125 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
126 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
127 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
128
129 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
130
131 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
132 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
133 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
134 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
135 entry.
136 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
137 mentioned flavors of operators.
138
139 ** static const class members
140
141 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
142 class definition has been fixed.
143
144 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
145
146 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
147 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
148 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
149 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
150 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
151 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
152
153 * Static tracepoints
154
155 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
156 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
157 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
158 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
159 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
160 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
161 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
162 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
163 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
164 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
165 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
166 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
167 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
168 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
169 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
170 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
171 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
172 the "New remote packets" section below.
173
174 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
175
176 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
177 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
178 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
179 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
180
181 * Observer mode
182
183 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
184 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
185 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
186 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
187 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
188 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
189 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
190
191 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
192 current thread.
193
194 * New remote packets
195
196 qGetTIBAddr
197
198 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
199
200 qRelocInsn
201
202 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
203 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
204 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
205 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
206 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
207 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
208
209 qTfSTM, qTsSTM
210
211 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
212
213 qTSTMat
214
215 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
216 program.
217
218 qXfer:statictrace:read
219
220 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
221 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
222 to gdb's qSupported query.
223
224 QAllow
225
226 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
227
228 QTDPsrc
229
230 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
231 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
232
233 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
234 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
235 a directory.
236
237 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
238
239 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
240 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
241 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
242 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
243
244 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
245 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
246 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
247 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
248 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
249 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
250 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
251
252 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
253 for static tracepoints support.
254
255 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
256
257 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
258 it understands register description.
259
260 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
261
262 * X86 general purpose registers
263
264 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
265 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
266 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
267 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
268 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
269
270 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
271 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
272 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
273 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
274 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
275 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
276
277 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
278 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
279 in the specified file.
280
281 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
282 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
283 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
284 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
285 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
286 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
287 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
288 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
289 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
290 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
291
292 * New commands
293
294 eval template, expressions...
295 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
296 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
297
298 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
299 show target-file-system-kind
300 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
301 names.
302
303 save breakpoints <filename>
304 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
305 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
306 definitions, use the `source' command.
307
308 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
309 is now deprecated.
310
311 info static-tracepoint-markers
312 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
313
314 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
315 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
316 function, line, address, or marker ID.
317
318 set observer on|off
319 show observer
320 Enable and disable observer mode.
321
322 set may-write-registers on|off
323 set may-write-memory on|off
324 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
325 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
326 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
327 set may-interrupt on|off
328 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
329 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
330 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
331 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
332 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
333 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
334 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
335
336 set record memory-query on|off
337 show record memory-query
338 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
339 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
340
341 * Changed commands
342
343 disassemble
344 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
345
346 * Python scripting
347
348 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
349 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
350 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
351 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
352 GDB using Python' in the manual.
353
354 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
355 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
356 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
357 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
358
359 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
360 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
361
362 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
363
364 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
365
366 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
367
368 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
369 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
370 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
371
372 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
373 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
374 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
375 regular breakpoints.
376
377 * New targets
378
379 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
380
381 * D language support.
382 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
383 language.
384
385 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
386 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
387 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
388 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
389 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
390
391 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
392 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
393 conditions of the form:
394
395 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
396
397 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
398 interface mentioned above.
399
400 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
401
402 * C++ Improvements
403
404 ** Namespace Support
405
406 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
407 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
408 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
409 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
410 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
411
412 ** Bug Fixes
413
414 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
415 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
416 qualified name.
417
418 ** Cast Operators
419
420 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
421 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
422
423 * New targets
424
425 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
426 Renesas RX rx-*-elf
427
428 * New Simulators
429
430 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
431 Renesas RX rx
432
433 * Multi-program debugging.
434
435 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
436 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
437 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
438 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
439 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
440 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
441 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
442 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
443
444 * New tracing features
445
446 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
447
448 ** Trace state variables
449
450 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
451 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
452 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
453 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
454 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
455 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
456 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
457 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
458 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
459 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
460
461 ** Fast tracepoints
462
463 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
464 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
465 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
466 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
467 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
468 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
469 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
470 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
471 the regular trace command.
472
473 ** Disconnected tracing
474
475 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
476 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
477 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
478 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
479 connection is lost unexpectedly.
480
481 ** Trace files
482
483 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
484 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
485 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
486 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
487 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
488 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
489 <name>".
490
491 ** Circular trace buffer
492
493 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
494 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
495 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
496 not be available for all target agents.
497
498 * Changed commands
499
500 disassemble
501 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
502 the arguments to be comma-separated.
503
504 info variables
505 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
506 which only declare a variable are not shown.
507
508 source
509 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
510 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
511 support.
512
513 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
514 "set script-extension" (see below).
515
516 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
517
518 record save [<FILENAME>]
519 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
520 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
521
522 record restore <FILENAME>
523 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
524 earlier time, for replay debugging.
525
526 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
527 Add a new inferior.
528
529 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
530 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
531 inferior has loaded.
532
533 remove-inferior ID
534 Remove an inferior.
535
536 maint info program-spaces
537 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
538
539 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
540 show remote interrupt-sequence
541 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
542 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
543 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
544 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
545 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
546
547 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
548 show remote interrupt-on-connect
549 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
550 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
551 Linux kernel.
552
553 set remotebreak [on | off]
554 show remotebreak
555 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
556
557 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
558 Create or modify a trace state variable.
559
560 info tvariables
561 List trace state variables and their values.
562
563 delete tvariable $NAME ...
564 Delete one or more trace state variables.
565
566 teval EXPR, ...
567 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
568 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
569
570 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
571 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
572
573 * New expression syntax
574
575 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
576 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
577
578 * New options
579
580 set follow-exec-mode new|same
581 show follow-exec-mode
582 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
583 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
584 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
585
586 set default-collect EXPR, ...
587 show default-collect
588 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
589 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
590 such as registers or a critical global variable.
591
592 set disconnected-tracing
593 show disconnected-tracing
594 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
595 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
596 upon disconnection.
597
598 set circular-trace-buffer
599 show circular-trace-buffer
600 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
601 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
602 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
603 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
604
605 set script-extension off|soft|strict
606 show script-extension
607 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
608 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
609 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
610 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
611 evaluation failed.
612 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
613
614 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
615 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
616 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
617 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
618 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
619 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
620 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
621 is on.
622
623 * Python API Improvements
624
625 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
626 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
627 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
628
629 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
630 `is_base_class' attribute.
631
632 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
633
634 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
635 evaluate an expression.
636
637 * New remote packets
638
639 QTDV
640 Define a trace state variable.
641
642 qTV
643 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
644
645 QTDisconnected
646 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
647
648 QTBuffer:circular
649 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
650
651 qTfP, qTsP
652 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
653
654 * Bug fixes
655
656 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
657
658 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
659 much more reliable. In particular:
660 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
661 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
662 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
663 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
664 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
665 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
666 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
667 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
668 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
669 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
670 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
671 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
672 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
673 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
674 non-threaded programs.
675
676 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
677 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
678 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
679 executable program.
680
681 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
682
683 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
684 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
685 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
686 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
687 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
688
689 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
690 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
691 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
692 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
693 for tracepoint actions.
694
695 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
696 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
697 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
698
699 * Process record and replay
700
701 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
702 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
703 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
704 execute commands.
705
706 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
707 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
708 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
709 reverse execution.
710
711 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
712 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
713 2.6.28 or later.
714
715 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
716 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
717 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
718 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
719 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
720 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
721 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
722 the installation instructions for more information.
723
724 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
725 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
726 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
727 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
728
729 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
730 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
731
732 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
733 now complete on file names.
734
735 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
736 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
737 For instance, consider:
738
739 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
740 # struct example variable;
741 (gdb) p variable.
742
743 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
744 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
745
746 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
747 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
748
749 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
750 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
751 macros.
752
753 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
754 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
755 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
756
757 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
758 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
759 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
760 and simulator targets may also provide them.
761
762 * New remote packets
763
764 qSearch:memory:
765 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
766
767 QStartNoAckMode
768 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
769 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
770 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
771
772 vKill
773 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
774 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
775
776 qXfer:osdata:read
777 Obtains additional operating system information
778
779 qXfer:siginfo:read
780 qXfer:siginfo:write
781 Read or write additional signal information.
782
783 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
784
785 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
786 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
787 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
788
789 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
790 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
791
792 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
793 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
794 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
795
796 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
797 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
798
799 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
800
801 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
802
803 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
804 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
805
806 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
807 list of section offsets.
808
809 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
810 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
811 have also been fixed.
812
813 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
814 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
815 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
816
817 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
818 example, given:
819
820 template<typename T> class C { };
821 C<char const *> c;
822
823 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
824
825 ptype C<char const *>
826 ptype C<char const*>
827 ptype C<const char *>
828 ptype C<const char*>
829
830 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
831
832 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
833 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
834
835 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
836 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
837 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
838
839 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
840 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
841
842 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
843 gdbserver.
844
845 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
846 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
847
848 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
849 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
850 as appropriate.
851
852 * Python scripting
853
854 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
855 available is determined at configure time.
856
857 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
858
859 * Ada tasking support
860
861 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
862 been introduced:
863
864 info tasks
865 Print the list of Ada tasks.
866 info task N
867 Print detailed information about task number N.
868 task
869 Print the task number of the current task.
870 task N
871 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
872
873 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
874 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
875
876 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
877
878 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
879 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
880 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
881 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
882 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
883 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
884 below.
885
886 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
887 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
888 information.
889
890 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
891 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
892 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
893 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
894 more information.
895
896 * Multi-architecture debugging.
897
898 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
899 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
900 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
901 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
902 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
903
904 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
905 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
906 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
907 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
908 --enable-targets configure option.
909
910 * Non-stop mode debugging.
911
912 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
913 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
914 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
915 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
916 section in the user manual for more information.
917
918 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
919 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
920 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
921 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
922 extensions on linux targets.
923
924 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
925
926 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
927 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
928 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
929 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
930 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
931 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
932 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
933 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
934 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
935
936 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
937 val1 [, val2, ...]
938 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
939
940 maint set python print-stack
941 maint show python print-stack
942 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
943
944 python [CODE]
945 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
946
947 macro define
948 macro list
949 macro undef
950 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
951 interactively.
952
953 info os processes
954 Show operating system information about processes.
955
956 info inferiors
957 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
958
959 inferior NUM
960 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
961
962 detach inferior NUM
963 Detach from inferior number NUM.
964
965 kill inferior NUM
966 Kill inferior number NUM.
967
968 * New options
969
970 set spu stop-on-load
971 show spu stop-on-load
972 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
973
974 set spu auto-flush-cache
975 show spu auto-flush-cache
976 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
977 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
978
979 set sh calling-convention
980 show sh calling-convention
981 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
982
983 set debug timestamp
984 show debug timestamp
985 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
986
987 set disassemble-next-line
988 show disassemble-next-line
989 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
990 the debuggee stops.
991
992 set remote noack-packet
993 show remote noack-packet
994 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
995 under "New remote packets."
996
997 set remote query-attached-packet
998 show remote query-attached-packet
999 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
1000
1001 set remote read-siginfo-object
1002 show remote read-siginfo-object
1003 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
1004 packet.
1005
1006 set remote write-siginfo-object
1007 show remote write-siginfo-object
1008 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
1009 packet.
1010
1011 set remote reverse-continue
1012 show remote reverse-continue
1013 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
1014
1015 set remote reverse-step
1016 show remote reverse-step
1017 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
1018
1019 set displaced-stepping
1020 show displaced-stepping
1021 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
1022 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
1023 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
1024
1025 set debug displaced
1026 show debug displaced
1027 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
1028
1029 maint set internal-error
1030 maint show internal-error
1031 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
1032
1033 maint set internal-warning
1034 maint show internal-warning
1035 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
1036
1037 set exec-wrapper
1038 show exec-wrapper
1039 unset exec-wrapper
1040 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
1041
1042 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
1043 show multiple-symbols
1044 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
1045 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
1046 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
1047
1048 set breakpoint always-inserted
1049 show breakpoint always-inserted
1050 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
1051 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
1052 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
1053
1054 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
1055 show arm fallback-mode
1056 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
1057 show arm force-mode
1058 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
1059 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
1060 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
1061 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
1062
1063 set disable-randomization
1064 show disable-randomization
1065 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
1066 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
1067 multiple debugging sessions.
1068
1069 set non-stop
1070 show non-stop
1071 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
1072 a breakpoint.
1073
1074 set target-async
1075 show target-async
1076 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
1077 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
1078 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
1079 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
1080
1081 set target-wide-charset
1082 show target-wide-charset
1083 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
1084 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
1085
1086 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
1087 show tcp auto-retry
1088 set tcp connect-timeout
1089 show tcp connect-timeout
1090 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
1091 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
1092 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
1093
1094 set libthread-db-search-path
1095 show libthread-db-search-path
1096 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
1097 libthread_db.
1098
1099 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
1100 show schedule-multiple
1101 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
1102 the current process.
1103
1104 set stack-cache
1105 show stack-cache
1106 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
1107 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
1108 affecting correctness.
1109
1110 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
1111 show interactive-mode
1112 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
1113 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
1114 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
1115 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
1116 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
1117
1118 * Removed commands
1119
1120 info forks
1121 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
1122 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
1123 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
1124 command.
1125
1126 fork NUM
1127 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
1128 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
1129 alias for the `fork' command.
1130
1131 process PID
1132 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
1133 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
1134 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
1135
1136 delete fork NUM
1137 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
1138 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
1139 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
1140 fork' command.
1141
1142 detach fork NUM
1143 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
1144 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
1145 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
1146 fork' command.
1147
1148 * New native configurations
1149
1150 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
1151
1152 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
1153
1154 * New targets
1155
1156 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
1157 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
1158 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
1159 S+core 3 score-*-*
1160
1161 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
1162 (mingw32ce) debugging.
1163
1164 * Removed commands
1165
1166 catch load
1167 catch unload
1168 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
1169
1170 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
1171
1172 * New native configurations
1173
1174 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
1175 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
1176
1177 * New targets
1178
1179 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
1180 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
1181
1182 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
1183
1184 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
1185 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
1186 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
1187 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
1188
1189 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
1190 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
1191
1192 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
1193 is resolved.
1194
1195 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
1196 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
1197 and in inlined functions.
1198
1199 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
1200 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
1201 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
1202
1203 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
1204
1205 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
1206 registers on PowerPC targets.
1207
1208 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
1209 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
1210
1211 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
1212 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
1213
1214 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
1215 extended-remote mode.
1216
1217 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
1218 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
1219 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
1220 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
1221
1222 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
1223 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
1224 target architectures.
1225
1226 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
1227 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
1228 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
1229 stored in two consecutive float registers.
1230
1231 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
1232 breakpoints now.
1233
1234 * Improved support for debugging Ada
1235 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
1236 include:
1237 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
1238 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
1239 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
1240 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
1241 of an assignment
1242 - Improved command completion in Ada
1243 - Several bug fixes
1244
1245 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
1246 process.
1247
1248 * New commands
1249
1250 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
1251 show print frame-arguments
1252 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
1253 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
1254
1255 remote put
1256 remote get
1257 remote delete
1258 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
1259
1260 * New MI commands
1261
1262 -target-file-put
1263 -target-file-get
1264 -target-file-delete
1265 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
1266
1267 * New remote packets
1268
1269 vFile:open:
1270 vFile:close:
1271 vFile:pread:
1272 vFile:pwrite:
1273 vFile:unlink:
1274 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
1275
1276 vAttach
1277 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
1278 mode.
1279
1280 vRun
1281 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
1282
1283 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
1284
1285 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
1286 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
1287 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
1288
1289 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
1290 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
1291 -Bsymbolic linker option.
1292
1293 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
1294 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
1295 is not supported.
1296
1297 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
1298 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
1299
1300 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
1301 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
1302
1303 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
1304
1305 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
1306 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
1307 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
1308
1309 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
1310 automatically displayed as character or string data.
1311
1312 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
1313 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
1314 as strings.
1315
1316 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
1317 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
1318 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
1319
1320 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
1321 iWMMXt coprocessor.
1322
1323 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
1324 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
1325 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
1326
1327 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
1328
1329 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
1330
1331 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
1332 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
1333 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
1334
1335 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
1336 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
1337
1338 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
1339 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
1340 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
1341 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
1342 Windows and SymbianOS).
1343
1344 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
1345 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
1346
1347 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
1348 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
1349
1350 * New commands
1351
1352 set remoteflow
1353 show remoteflow
1354 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
1355 when debugging using remote targets.
1356
1357 set mem inaccessible-by-default
1358 show mem inaccessible-by-default
1359 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1360 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1361 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
1362 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
1363 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
1364
1365 set breakpoint auto-hw
1366 show breakpoint auto-hw
1367 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1368 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1369 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
1370 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
1371 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
1372 including "next" and "finish".
1373
1374 catch exception
1375 catch exception unhandled
1376 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
1377
1378 catch assert
1379 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
1380
1381 set sysroot
1382 show sysroot
1383 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
1384 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
1385 an alias to "set sysroot".
1386
1387 info spu
1388 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
1389 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
1390 architecture.
1391
1392 * New native configurations
1393
1394 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
1395
1396 set tdesc filename
1397 unset tdesc filename
1398 show tdesc filename
1399 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
1400 not query the target for its built-in description.
1401
1402 * New targets
1403
1404 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
1405 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
1406 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
1407
1408 * New remote packets
1409
1410 QPassSignals:
1411 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
1412 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
1413
1414 qXfer:features:read:
1415 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
1416 features.
1417
1418 qXfer:spu:read:
1419 qXfer:spu:write:
1420 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
1421 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
1422
1423 qXfer:libraries:read:
1424 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
1425 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
1426 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
1427 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
1428
1429 * Removed targets
1430
1431 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
1432
1433 alpha*-*-osf1*
1434 alpha*-*-osf2*
1435 d10v-*-*
1436 hppa*-*-hiux*
1437 i[34567]86-ncr-*
1438 i[34567]86-*-dgux*
1439 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
1440 i[34567]86-*-netware*
1441 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
1442 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
1443 i[34567]86-*-sco*
1444 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
1445 i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
1446 i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
1447 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
1448 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
1449 i[34567]86-*-sysv*
1450 i[34567]86-*-isc*
1451 m68*-cisco*-*
1452 m68*-tandem-*
1453 mips*-*-pe
1454 rs6000-*-lynxos*
1455 sh*-*-pe
1456
1457 * Other removed features
1458
1459 target abug
1460 target cpu32bug
1461 target est
1462 target rom68k
1463
1464 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
1465
1466 target hms
1467 target e7000
1468 target sh3
1469 target sh3e
1470
1471 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
1472 H8/300.
1473
1474 target ocd
1475
1476 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
1477 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
1478 interfaces.
1479
1480 DWARF 1 support
1481
1482 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
1483 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
1484
1485 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
1486
1487 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
1488 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
1489 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
1490 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
1491
1492 MIPS ".pdr" sections
1493
1494 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
1495 in debugging information.
1496
1497 Scheme support
1498
1499 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
1500 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
1501
1502 set mips stack-arg-size
1503 set mips saved-gpreg-size
1504
1505 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
1506
1507 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
1508
1509 * New targets
1510
1511 Xtensa xtensa-elf
1512 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
1513
1514 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
1515 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
1516 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
1517
1518 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
1519 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
1520 supported.
1521
1522 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
1523 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
1524
1525 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
1526 stub provides the required support.
1527
1528 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
1529 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
1530
1531 * New commands
1532
1533 set substitute-path
1534 unset substitute-path
1535 show substitute-path
1536 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
1537 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
1538 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
1539 between compilation and debugging.
1540
1541 set trace-commands
1542 show trace-commands
1543 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
1544 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
1545 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
1546
1547 * REMOVED features
1548
1549 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
1550
1551 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
1552 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
1553
1554 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
1555
1556 * New remote packets
1557
1558 qSupported:
1559 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
1560 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
1561 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
1562 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
1563 target.
1564
1565 qXfer:auxv:read:
1566 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
1567 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
1568
1569 qXfer:memory-map:read:
1570 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
1571 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
1572
1573 vFlashErase:
1574 vFlashWrite:
1575 vFlashDone:
1576 Erase and program a flash memory device.
1577
1578 * Removed remote packets
1579
1580 qPart:auxv:read:
1581 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
1582 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
1583
1584 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
1585
1586 * New targets
1587
1588 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
1589
1590 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
1591
1592 * New commands
1593
1594 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
1595 only if it doesn't already have a value.
1596
1597 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
1598
1599 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
1600
1601 restart <n> Return the program state to a
1602 previously saved state.
1603
1604 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
1605
1606 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
1607
1608 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
1609 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
1610
1611 info forks List forks of the user program that
1612 are available to be debugged.
1613
1614 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
1615 forks of the user program that are
1616 available to be debugged.
1617
1618 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
1619 that are available to be debugged (and
1620 kill the forked process).
1621
1622 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
1623 that are available to be debugged (and
1624 allow the process to continue).
1625
1626 * New architecture
1627
1628 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
1629
1630 * Improved Windows host support
1631
1632 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
1633 native console support, and remote communications using either
1634 network sockets or serial ports.
1635
1636 * Improved Modula-2 language support
1637
1638 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
1639 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
1640 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
1641 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
1642 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
1643 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
1644
1645 * REMOVED features
1646
1647 The ARM rdi-share module.
1648
1649 The Netware NLM debug server.
1650
1651 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
1652
1653 * New native configurations
1654
1655 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
1656 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
1657
1658 * New targets
1659
1660 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
1661
1662 * New command line options
1663
1664 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
1665 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
1666 the child (debugged) program exited with.
1667 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
1668 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
1669 specified multiple times and in conjunction
1670 with the --command (-x) option.
1671
1672 * Deprecated commands removed
1673
1674 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
1675 removed:
1676
1677 Command Replacement
1678 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
1679 othernames set arm disassembler
1680 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
1681 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
1682 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
1683 regs info registers
1684
1685 * New BSD user-level threads support
1686
1687 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
1688 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
1689 configurations are:
1690
1691 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1692 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
1693 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
1694
1695 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
1696 are not yet supported.
1697
1698 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
1699 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
1700
1701 * REMOVED configurations and files
1702
1703 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
1704 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
1705 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
1706
1707 * New "set print array-indexes" command
1708
1709 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
1710 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
1711 behavior.
1712
1713 * VAX floating point support
1714
1715 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
1716
1717 * User-defined command support
1718
1719 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
1720 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
1721 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
1722
1723 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
1724
1725 * New command line option
1726
1727 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
1728 debugging.
1729
1730 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
1731
1732 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
1733 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
1734 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
1735 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
1736 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
1737
1738 * Internationalization
1739
1740 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
1741 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
1742 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
1743
1744 * Ada
1745
1746 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
1747 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
1748 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
1749
1750 * New native configurations
1751
1752 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
1753
1754 * Remote 'p' packet
1755
1756 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
1757 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
1758
1759 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
1760
1761 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
1762 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
1763 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
1764 i386 application).
1765
1766 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
1767 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
1768 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
1769 configurations:
1770
1771 hppa-*-hpux
1772 ia64-*-aix
1773 mips-*-irix*
1774 *-*-lynx
1775 mips-*-linux-gnu
1776 sds protocol
1777 xdr protocol
1778 powerpc bdm protocol
1779
1780 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
1781 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
1782
1783 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1784
1785 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1786 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1787 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1788 permanently REMOVED.
1789
1790 h8300-*-*
1791 mcore-*-*
1792 mn10300-*-*
1793 ns32k-*-*
1794 sh64-*-*
1795 v850-*-*
1796
1797 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
1798
1799 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
1800
1801 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
1802 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
1803 been fixed.
1804
1805 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
1806
1807 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
1808 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
1809 IRIX long double values).
1810
1811 * VAX and "next"
1812
1813 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
1814 command. This problem has been fixed.
1815
1816 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
1817
1818 * Fix for ``many threads''
1819
1820 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
1821 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
1822 error message:
1823
1824 ptrace: No such process.
1825 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
1826
1827 This problem has been fixed.
1828
1829 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
1830
1831 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
1832 GDB to dump core).
1833
1834 * New ``start'' command.
1835
1836 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
1837
1838 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
1839
1840 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
1841 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
1842 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
1843
1844 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1845 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
1846 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
1847 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
1848 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
1849 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
1850 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
1851 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
1852 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
1853
1854 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
1855
1856 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
1857 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
1858 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
1859 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
1860 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
1861
1862 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
1863 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
1864 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
1865
1866 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
1867
1868 * New native configurations
1869
1870 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
1871 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
1872 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
1873 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
1874 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
1875 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
1876 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
1877
1878 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
1879
1880 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
1881 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
1882 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
1883 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
1884 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
1885 work, was also included.
1886
1887 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
1888 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
1889
1890 h8300-*-*
1891 mcore-*-*
1892 mn10300-*-*
1893 ns32k-*-*
1894 sh64-*-*
1895 v850-*-*
1896 xstormy16-*-*
1897
1898 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
1899 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
1900
1901 * REMOVED configurations and files
1902
1903 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
1904 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
1905 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
1906 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
1907 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
1908 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
1909 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
1910 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
1911 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
1912 sonymips mips-sony-*
1913 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
1914
1915 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
1916
1917 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
1918
1919 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
1920 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
1921 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
1922 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
1923 with GDB".
1924
1925 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
1926
1927 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
1928 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
1929 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
1930 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
1931 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
1932 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
1933 are created.
1934
1935 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
1936
1937 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
1938
1939 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
1940 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
1941 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
1942
1943 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
1944
1945 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
1946 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
1947
1948 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
1949
1950 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
1951 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
1952 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
1953
1954 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
1955
1956 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
1957 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
1958
1959 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
1960
1961 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
1962 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
1963 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
1964
1965 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
1966
1967 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
1968 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
1969 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
1970
1971 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
1972
1973 * Removed --with-mmalloc
1974
1975 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
1976 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
1977
1978 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
1979
1980 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
1981 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
1982 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
1983 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
1984
1985 * Revised SPARC target
1986
1987 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
1988 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
1989 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
1990 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
1991 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
1992
1993 * New C++ demangler
1994
1995 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
1996 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
1997 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
1998 programs.
1999
2000 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
2001
2002 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
2003 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
2004 encountered these.
2005
2006 * C++ nested types and namespaces
2007
2008 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
2009 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
2010 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
2011 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
2012 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
2013 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
2014 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
2015 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
2016 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
2017
2018 * New native configurations
2019
2020 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
2021 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2022 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
2023 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2024 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
2025
2026 * New debugging protocols
2027
2028 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
2029
2030 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
2031
2032 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
2033 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
2034 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
2035
2036 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2037
2038 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2039 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2040 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2041 permanently REMOVED.
2042
2043 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
2044 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
2045 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
2046 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
2047 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
2048 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
2049 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
2050 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
2051 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
2052 sonymips mips-sony-*
2053 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
2054
2055 * REMOVED configurations and files
2056
2057 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2058 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2059 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2060 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2061 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2062 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
2063 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2064 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
2065 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2066 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
2067 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
2068 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
2069 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
2070 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
2071 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
2072 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2073 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
2074
2075 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
2076
2077 * Objective-C
2078
2079 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
2080 integrated into GDB.
2081
2082 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
2083
2084 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
2085 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
2086 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
2087 backtraces.
2088
2089 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
2090 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
2091 DWARF 2 CFI support.
2092
2093 * Hosted file I/O.
2094
2095 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
2096 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
2097 remote protocol documentation for details.
2098
2099 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
2100
2101 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
2102 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
2103 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
2104 ppc32 on ppc64).
2105
2106 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
2107
2108 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
2109 per-thread variables.
2110
2111 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
2112
2113 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
2114 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
2115
2116 * Separate debug info.
2117
2118 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
2119 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
2120 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
2121 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
2122 and optional debug files.
2123
2124 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
2125
2126 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
2127 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
2128 debugger.
2129
2130 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
2131 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
2132
2133 * Java
2134
2135 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
2136 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
2137 considered "useable".
2138
2139 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
2140
2141 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
2142 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
2143 kernel.
2144
2145 * GDB supports logging output to a file
2146
2147 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
2148 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
2149
2150 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
2151
2152 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
2153 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
2154 command.
2155
2156 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
2157
2158 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
2159 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
2160
2161 * Profiling support
2162
2163 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
2164 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
2165 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
2166 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
2167 data, for more informative profiling results.
2168
2169 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
2170
2171 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
2172 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
2173 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
2174
2175 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
2176 removed.
2177
2178 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
2179 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
2180 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
2181 in a subsequent -var-update.
2182
2183 * New native configurations.
2184
2185 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2186
2187 * Multi-arched targets.
2188
2189 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
2190 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
2191
2192 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2193
2194 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2195 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2196 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2197 permanently REMOVED.
2198
2199 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2200 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2201 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2202 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
2203 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2204 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
2205 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2206 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
2207 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
2208 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
2209 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2210 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
2211
2212 * REMOVED configurations and files
2213
2214 V850EA ISA
2215 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2216 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
2217 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
2218 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
2219 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
2220 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
2221 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
2222 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
2223 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2224 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
2225 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
2226 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2227 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
2228
2229 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
2230
2231 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
2232 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
2233 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
2234 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
2235 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
2236
2237 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
2238
2239 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
2240
2241 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
2242 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
2243 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
2244 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
2245 shared libs like mad''.
2246
2247 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
2248
2249 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
2250 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
2251 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
2252 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
2253
2254 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
2255
2256 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
2257 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
2258 they expand.
2259
2260 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
2261 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
2262
2263 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
2264 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
2265
2266 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
2267 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
2268 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
2269 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
2270
2271 * Multi-arched targets.
2272
2273 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
2274 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2275 NEC V850 v850-*-*
2276 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
2277 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
2278 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2279
2280 * New targets.
2281
2282 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
2283
2284
2285 * New native configurations
2286
2287 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
2288 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
2289 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
2290 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
2291
2292 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2293
2294 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2295 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2296 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2297 permanently REMOVED.
2298
2299 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
2300 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2301 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
2302 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
2303 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2304 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2305 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
2306 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
2307 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
2308 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
2309 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
2310 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
2311 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
2312
2313 * OBSOLETE languages
2314
2315 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
2316
2317 * REMOVED configurations and files
2318
2319 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2320 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2321 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2322 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2323 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2324
2325 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
2326
2327 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
2328
2329 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
2330 commands. The default is 1024.
2331
2332 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
2333
2334 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
2335
2336 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
2337
2338 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
2339 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
2340 from a file into memory (restore).
2341
2342 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
2343
2344 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
2345 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
2346 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
2347
2348 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
2349
2350 * New targets.
2351
2352 Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
2353
2354 * Bug fixes
2355
2356 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
2357 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
2358 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
2359
2360 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
2361 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
2362 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
2363
2364 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
2365 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
2366 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
2367
2368 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
2369 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
2370 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
2371
2372 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
2373
2374 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
2375
2376 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
2377 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
2378 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
2379 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
2380 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
2381 (notably embedded) targets.
2382
2383 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
2384
2385 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
2386 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
2387 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
2388 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
2389
2390 * New command line option
2391
2392 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
2393
2394 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2395
2396 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
2397 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
2398 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
2399 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
2400 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
2401 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
2402 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
2403 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
2404 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
2405 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
2406
2407 * Changes in ARM configurations.
2408
2409 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
2410 configuration is fully multi-arch.
2411
2412 * New native configurations
2413
2414 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
2415 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
2416 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
2417 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
2418
2419 * New targets
2420
2421 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
2422
2423 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2424
2425 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2426 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2427 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2428 permanently REMOVED.
2429
2430 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2431 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2432 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2433 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2434 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2435
2436 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
2437
2438 * REMOVED configurations and files
2439
2440 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2441 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
2442 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2443 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2444 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
2445 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
2446 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2447 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
2448 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
2449 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
2450 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2451 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
2452 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
2453
2454 * Changes to command line processing
2455
2456 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
2457 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
2458
2459 * Changes to key bindings
2460
2461 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
2462
2463 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
2464
2465 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
2466
2467 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
2468 corrupted.
2469
2470 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
2471
2472 Numerous documentation fixes.
2473
2474 Numerous testsuite fixes.
2475
2476 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
2477
2478 * New native configurations
2479
2480 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
2481 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
2482 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
2483 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
2484 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
2485 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
2486
2487 * New targets
2488
2489 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
2490 CRIS cris-axis
2491 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
2492
2493 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2494
2495 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
2496 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
2497 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2498 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
2499 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2500 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
2501 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
2502 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2503 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2504 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
2505 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
2506 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2507 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
2508 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
2509
2510 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
2511 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
2512
2513 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2514 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2515 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2516 permanently REMOVED.
2517
2518 * REMOVED configurations and files
2519
2520 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
2521 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
2522 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
2523 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
2524 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
2525 ser-ocd.c *-*-*
2526
2527 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
2528
2529 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
2530 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
2531 present.
2532
2533 * Other news:
2534
2535 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
2536
2537 * The MI enabled by default.
2538
2539 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
2540 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
2541 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
2542 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
2543 which is now deprecated.
2544
2545 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
2546
2547 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
2548 main features are supported:
2549
2550 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
2551
2552 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
2553 extension;
2554
2555 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
2556
2557 - a Pascal expression parser.
2558
2559 However, some important features are not yet supported.
2560
2561 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
2562
2563 - there are some problems with boolean types;
2564
2565 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
2566 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
2567
2568 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
2569
2570 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
2571
2572 * Changes in completion.
2573
2574 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
2575 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
2576 users expect at the shell prompt.
2577
2578 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
2579 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
2580 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
2581 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
2582 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
2583 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
2584 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
2585
2586 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
2587
2588 * New platform-independent commands:
2589
2590 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
2591 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
2592 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
2593
2594 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
2595
2596 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
2597 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
2598 many threads as your system allows you to have.
2599
2600 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
2601
2602 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
2603 multi-threaded programs though.
2604
2605 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
2606
2607 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
2608
2609 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
2610 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
2611 supported.)
2612
2613 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
2614
2615 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
2616 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
2617 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
2618 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
2619 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
2620 registers.
2621
2622 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
2623 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
2624 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
2625
2626 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
2627
2628 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
2629 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
2630
2631 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
2632 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
2633 IDT.
2634
2635 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
2636 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
2637 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
2638 a given linear address.
2639
2640 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
2641 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
2642 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
2643
2644 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
2645
2646 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
2647
2648 * Changes in documentation.
2649
2650 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
2651 Documentation License.
2652
2653 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
2654 manual.
2655
2656 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
2657
2658 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
2659 manual.
2660
2661 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
2662 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
2663 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
2664
2665 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
2666
2667 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
2668 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
2669 contents of this file.
2670
2671 * gdba.el deleted
2672
2673 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
2674
2675 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
2676
2677 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
2678
2679 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
2680 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
2681 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
2682 greater level of detail.
2683
2684 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
2685
2686 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
2687 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
2688 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
2689 written.
2690
2691 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
2692
2693 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
2694 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
2695 machines ``out of the box''.
2696
2697 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
2698 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
2699 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
2700 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
2701 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
2702
2703 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
2704 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
2705 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
2706 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
2707 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
2708
2709 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
2710 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
2711 also works.
2712
2713 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
2714 GDB.
2715
2716 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
2717 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
2718 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
2719 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
2720
2721 * New native configurations
2722
2723 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
2724 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
2725
2726 * New targets
2727
2728 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
2729 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
2730 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
2731 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2732
2733 * OBSOLETE configurations
2734
2735 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
2736 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
2737 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
2738 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
2739 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
2740
2741 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
2742 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
2743 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
2744 be permanently REMOVED.
2745
2746 * Gould support removed
2747
2748 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
2749
2750 * New features for SVR4
2751
2752 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
2753 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
2754 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
2755
2756 * Many C++ enhancements
2757
2758 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
2759 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
2760
2761 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
2762
2763 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
2764 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
2765 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
2766 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
2767
2768 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
2769 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
2770
2771 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
2772
2773 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
2774 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
2775 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
2776
2777 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
2778 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
2779
2780 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
2781
2782 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
2783 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
2784 include ``set remote P-packet''.
2785
2786 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
2787
2788 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
2789 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
2790 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
2791
2792 * ``apropos'' command added.
2793
2794 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
2795 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
2796 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
2797
2798 * New MI interface
2799
2800 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
2801 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
2802 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
2803 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
2804 enabled by configuring with:
2805
2806 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
2807
2808 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
2809
2810 * New native configurations
2811
2812 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
2813 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
2814 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
2815
2816 * New targets
2817
2818 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
2819 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
2820 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
2821
2822 * OBSOLETE configurations
2823
2824 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
2825
2826 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
2827 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
2828 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
2829 be permanently REMOVED.
2830
2831 * ANSI/ISO C
2832
2833 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
2834 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
2835 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
2836 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
2837 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
2838 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
2839 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
2840 already.
2841
2842 * Readline 2.2
2843
2844 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
2845
2846 * set extension-language
2847
2848 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
2849 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
2850 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
2851 set extension-language .c c++
2852 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
2853 and their associated languages.
2854
2855 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
2856
2857 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
2858 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
2859 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
2860
2861 set processor NAME
2862
2863 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
2864 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
2865
2866 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
2867 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
2868 403 IBM PowerPC 403
2869 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
2870 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
2871 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
2872 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
2873 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
2874 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
2875 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
2876 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
2877
2878 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
2879 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
2880 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
2881 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
2882
2883 * HP-UX support
2884
2885 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
2886 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
2887 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
2888 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
2889 for xdb and dbx commands.
2890
2891 * Catchpoints
2892
2893 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
2894 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
2895 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
2896
2897 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
2898 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
2899 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
2900
2901 * Debugging across forks
2902
2903 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
2904 in the inferior.
2905
2906 * TUI
2907
2908 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
2909 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
2910 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
2911
2912 * GDB remote protocol additions
2913
2914 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
2915 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
2916 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
2917 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
2918
2919 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
2920 full 64-bit address. The command
2921
2922 set remoteaddresssize 32
2923
2924 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
2925 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
2926 will be discarded.
2927
2928 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
2929 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
2930
2931 maint packet heythere
2932
2933 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
2934 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
2935 time.
2936
2937 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
2938 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
2939 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
2940
2941 * Tracing can collect general expressions
2942
2943 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
2944 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
2945 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
2946
2947 * mask-address variable for Mips
2948
2949 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
2950 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
2951 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
2952
2953 * Higher serial baud rates
2954
2955 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
2956 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
2957 to achieve all of these rates.)
2958
2959 * i960 simulator
2960
2961 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
2962 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
2963
2964
2965 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
2966
2967 * New native configurations
2968
2969 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
2970 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
2971 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
2972 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
2973 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2974 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
2975 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
2976
2977 * New targets
2978
2979 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2980 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
2981 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2982 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
2983 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
2984 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
2985 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
2986 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
2987 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
2988 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2989 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
2990
2991 * New debugging protocols
2992
2993 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
2994 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
2995 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
2996 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2997 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2998 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2999
3000 * DWARF 2
3001
3002 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
3003 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
3004 information.
3005
3006 * Java frontend
3007
3008 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
3009 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
3010
3011 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
3012
3013 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
3014 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
3015 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
3016
3017 * Live range splitting
3018
3019 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
3020 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
3021 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
3022
3023 * Hurd support
3024
3025 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
3026 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
3027
3028 * ARM Thumb support
3029
3030 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
3031 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
3032 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
3033 accordingly.
3034
3035 * MIPS16 support
3036
3037 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
3038 instruction set.
3039
3040 * Overlay support
3041
3042 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
3043 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
3044 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
3045 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
3046 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
3047 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
3048
3049 * info symbol
3050
3051 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
3052 the symbol at the specified address.
3053
3054 * Trace support
3055
3056 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
3057 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
3058 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
3059 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
3060 file tracepoint.c for more details.
3061
3062 * MIPS simulator
3063
3064 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
3065 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
3066 of most MIPS variants.
3067
3068 * Sparc simulator
3069
3070 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
3071 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
3072 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
3073
3074 * set architecture
3075
3076 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
3077 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
3078 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
3079 the possible architectures.
3080
3081 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
3082
3083 * New native configurations
3084
3085 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
3086 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
3087 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
3088 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
3089 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3090 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
3091
3092 * New targets
3093
3094 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
3095 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3096 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
3097 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
3098 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
3099 Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
3100 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3101
3102 * PowerPC simulator
3103
3104 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
3105 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
3106 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
3107 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
3108 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
3109
3110 * Solaris 2.5
3111
3112 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
3113
3114 * Windows 95/NT native
3115
3116 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
3117 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
3118 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
3119 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
3120 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
3121
3122 * dont-repeat command
3123
3124 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
3125 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
3126 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
3127 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
3128
3129 * Send break instead of ^C
3130
3131 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
3132 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
3133 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
3134
3135 * Remote protocol timeout
3136
3137 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
3138 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
3139 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
3140
3141 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
3142
3143 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
3144 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
3145 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
3146 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
3147 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
3148
3149 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
3150 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
3151 automatically on hpux10.
3152
3153 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
3154
3155 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
3156
3157 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
3158
3159 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
3160 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
3161 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
3162 every character. The default value is 1050.
3163
3164 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
3165
3166 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
3167 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
3168 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
3169 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
3170 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
3171 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
3172
3173 * Speedups for remote debugging
3174
3175 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
3176 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
3177 and more efficient S-record downloading.
3178
3179 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
3180
3181 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
3182 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
3183
3184 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
3185
3186 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
3187
3188 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
3189 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
3190
3191 * Remote targets use caching
3192
3193 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
3194 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
3195 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
3196 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
3197 off' turns the the data cache off.
3198
3199 * Remote targets may have threads
3200
3201 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
3202 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
3203 gdb/remote.c for details.
3204
3205 * NetROM support
3206
3207 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
3208 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
3209 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
3210 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
3211 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
3212 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
3213 sequence is something like
3214
3215 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
3216 load <prog>
3217 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
3218
3219 * Macintosh host
3220
3221 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
3222 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
3223 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
3224 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
3225 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
3226 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
3227 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
3228 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
3229
3230 * Autoconf
3231
3232 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
3233 but does simplify configuration and building.
3234
3235 * hpux10
3236
3237 GDB now supports hpux10.
3238
3239 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
3240
3241 * New native configurations
3242
3243 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
3244 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
3245 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
3246 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
3247
3248 * New targets
3249
3250 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3251 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
3252 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
3253 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
3254 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
3255
3256 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
3257
3258 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
3259 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
3260 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
3261 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
3262 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
3263
3264 * Arguments to user-defined commands
3265
3266 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
3267 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
3268 trivial example:
3269 define adder
3270 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
3271
3272 To execute the command use:
3273 adder 1 2 3
3274
3275 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
3276 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
3277 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
3278
3279 * New `if' and `while' commands
3280
3281 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
3282 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
3283 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
3284 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
3285 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
3286 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
3287 if the expression is zero.
3288
3289 * Fortran source language mode
3290
3291 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
3292 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
3293 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
3294 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
3295 Fortran compilers.
3296
3297 * Better HPUX support
3298
3299 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
3300 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
3301 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
3302 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
3303 that behavior do the following before running the program:
3304
3305 adb -w a.out
3306 __dld_flags?W 0x5
3307 control-d
3308
3309 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
3310 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
3311
3312 adb -w a.out
3313 __dld_flags?W 0x4
3314 control-d
3315
3316 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
3317 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
3318 external linkage.
3319
3320 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
3321 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
3322
3323 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
3324
3325 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
3326 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
3327 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
3328 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
3329 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
3330 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
3331
3332 * New DOS host serial code
3333
3334 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
3335 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
3336 a PC's serial port.
3337
3338 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
3339
3340 * New "complete" command
3341
3342 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
3343 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
3344
3345 * Trailing space optional in prompt
3346
3347 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
3348 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
3349
3350 * Breakpoint hit counts
3351
3352 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
3353 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
3354 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
3355 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
3356 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
3357 that breakpoint.
3358
3359 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
3360
3361 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
3362 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
3363 arrays actually contain only short strings.
3364
3365 * Shared library breakpoints
3366
3367 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
3368 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
3369
3370 * Hardware watchpoints
3371
3372 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
3373 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
3374
3375 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
3376
3377 * Annotations
3378
3379 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
3380 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
3381
3382 * Improved Irix 5 support
3383
3384 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
3385
3386 * Improved HPPA support
3387
3388 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
3389
3390 * New native configurations
3391
3392 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
3393 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3394 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
3395 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
3396
3397 * New targets
3398
3399 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3400 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
3401 Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
3402
3403 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
3404
3405 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
3406 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
3407
3408 * Fixes
3409
3410 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
3411 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
3412
3413 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
3414
3415 * Irix 5 is now supported
3416
3417 * HPPA support
3418
3419 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
3420 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
3421 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
3422 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
3423 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
3424
3425
3426 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
3427
3428 * User visible changes:
3429
3430 * Remote Debugging
3431
3432 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
3433 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
3434 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
3435 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
3436 debugging info for the mips target).
3437
3438 * DEC Alpha native support
3439
3440 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
3441 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
3442 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
3443 Alpha-specific notes.
3444
3445 * Preliminary thread implementation
3446
3447 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
3448
3449 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
3450
3451 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
3452 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
3453 for details).
3454
3455 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
3456
3457 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
3458 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
3459 call methods, ...etc.
3460
3461 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
3462
3463 * User visible changes:
3464
3465 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
3466 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
3467 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
3468 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
3469
3470 Filename completion now works.
3471
3472 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
3473 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
3474 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
3475
3476 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
3477 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
3478 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
3479 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
3480 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
3481
3482 * DEC alpha support
3483
3484 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
3485 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
3486
3487
3488 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
3489
3490 * Testsuite
3491
3492 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
3493 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
3494 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
3495
3496 * C++ demangling
3497
3498 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
3499 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
3500 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
3501 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
3502 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
3503
3504 * Simulators
3505
3506 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
3507 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
3508 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
3509
3510 * New targets supported
3511
3512 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
3513 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3514 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
3515 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3516 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
3517
3518 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
3519 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
3520 GO32 memory extender.
3521
3522 * New remote protocols
3523
3524 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
3525
3526 * New source languages supported
3527
3528 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
3529 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
3530 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
3531
3532
3533 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
3534
3535 * HP Precision Architecture supported
3536
3537 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
3538 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
3539 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
3540 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
3541 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
3542 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
3543
3544 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
3545
3546 * Faster and better demangling
3547
3548 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
3549 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
3550 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
3551 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
3552 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
3553 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
3554 symbol lookups.
3555
3556 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
3557 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
3558 compiler does not actually implement.
3559
3560 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
3561
3562 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
3563 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
3564 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
3565 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
3566 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
3567 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
3568 fix.
3569
3570 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
3571 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
3572
3573 * Improved configure script
3574
3575 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
3576 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
3577 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
3578 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
3579
3580 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
3581 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
3582 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
3583 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
3584 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
3585 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
3586
3587 * Documentation improvements
3588
3589 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
3590 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
3591 before submitting changes.
3592
3593 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
3594 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
3595 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
3596 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
3597 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
3598
3599 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
3600 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
3601 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
3602 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
3603 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
3604 around this problem.
3605
3606 * New features
3607
3608 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
3609 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
3610 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
3611 the target program.
3612
3613 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
3614 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
3615
3616 * New native hosts supported
3617
3618 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
3619 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
3620
3621 * New targets supported
3622
3623 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
3624
3625 * New file formats supported
3626
3627 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
3628 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
3629
3630 * Major bug fixes
3631
3632 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
3633
3634 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
3635 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
3636
3637 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
3638 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
3639 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
3640
3641 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
3642 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
3643
3644 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
3645 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
3646 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
3647 libraries.
3648
3649 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
3650 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
3651 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
3652 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
3653 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
3654
3655 * Internal improvements
3656
3657 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
3658 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
3659
3660 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
3661 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
3662 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
3663 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
3664 shared code that handles any of them.
3665
3666 * New command line options
3667
3668 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
3669
3670 * Mmalloc licensing
3671
3672 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
3673 General Public License.
3674
3675 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
3676
3677 * Host/native/target split
3678
3679 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
3680 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
3681 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
3682 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
3683 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
3684
3685 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
3686 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
3687 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
3688 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
3689 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
3690 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
3691 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
3692
3693 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
3694 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
3695 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
3696
3697 * New hosts supported
3698
3699 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
3700 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
3701 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
3702
3703 * New targets supported
3704
3705 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
3706 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
3707
3708 * New native hosts supported
3709
3710 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
3711 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
3712 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
3713
3714 * New file formats supported
3715
3716 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
3717 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
3718 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
3719
3720 * New commands
3721
3722 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
3723 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
3724 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
3725
3726 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
3727
3728 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
3729 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
3730 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
3731 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
3732
3733 * C++ improvements
3734
3735 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
3736 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
3737 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
3738
3739 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
3740
3741 * Major bug fixes
3742
3743 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
3744 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
3745 by the compiler.
3746
3747 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
3748 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
3749
3750 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
3751 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
3752 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
3753 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
3754 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
3755 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
3756
3757 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
3758 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
3759 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
3760 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
3761
3762 * AMD 29k support
3763
3764 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
3765 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
3766 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
3767 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
3768 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
3769
3770 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
3771 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
3772 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
3773 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
3774
3775 * Remote interfaces
3776
3777 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
3778 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
3779 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
3780 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
3781 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
3782 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
3783 each instruction being stepped through.
3784
3785 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
3786 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
3787
3788 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
3789 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
3790 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
3791 processor with a serial port.
3792
3793 * Configuration
3794
3795 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
3796 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
3797 supported, and what files each one uses.
3798
3799 * Library changes
3800
3801 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
3802 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
3803 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
3804 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
3805
3806 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
3807 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
3808 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
3809 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
3810
3811 * Documentation
3812
3813 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
3814 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
3815 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
3816 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
3817 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
3818 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
3819
3820 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
3821
3822
3823 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
3824
3825 * Better support for C++ function names
3826
3827 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
3828 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
3829 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
3830 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
3831 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
3832
3833 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
3834 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
3835 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
3836 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
3837 for the list of formats.
3838
3839 * G++ symbol mangling problem
3840
3841 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
3842 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
3843 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
3844 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
3845 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
3846 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
3847 this problem.)
3848
3849 * New 'maintenance' command
3850
3851 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
3852 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
3853 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
3854
3855 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
3856 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
3857 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
3858 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
3859 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
3860 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
3861
3862 The following commands are new:
3863
3864 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
3865 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
3866 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
3867
3868 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
3869
3870 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
3871 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
3872 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
3873 read after argv processing.
3874
3875 * New hosts supported
3876
3877 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
3878
3879 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
3880
3881 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
3882 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
3883 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
3884 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
3885 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
3886 It costs extra.
3887
3888 * New targets supported
3889
3890 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
3891
3892 * More smarts about finding #include files
3893
3894 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
3895 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
3896 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
3897 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
3898 the one that contains your sources.
3899
3900 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
3901 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
3902 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
3903
3904 * Interesting infernals change
3905
3906 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
3907 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
3908 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
3909 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
3910
3911 * Bug fixes (of course!)
3912
3913 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
3914 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
3915 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
3916
3917 See the ChangeLog for details.
3918
3919 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
3920
3921 * New machines supported (host and target)
3922
3923 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
3924
3925 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
3926
3927 * New malloc package
3928
3929 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
3930 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
3931 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
3932 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
3933 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
3934 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
3935
3936 * info proc
3937
3938 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
3939 'help info proc' for details.
3940
3941 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
3942
3943 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
3944 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
3945 possible.
3946
3947 * File name changes for MS-DOS
3948
3949 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
3950 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
3951 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
3952 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
3953 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
3954 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
3955
3956 * Cross byte order fixes
3957
3958 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
3959 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
3960
3961 * New -mapped and -readnow options
3962
3963 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
3964 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
3965 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
3966 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
3967 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
3968 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
3969 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
3970 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
3971 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
3972 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
3973
3974 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
3975 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
3976 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
3977 slower, but makes future operations faster.
3978
3979 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
3980 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
3981 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
3982 use is:
3983
3984 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
3985
3986 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
3987 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
3988 shared across multiple host platforms.
3989
3990 * longjmp() handling
3991
3992 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
3993 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
3994 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
3995 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
3996
3997 * Solaris 2.0
3998
3999 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
4000 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
4001 reading symbols.
4002
4003 * Bug fixes
4004
4005 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
4006 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
4007 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
4008
4009 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
4010
4011 * New machines supported (host and target)
4012
4013 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
4014 (except core files)
4015 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
4016 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
4017
4018 * New machines supported (target)
4019
4020 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4021
4022 * C++ support
4023
4024 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
4025 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
4026 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
4027
4028 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
4029 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
4030 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
4031 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
4032 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
4033 released.
4034
4035 * New features for SVR4
4036
4037 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
4038 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
4039 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
4040
4041 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
4042 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
4043 it prints the address mappings of the process.
4044
4045 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
4046 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
4047
4048 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
4049
4050 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
4051 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
4052 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
4053 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
4054 same code linked statically.
4055
4056 * New Getopt
4057
4058 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
4059 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
4060 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
4061 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
4062 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
4063 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
4064
4065 * Bugs fixed
4066
4067 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
4068 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
4069 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
4070
4071
4072 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
4073
4074 * New machines supported (host and target)
4075
4076 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
4077 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
4078 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4079
4080 * Almost SCO Unix support
4081
4082 We had hoped to support:
4083 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
4084 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
4085 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
4086 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
4087
4088 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
4089
4090 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
4091 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
4092 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
4093 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
4094 reqired (if any).
4095
4096 * New Readline
4097
4098 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
4099 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
4100 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
4101
4102 * Bugs fixed
4103
4104 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
4105 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
4106 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
4107
4108 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
4109
4110 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
4111 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
4112 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
4113
4114 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
4115 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
4116 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
4117 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
4118 version 2.
4119
4120 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
4121 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
4122 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
4123 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
4124 situation somewhat.
4125
4126 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
4127 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
4128 methods.
4129
4130 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
4131 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
4132 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
4133
4134
4135 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
4136
4137 * Improved configuration
4138
4139 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
4140 Porting BFD is simpler.
4141
4142 * Stepping improved
4143
4144 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
4145 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
4146 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
4147 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
4148
4149 * Bug fixing
4150
4151 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
4152
4153 * New host supported (not target)
4154
4155 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
4156
4157
4158 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
4159
4160 * Multiple source language support
4161
4162 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
4163 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
4164 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
4165 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
4166 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
4167 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
4168
4169 * GDB and Modula-2
4170
4171 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
4172 currently under development at the State University of New York at
4173 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
4174 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
4175
4176 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
4177 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
4178 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
4179
4180 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
4181 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
4182
4183 * set write on/off
4184
4185 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
4186 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
4187 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
4188 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
4189 effect immediately.
4190
4191 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
4192
4193 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
4194 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
4195 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
4196 examining core files.
4197
4198 * set listsize
4199
4200 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
4201 The default is 10.
4202
4203 * New machines supported (host and target)
4204
4205 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4206 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
4207 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
4208
4209 * New hosts supported (not targets)
4210
4211 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
4212
4213 * New targets supported (not hosts)
4214
4215 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4216 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4217 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
4218
4219 * New remote interfaces
4220
4221 AMD 29000 Adapt
4222 AMD 29000 Minimon
4223
4224
4225 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
4226
4227 * New Facilities
4228
4229 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
4230
4231 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
4232 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
4233 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
4234 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
4235 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
4236 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
4237 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
4238 stub on the target system.
4239
4240 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
4241
4242 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
4243 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
4244 object file types such as a.out and coff.
4245
4246 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
4247 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
4248
4249
4250 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
4251
4252 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
4253 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
4254
4255 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
4256 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
4257 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
4258
4259 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
4260 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
4261 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
4262 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
4263
4264 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
4265 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
4266 it is already running. Default is ON.
4267
4268 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
4269 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
4270 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
4271 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
4272 Default is ON.
4273
4274 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
4275 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
4276 or the value of the environment variable
4277 GDBHISTFILE.
4278
4279 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
4280 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
4281 HISTSIZE.
4282
4283 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
4284 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
4285 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
4286
4287 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
4288 history expansion will be performed on
4289 command line input. The default is OFF.
4290
4291 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
4292 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
4293 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
4294
4295 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
4296 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
4297 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
4298 variable TERM.
4299
4300 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
4301 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
4302 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
4303 variable TERM.
4304
4305 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
4306 ``set width'' instead.
4307
4308 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
4309 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
4310 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
4311 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
4312
4313 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
4314 is OFF.
4315
4316 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
4317 "raw" form if off.
4318
4319 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
4320 like instructions.
4321
4322 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
4323
4324
4325 * Support for Epoch Environment.
4326
4327 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
4328 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
4329 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
4330 window.
4331
4332
4333 * Support for Shared Libraries
4334
4335 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
4336 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
4337 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
4338 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
4339 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
4340 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
4341 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
4342 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
4343
4344 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
4345 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
4346 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
4347
4348 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
4349
4350
4351 * Watchpoints
4352
4353 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
4354 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
4355 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
4356 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
4357 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
4358 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
4359
4360 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
4361
4362 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
4363
4364 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4365 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4366 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4367
4368
4369 * C++ multiple inheritance
4370
4371 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
4372 for C++ programs.
4373
4374 * C++ exception handling
4375
4376 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
4377 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
4378 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
4379 handler's context).
4380
4381 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
4382 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
4383 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
4384
4385 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
4386 current stack frame.
4387
4388
4389 * Minor command changes
4390
4391 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
4392 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
4393 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
4394
4395 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
4396 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
4397 frames without printing.
4398
4399 * New directory command
4400
4401 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
4402 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
4403 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
4404 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
4405 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
4406
4407 * Configuring GDB for compilation
4408
4409 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
4410 for more details.
4411
4412 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
4413 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
4414 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
4415 where the program that you are debugging will run.
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