1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 7.6
6 * GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
7 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
9 * New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
10 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
11 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
12 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
13 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
14 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
17 * The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
19 * The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
21 * GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
22 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
23 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
24 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
29 (gdb) info registers rax
32 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
33 "*value not available*".
37 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
38 ** Temporary breakpoints are now supported.
39 ** Line tables representation has been added.
43 Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
44 Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
45 Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
47 * Removed native configurations
49 Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
50 been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
52 arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
53 i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
54 i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
55 i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
56 m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
57 sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
58 vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
62 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
64 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
66 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
68 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
71 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
73 maint set|show per-command
74 maint set|show per-command space
75 maint set|show per-command time
76 maint set|show per-command symtab
77 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
79 remove-symbol-file FILENAME
80 remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
81 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
82 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
83 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
86 info exceptions REGEXP
87 Display the list of Ada exceptions defined in the program being
88 debugged. If provided, only the exceptions whose names match REGEXP
93 set debug symfile off|on
95 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
96 symbol tables within those files
98 set print raw frame-arguments
99 show print raw frame-arguments
100 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
101 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
103 set remote trace-status-packet
104 show remote trace-status-packet
105 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
109 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
113 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
115 set startup-with-shell
116 show startup-with-shell
117 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
120 * You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
121 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
122 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
123 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
126 * The "set debug symtab-create" debugging option of GDB has been changed to
127 accept a verbosity level. 0 means "off", 1 provides basic debugging
128 output, and values of 2 or greater provides more verbose output.
130 * New command-line options
132 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
134 * The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
135 buffer in Common Trace Format.
137 * Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
140 * GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
142 * The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
143 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
145 * The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
146 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
148 * The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
149 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
150 due to an uncaught signal.
154 ** All MI commands now accept an optional "--language" option.
156 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
159 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
161 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
162 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
165 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
166 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
168 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
169 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
170 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
172 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
173 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
174 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
177 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
178 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
180 ** The new command -info-ada-exceptions provides the equivalent of
181 the new "info exceptions" command.
183 * New system-wide configuration scripts
184 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
185 configuration scripts for the following systems:
189 * GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
190 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
191 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
194 * GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
195 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
197 * On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
198 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
199 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
205 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
206 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
207 involvemement at each single-step.
209 qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
210 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
211 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
212 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
213 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
214 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
217 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
219 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
220 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
222 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
223 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
224 trace state variables.
226 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
229 * New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
230 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
232 * GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
234 * The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
235 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
236 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
237 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
239 *** Changes in GDB 7.6
241 * Target record has been renamed to record-full.
242 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
243 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
244 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
246 set|show record full insn-number-max
247 set|show record full stop-at-limit
248 set|show record full memory-query
250 * A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
251 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
252 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
253 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
254 This new recording method can be enabled using:
258 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
259 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
261 * Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
262 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
263 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
265 record instruction-history prints the execution history at
266 instruction granularity
268 record function-call-history prints the execution history at
271 * New native configurations
273 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
274 FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
275 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
276 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
280 ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
281 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
282 Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
283 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
284 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
286 * If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
287 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
288 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
289 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
290 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
291 --data-directory command-line option.
293 * New command line options:
295 -nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
296 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
298 * Removed command line options
300 -epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
303 * The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
306 * 'info proc' now works on some core files.
310 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
312 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
314 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
316 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
318 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
319 of architecture in the Python API.
321 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
322 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
324 * New Python-based convenience functions:
326 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
327 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
329 ** $_regex(str, regex)
331 * The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
334 * The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
335 default for GCC since November 2000.
337 * The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
339 * The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
340 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
342 * New configure options
344 --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
345 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
346 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
347 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
348 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
349 options allow the user to override that default.
350 --with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
351 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
352 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
354 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
357 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
358 conditions to be attached.
361 List the BFDs known to GDB.
363 python-interactive [command]
365 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
366 and print the result of expressions.
369 "py" is a new alias for "python".
371 enable type-printer [name]...
372 disable type-printer [name]...
373 Enable or disable type printers.
377 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
378 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
383 set print type methods (on|off)
384 show print type methods
385 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
386 The default is to show them.
388 set print type typedefs (on|off)
389 show print type typedefs
390 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
391 The default is to show them.
393 set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
394 show filename-display
395 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
396 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
398 set trace-buffer-size
399 show trace-buffer-size
400 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
402 set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
403 show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
404 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
408 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
411 set debug coff-pe-read
412 show debug coff-pe-read
413 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
418 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
421 set debug notification
422 show debug notification
423 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
427 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
428 "=cmd-param-changed".
429 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
430 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
431 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
432 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
433 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
434 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
435 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
436 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
438 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
439 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
440 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
441 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
442 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
443 library load/unload events.
444 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
445 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
446 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
447 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
448 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
449 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
450 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
451 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
453 * GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
454 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
455 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
456 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
461 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
462 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
465 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
466 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
470 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
471 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
474 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
475 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
477 *** Changes in GDB 7.5
479 * GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
480 for more x32 ABI info.
482 * GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
484 * GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
486 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
487 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
488 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
489 "info os files" lists file descriptors
490 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
491 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
492 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
493 "info os msg" lists message queues
494 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
496 * GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
497 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
498 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
499 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
500 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
501 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
503 * GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
504 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
505 record/replay support.
507 * The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
511 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
514 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
516 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
517 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
519 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
521 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
522 the source at which the symbol was defined.
524 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
525 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
526 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
529 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
530 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
532 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
533 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
534 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
536 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
537 object associated with a PC value.
539 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
540 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
542 * Go language support.
543 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
546 * GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
547 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
549 * The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
550 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
552 * GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
553 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
554 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
555 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
556 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
559 * The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
560 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
561 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
564 * The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
565 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
567 * The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
570 * The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
571 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
572 command does. For instance:
574 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
576 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
577 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
578 created, using the "condition" command.
580 * The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
581 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
583 * GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
585 * The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
586 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
587 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
588 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
589 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
590 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
591 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
592 files with older .gdb_index sections.
594 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
595 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
596 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
597 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
598 the .gdb_index section.
600 * Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
602 * GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
607 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
609 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
613 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
614 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
615 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
617 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
618 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
620 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
623 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
624 C++ and Java objects.
626 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
627 can be used to reccursively explore values and types of
628 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
629 configured with '--with-python'.
631 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
632 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
633 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
634 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
635 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
636 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
637 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
639 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
640 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
641 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
642 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
644 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
645 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
646 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
647 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
649 ** "set print symbol"
651 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
652 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
653 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
655 * Deprecated commands
657 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
658 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
662 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
663 HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
665 * GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
666 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
667 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
668 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
674 show mips compression
675 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
676 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
679 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
681 set breakpoint condition-evaluation
682 show breakpoint condition-evaluation
683 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
684 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
686 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
690 Disable auto-loading globally.
693 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
695 set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
696 show auto-load gdb-scripts
697 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
699 set auto-load python-scripts on|off
700 show auto-load python-scripts
701 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
703 set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
704 show auto-load local-gdbinit
705 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
707 set auto-load libthread-db on|off
708 show auto-load libthread-db
709 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
711 set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
712 show auto-load scripts-directory
713 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
714 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
715 of the directories listed by this option.
716 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
718 set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
719 show auto-load safe-path
720 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
721 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
723 set debug auto-load on|off
725 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
727 set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
729 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
730 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
731 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
732 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
734 set dprintf-function <expr>
735 show dprintf-function
736 set dprintf-channel <expr>
738 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
739 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
741 set disconnected-dprintf on|off
742 show disconnected-dprintf
743 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
744 after GDB disconnects.
746 * New configure options
749 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
750 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
751 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
752 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
753 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
755 --with-auto-load-safe-path
756 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
757 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
759 --without-auto-load-safe-path
760 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
765 z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
767 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
768 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
769 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
770 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
774 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
775 program without GDB involvement.
777 * New command line options
779 --init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
780 before loading inferior.
781 --init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
782 execute it before loading inferior.
784 *** Changes in GDB 7.4
786 * GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
787 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
788 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
789 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
792 * GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
793 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
795 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
796 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
797 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
798 target hardware watchpoint.
800 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
801 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
802 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
803 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
807 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
808 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
811 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
812 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
813 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
814 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
815 now "message", which just prints the error message without
818 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
821 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
822 modules library. This module provides functionality for
823 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
824 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
827 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
828 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
829 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
832 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
833 static_block will return the global and static blocks
834 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
835 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
837 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
839 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
842 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
843 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
844 available in the CLI.
846 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
847 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
848 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
851 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
854 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
855 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
856 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
857 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
858 any anonymous fields.
862 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
865 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
866 "=breakpoint-modified".
868 ** New command -ada-task-info.
870 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
871 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
872 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
875 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
876 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
877 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
878 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
879 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
881 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
882 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
884 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
885 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
886 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
887 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
888 use this option to specify where to find it.
890 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
891 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
892 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
893 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
894 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
895 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
896 section in the user manual for more details.
898 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
899 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
900 become available after that.
902 * New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
904 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
905 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
911 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
912 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
916 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
917 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
918 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
920 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
921 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
922 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
924 info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
925 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
926 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
927 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
928 name starts with a hyphen.
930 collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
931 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
932 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
933 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
934 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
935 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
936 number of bytes that will be collected.
939 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
940 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
941 setting the variable trace-notes.
944 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
945 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
946 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
949 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
950 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
951 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
952 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
953 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
956 * Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
957 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
958 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
962 set debug dwarf2-read
963 show debug dwarf2-read
964 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
965 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
967 set debug symtab-create
968 show debug symtab-create
969 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
970 creation. The default is off.
974 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
975 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
976 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
977 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
980 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
981 show print entry-values
982 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
983 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
984 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
986 set debug entry-values
987 show debug entry-values
988 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
989 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
991 set basenames-may-differ
992 show basenames-may-differ
993 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
994 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
995 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
996 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
997 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
998 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
999 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
1000 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
1006 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
1007 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
1008 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
1009 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
1011 set trace-stop-notes
1012 show trace-stop-notes
1013 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
1014 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
1015 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
1016 started by someone else.
1018 * New remote packets
1022 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1026 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1030 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
1034 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
1038 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
1041 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
1042 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
1046 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
1050 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
1052 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
1054 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
1056 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
1058 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
1059 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
1060 matches the given regular expression.
1062 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
1064 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
1065 dumping the instruction opcodes.
1067 * New command line options
1069 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
1070 This is mostly for testing purposes.
1072 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
1073 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
1075 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
1076 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
1077 source path list instead of augmenting it.
1079 * GDB now understands thread names.
1081 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
1082 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
1084 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
1085 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
1088 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
1089 has been integrated into GDB.
1093 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
1094 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
1095 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
1097 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1098 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
1099 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
1100 and allows for more dynamic content.
1102 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
1103 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
1104 have an is_valid method.
1106 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1107 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
1108 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
1110 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
1112 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
1113 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
1114 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
1115 that function like so:
1117 result = some_value (10,20)
1119 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
1120 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
1121 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
1123 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
1124 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
1125 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
1126 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
1127 New function: register_pretty_printer.
1129 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
1130 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
1132 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
1134 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
1137 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
1138 holds the thread's name.
1140 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
1141 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
1142 occurring in the process being debugged.
1143 The following events are currently supported:
1144 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
1145 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
1146 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
1150 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
1151 instantiation. For example, if you have:
1153 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
1155 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
1156 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
1157 was added to GCC 4.5.
1159 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
1160 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
1161 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
1162 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
1163 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
1164 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
1166 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
1167 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
1168 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
1169 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
1170 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
1172 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
1173 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
1174 execution to a label.
1176 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
1177 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
1178 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
1179 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
1181 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
1182 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
1183 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
1186 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
1188 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
1189 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
1190 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
1191 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
1192 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
1193 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
1196 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
1198 While now you see this:
1201 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
1203 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
1206 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
1207 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
1208 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
1209 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
1211 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
1212 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
1213 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
1214 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
1215 section in the user manual for more details.
1217 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1219 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
1220 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
1222 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
1224 * New native configurations
1226 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
1230 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
1232 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
1233 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
1234 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
1235 in the GDB user manual.
1237 * Guile support was removed.
1239 * New features in the GNU simulator
1241 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
1243 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
1245 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
1247 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
1249 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
1250 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
1251 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
1252 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
1253 was always disabled for such configurations.
1257 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
1259 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
1260 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
1270 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
1271 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
1272 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
1274 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
1276 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
1277 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
1278 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
1279 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
1281 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
1282 mentioned flavors of operators.
1284 ** static const class members
1286 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
1287 class definition has been fixed.
1289 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
1291 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
1292 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
1293 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
1294 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
1295 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
1296 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
1298 * Static tracepoints
1300 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
1301 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
1302 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
1303 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
1304 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
1305 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
1306 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
1307 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
1308 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
1309 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
1310 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
1311 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
1312 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
1313 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
1314 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
1315 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
1316 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
1317 the "New remote packets" section below.
1319 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
1321 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
1322 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
1323 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
1324 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
1328 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
1329 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
1330 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
1331 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
1332 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
1333 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
1334 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
1336 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
1339 * New remote packets
1343 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
1347 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
1348 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
1349 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
1350 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
1351 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
1352 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
1356 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
1360 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
1363 qXfer:statictrace:read
1365 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
1366 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
1367 to gdb's qSupported query.
1371 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
1375 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
1376 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
1378 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
1379 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
1382 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1384 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
1385 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
1386 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
1387 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
1389 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
1390 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
1391 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
1392 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
1393 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
1394 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
1395 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
1397 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
1398 for static tracepoints support.
1400 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
1402 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
1403 it understands register description.
1405 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
1407 * X86 general purpose registers
1409 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
1410 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
1411 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
1412 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
1413 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
1415 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
1416 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
1417 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
1418 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
1419 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
1420 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
1422 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
1423 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
1424 in the specified file.
1426 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
1427 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
1428 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
1429 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
1430 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
1431 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
1432 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
1433 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
1434 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
1435 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
1439 eval template, expressions...
1440 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
1441 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
1443 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
1444 show target-file-system-kind
1445 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
1448 save breakpoints <filename>
1449 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
1450 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
1451 definitions, use the `source' command.
1453 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
1456 info static-tracepoint-markers
1457 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
1459 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
1460 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
1461 function, line, address, or marker ID.
1465 Enable and disable observer mode.
1467 set may-write-registers on|off
1468 set may-write-memory on|off
1469 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
1470 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
1471 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
1472 set may-interrupt on|off
1473 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
1474 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
1475 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
1476 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
1477 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
1478 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
1479 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
1481 set record memory-query on|off
1482 show record memory-query
1483 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
1484 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
1489 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
1493 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
1494 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
1495 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
1496 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
1497 GDB using Python' in the manual.
1499 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
1500 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
1501 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
1502 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
1504 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
1505 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
1507 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
1509 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
1511 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
1513 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
1514 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
1515 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
1517 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
1518 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
1519 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
1520 regular breakpoints.
1524 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
1526 * D language support.
1527 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
1530 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
1531 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
1532 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
1533 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
1534 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
1536 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
1537 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
1538 conditions of the form:
1540 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
1542 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
1543 interface mentioned above.
1545 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
1549 ** Namespace Support
1551 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
1552 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
1553 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
1554 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
1555 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
1559 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
1560 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
1565 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
1566 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
1570 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
1575 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
1578 * Multi-program debugging.
1580 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
1581 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
1582 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
1583 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
1584 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
1585 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
1586 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
1587 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
1589 * New tracing features
1591 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
1593 ** Trace state variables
1595 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
1596 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
1597 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
1598 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
1599 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
1600 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
1601 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
1602 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
1603 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
1604 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
1608 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
1609 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
1610 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
1611 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
1612 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
1613 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
1614 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
1615 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
1616 the regular trace command.
1618 ** Disconnected tracing
1620 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
1621 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
1622 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
1623 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
1624 connection is lost unexpectedly.
1628 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
1629 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
1630 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
1631 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
1632 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
1633 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
1636 ** Circular trace buffer
1638 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
1639 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
1640 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
1641 not be available for all target agents.
1646 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
1647 the arguments to be comma-separated.
1650 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
1651 which only declare a variable are not shown.
1654 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
1655 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
1658 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
1659 "set script-extension" (see below).
1661 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1663 record save [<FILENAME>]
1664 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
1665 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
1667 record restore <FILENAME>
1668 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
1669 earlier time, for replay debugging.
1671 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
1674 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
1675 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
1676 inferior has loaded.
1681 maint info program-spaces
1682 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
1684 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
1685 show remote interrupt-sequence
1686 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
1687 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
1688 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
1689 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
1690 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
1692 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
1693 show remote interrupt-on-connect
1694 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
1695 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
1698 set remotebreak [on | off]
1700 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
1702 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
1703 Create or modify a trace state variable.
1706 List trace state variables and their values.
1708 delete tvariable $NAME ...
1709 Delete one or more trace state variables.
1712 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
1713 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
1715 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
1716 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
1718 * New expression syntax
1720 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
1721 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
1725 set follow-exec-mode new|same
1726 show follow-exec-mode
1727 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
1728 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
1729 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
1731 set default-collect EXPR, ...
1732 show default-collect
1733 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
1734 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
1735 such as registers or a critical global variable.
1737 set disconnected-tracing
1738 show disconnected-tracing
1739 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
1740 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
1743 set circular-trace-buffer
1744 show circular-trace-buffer
1745 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
1746 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
1747 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
1748 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
1750 set script-extension off|soft|strict
1751 show script-extension
1752 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
1753 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
1754 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
1755 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
1757 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
1759 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
1760 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
1761 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
1762 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
1763 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
1764 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
1765 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
1768 * Python API Improvements
1770 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
1771 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
1772 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
1774 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
1775 `is_base_class' attribute.
1777 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
1779 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
1780 evaluate an expression.
1782 * New remote packets
1785 Define a trace state variable.
1788 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
1791 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
1794 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
1797 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
1801 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
1803 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
1804 much more reliable. In particular:
1805 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
1806 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
1807 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
1808 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
1809 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
1810 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
1811 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
1812 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
1813 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
1814 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
1815 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
1816 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
1817 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
1818 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
1819 non-threaded programs.
1821 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
1822 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
1823 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
1826 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
1828 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
1829 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
1830 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
1831 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
1832 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
1834 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
1835 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
1836 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
1837 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
1838 for tracepoint actions.
1840 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
1841 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
1842 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
1844 * Process record and replay
1846 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
1847 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
1848 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
1851 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
1852 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
1853 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
1856 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
1857 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
1860 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
1861 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
1862 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
1863 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
1864 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
1865 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
1866 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
1867 the installation instructions for more information.
1869 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
1870 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
1871 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
1872 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
1874 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
1875 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
1877 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
1878 now complete on file names.
1880 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
1881 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
1882 For instance, consider:
1884 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
1885 # struct example variable;
1888 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
1889 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
1891 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
1892 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
1894 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
1895 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
1898 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
1899 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
1900 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
1902 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
1903 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
1904 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
1905 and simulator targets may also provide them.
1907 * New remote packets
1910 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1913 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
1914 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
1915 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
1918 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
1919 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
1922 Obtains additional operating system information
1926 Read or write additional signal information.
1928 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
1930 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
1931 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
1932 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
1934 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
1935 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
1937 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
1938 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
1939 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
1941 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
1942 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
1944 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
1946 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
1948 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
1949 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
1951 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
1952 list of section offsets.
1954 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
1955 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
1956 have also been fixed.
1958 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
1959 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
1960 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
1962 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
1965 template<typename T> class C { };
1968 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
1970 ptype C<char const *>
1971 ptype C<char const*>
1972 ptype C<const char *>
1973 ptype C<const char*>
1975 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
1977 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
1978 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
1980 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
1981 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1982 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
1984 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
1985 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
1987 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
1990 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
1991 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1993 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
1994 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
1999 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
2000 available is determined at configure time.
2002 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
2004 * Ada tasking support
2006 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
2010 Print the list of Ada tasks.
2012 Print detailed information about task number N.
2014 Print the task number of the current task.
2016 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
2018 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
2019 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
2021 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
2023 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
2024 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
2025 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
2026 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
2027 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
2028 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
2031 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
2032 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
2035 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
2036 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
2037 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
2038 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
2041 * Multi-architecture debugging.
2043 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
2044 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
2045 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
2046 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
2047 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
2049 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
2050 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
2051 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
2052 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
2053 --enable-targets configure option.
2055 * Non-stop mode debugging.
2057 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
2058 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
2059 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
2060 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
2061 section in the user manual for more information.
2063 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
2064 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
2065 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
2066 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
2067 extensions on linux targets.
2069 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2071 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
2072 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
2073 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
2074 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
2075 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
2076 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
2077 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
2078 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
2079 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
2081 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
2083 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
2085 maint set python print-stack
2086 maint show python print-stack
2087 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
2090 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
2095 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
2099 Show operating system information about processes.
2102 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
2105 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
2108 Detach from inferior number NUM.
2111 Kill inferior number NUM.
2115 set spu stop-on-load
2116 show spu stop-on-load
2117 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2119 set spu auto-flush-cache
2120 show spu auto-flush-cache
2121 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
2122 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2124 set sh calling-convention
2125 show sh calling-convention
2126 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
2129 show debug timestamp
2130 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
2132 set disassemble-next-line
2133 show disassemble-next-line
2134 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
2137 set remote noack-packet
2138 show remote noack-packet
2139 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
2140 under "New remote packets."
2142 set remote query-attached-packet
2143 show remote query-attached-packet
2144 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
2146 set remote read-siginfo-object
2147 show remote read-siginfo-object
2148 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
2151 set remote write-siginfo-object
2152 show remote write-siginfo-object
2153 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
2156 set remote reverse-continue
2157 show remote reverse-continue
2158 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
2160 set remote reverse-step
2161 show remote reverse-step
2162 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
2164 set displaced-stepping
2165 show displaced-stepping
2166 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
2167 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
2168 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
2171 show debug displaced
2172 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
2174 maint set internal-error
2175 maint show internal-error
2176 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
2178 maint set internal-warning
2179 maint show internal-warning
2180 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
2185 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
2187 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
2188 show multiple-symbols
2189 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
2190 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
2191 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
2193 set breakpoint always-inserted
2194 show breakpoint always-inserted
2195 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
2196 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
2197 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
2199 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2200 show arm fallback-mode
2201 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2203 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
2204 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
2205 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
2206 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
2208 set disable-randomization
2209 show disable-randomization
2210 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
2211 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
2212 multiple debugging sessions.
2216 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
2221 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
2222 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
2223 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
2224 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
2226 set target-wide-charset
2227 show target-wide-charset
2228 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
2229 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
2231 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
2233 set tcp connect-timeout
2234 show tcp connect-timeout
2235 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
2236 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
2237 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
2239 set libthread-db-search-path
2240 show libthread-db-search-path
2241 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
2244 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
2245 show schedule-multiple
2246 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
2247 the current process.
2251 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
2252 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
2253 affecting correctness.
2255 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
2256 show interactive-mode
2257 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
2258 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
2259 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
2260 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
2261 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
2266 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
2267 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
2268 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
2272 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
2273 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
2274 alias for the `fork' command.
2277 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
2278 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
2279 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
2282 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
2283 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
2284 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
2288 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
2289 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
2290 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
2293 * New native configurations
2295 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
2297 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
2301 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
2302 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
2303 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
2306 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
2307 (mingw32ce) debugging.
2313 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
2315 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
2317 * New native configurations
2319 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
2320 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
2324 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
2325 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
2327 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2329 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
2330 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
2331 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
2332 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
2334 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
2335 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
2337 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
2340 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
2341 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
2342 and in inlined functions.
2344 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
2345 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
2346 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
2348 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
2350 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
2351 registers on PowerPC targets.
2353 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
2354 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
2356 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
2357 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
2359 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
2360 extended-remote mode.
2362 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
2363 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
2364 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
2365 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
2367 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
2368 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
2369 target architectures.
2371 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
2372 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
2373 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
2374 stored in two consecutive float registers.
2376 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
2379 * Improved support for debugging Ada
2380 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
2382 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
2383 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
2384 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
2385 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
2387 - Improved command completion in Ada
2390 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
2395 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
2396 show print frame-arguments
2397 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
2398 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
2403 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2410 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2412 * New remote packets
2419 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
2422 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
2426 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
2428 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
2430 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
2431 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
2432 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
2434 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
2435 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
2436 -Bsymbolic linker option.
2438 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
2439 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
2442 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
2443 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
2445 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
2446 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
2448 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
2450 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
2451 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
2452 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
2454 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
2455 automatically displayed as character or string data.
2457 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
2458 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
2461 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
2462 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
2463 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
2465 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
2468 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
2469 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
2470 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
2472 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
2474 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
2476 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
2477 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
2478 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
2480 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
2481 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
2483 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
2484 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
2485 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
2486 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
2487 Windows and SymbianOS).
2489 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
2490 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
2492 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
2493 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
2499 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
2500 when debugging using remote targets.
2502 set mem inaccessible-by-default
2503 show mem inaccessible-by-default
2504 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2505 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2506 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
2507 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
2508 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
2510 set breakpoint auto-hw
2511 show breakpoint auto-hw
2512 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2513 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2514 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
2515 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
2516 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
2517 including "next" and "finish".
2520 catch exception unhandled
2521 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
2524 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
2528 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
2529 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
2530 an alias to "set sysroot".
2533 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
2534 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
2537 * New native configurations
2539 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
2542 unset tdesc filename
2544 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
2545 not query the target for its built-in description.
2549 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
2550 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
2551 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
2553 * New remote packets
2556 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
2557 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
2559 qXfer:features:read:
2560 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
2565 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
2566 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
2568 qXfer:libraries:read:
2569 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
2570 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
2571 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
2572 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
2576 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
2584 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
2585 i[34567]86-*-netware*
2586 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
2587 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
2589 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
2592 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
2593 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
2602 * Other removed features
2609 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
2616 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
2621 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
2622 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
2627 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
2628 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
2630 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
2632 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
2633 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
2634 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
2635 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
2637 MIPS ".pdr" sections
2639 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
2640 in debugging information.
2644 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
2645 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
2647 set mips stack-arg-size
2648 set mips saved-gpreg-size
2650 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
2652 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
2657 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
2659 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
2660 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
2661 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
2663 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
2664 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
2667 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
2668 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
2670 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
2671 stub provides the required support.
2673 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
2674 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
2679 unset substitute-path
2680 show substitute-path
2681 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
2682 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
2683 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
2684 between compilation and debugging.
2688 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
2689 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
2690 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
2694 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
2696 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
2697 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
2699 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
2701 * New remote packets
2704 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
2705 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
2706 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
2707 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
2711 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
2712 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
2714 qXfer:memory-map:read:
2715 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
2716 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
2721 Erase and program a flash memory device.
2723 * Removed remote packets
2726 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
2727 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
2729 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
2733 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
2735 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
2739 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
2740 only if it doesn't already have a value.
2742 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
2744 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
2746 restart <n> Return the program state to a
2747 previously saved state.
2749 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
2751 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
2753 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
2754 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
2756 info forks List forks of the user program that
2757 are available to be debugged.
2759 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
2760 forks of the user program that are
2761 available to be debugged.
2763 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
2764 that are available to be debugged (and
2765 kill the forked process).
2767 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
2768 that are available to be debugged (and
2769 allow the process to continue).
2773 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
2775 * Improved Windows host support
2777 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
2778 native console support, and remote communications using either
2779 network sockets or serial ports.
2781 * Improved Modula-2 language support
2783 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
2784 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
2785 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
2786 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
2787 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
2788 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
2792 The ARM rdi-share module.
2794 The Netware NLM debug server.
2796 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
2798 * New native configurations
2800 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
2801 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
2805 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
2807 * New command line options
2809 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
2810 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
2811 the child (debugged) program exited with.
2812 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
2813 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
2814 specified multiple times and in conjunction
2815 with the --command (-x) option.
2817 * Deprecated commands removed
2819 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
2823 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
2824 othernames set arm disassembler
2825 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
2826 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
2827 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
2830 * New BSD user-level threads support
2832 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
2833 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
2836 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2837 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
2838 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
2840 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
2841 are not yet supported.
2843 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
2844 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
2846 * REMOVED configurations and files
2848 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
2849 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2850 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
2852 * New "set print array-indexes" command
2854 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
2855 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
2858 * VAX floating point support
2860 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
2862 * User-defined command support
2864 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
2865 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
2866 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
2868 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
2870 * New command line option
2872 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
2875 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
2877 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
2878 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
2879 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
2880 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
2881 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
2883 * Internationalization
2885 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
2886 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
2887 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
2891 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
2892 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
2893 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
2895 * New native configurations
2897 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
2901 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
2902 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
2904 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
2906 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2907 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
2908 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
2911 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
2912 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
2913 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
2923 powerpc bdm protocol
2925 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2926 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
2928 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2930 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2931 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2932 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2933 permanently REMOVED.
2942 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
2944 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
2946 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
2947 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
2950 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
2952 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
2953 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
2954 IRIX long double values).
2958 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
2959 command. This problem has been fixed.
2961 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
2963 * Fix for ``many threads''
2965 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
2966 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
2969 ptrace: No such process.
2970 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
2972 This problem has been fixed.
2974 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
2976 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
2979 * New ``start'' command.
2981 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
2983 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
2985 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
2986 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
2987 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
2989 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2990 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
2991 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
2992 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
2993 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
2994 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2995 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
2996 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
2997 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2999 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
3001 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
3002 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
3003 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
3004 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
3005 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
3007 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
3008 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
3009 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3011 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
3013 * New native configurations
3015 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
3016 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
3017 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
3018 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
3019 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
3020 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
3021 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
3023 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
3025 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
3026 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
3027 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
3028 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
3029 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
3030 work, was also included.
3032 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
3033 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
3043 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
3044 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
3046 * REMOVED configurations and files
3048 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3049 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3050 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3051 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3052 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3053 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3054 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
3055 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3056 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3057 sonymips mips-sony-*
3058 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
3060 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
3062 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
3064 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
3065 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
3066 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
3067 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
3070 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
3072 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
3073 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
3074 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
3075 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
3076 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
3077 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
3080 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
3082 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
3084 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
3085 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
3086 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
3088 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
3090 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
3091 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
3093 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
3095 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
3096 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
3097 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
3099 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
3101 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
3102 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
3104 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
3106 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
3107 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
3108 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
3110 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
3112 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
3113 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
3114 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
3116 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
3118 * Removed --with-mmalloc
3120 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
3121 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
3123 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
3125 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
3126 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
3127 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
3128 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
3130 * Revised SPARC target
3132 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
3133 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
3134 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
3135 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
3136 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
3140 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
3141 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
3142 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
3145 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3147 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
3148 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
3151 * C++ nested types and namespaces
3153 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
3154 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
3155 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
3156 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
3157 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
3158 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
3159 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
3160 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
3161 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
3163 * New native configurations
3165 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
3166 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
3167 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
3168 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
3169 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
3171 * New debugging protocols
3173 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
3175 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
3177 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
3178 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
3179 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
3181 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3183 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3184 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3185 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3186 permanently REMOVED.
3188 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3189 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3190 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3191 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3192 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3193 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3194 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
3195 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3196 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3197 sonymips mips-sony-*
3198 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
3200 * REMOVED configurations and files
3202 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
3203 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
3204 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3205 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3206 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3207 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3208 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3209 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
3210 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
3211 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
3212 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3213 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3214 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
3215 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
3216 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
3217 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3218 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
3220 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
3224 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
3225 integrated into GDB.
3227 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
3229 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
3230 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
3231 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
3234 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
3235 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
3236 DWARF 2 CFI support.
3240 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
3241 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
3242 remote protocol documentation for details.
3244 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
3246 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
3247 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
3248 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
3251 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
3253 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
3254 per-thread variables.
3256 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
3258 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
3259 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
3261 * Separate debug info.
3263 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
3264 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
3265 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
3266 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
3267 and optional debug files.
3269 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3271 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
3272 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
3275 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
3276 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
3280 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
3281 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
3282 considered "useable".
3284 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
3286 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
3287 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
3290 * GDB supports logging output to a file
3292 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
3293 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
3295 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
3297 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
3298 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
3301 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
3303 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
3304 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
3308 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
3309 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
3310 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
3311 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
3312 data, for more informative profiling results.
3314 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
3316 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
3317 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
3318 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
3320 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
3323 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
3324 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
3325 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
3326 in a subsequent -var-update.
3328 * New native configurations.
3330 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3332 * Multi-arched targets.
3334 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
3335 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
3337 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3339 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3340 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3341 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3342 permanently REMOVED.
3344 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3345 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3346 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3347 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3348 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3349 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
3350 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
3351 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3352 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3353 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
3354 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3355 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
3357 * REMOVED configurations and files
3360 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3361 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
3362 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3363 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3364 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
3365 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3367 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
3368 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3369 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3370 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3371 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3372 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3374 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
3376 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
3377 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
3378 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
3379 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
3380 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
3382 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
3384 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
3386 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
3387 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
3388 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
3389 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
3390 shared libs like mad''.
3392 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
3394 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
3395 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
3396 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
3397 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
3399 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
3401 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
3402 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
3405 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
3406 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
3408 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
3409 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
3411 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
3412 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
3413 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
3414 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
3416 * Multi-arched targets.
3418 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
3419 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
3421 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
3422 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
3423 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
3427 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
3430 * New native configurations
3432 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
3433 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
3434 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
3435 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
3437 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3439 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3440 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3441 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3442 permanently REMOVED.
3444 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3445 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3446 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
3447 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3448 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3449 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3450 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3451 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3452 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
3453 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3455 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
3456 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3458 * OBSOLETE languages
3460 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
3462 * REMOVED configurations and files
3464 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3465 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3466 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3467 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3468 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3470 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
3472 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
3474 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
3475 commands. The default is 1024.
3477 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
3479 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
3481 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
3483 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
3484 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
3485 from a file into memory (restore).
3487 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
3489 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
3490 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
3491 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
3493 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
3501 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
3502 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
3503 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
3505 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
3506 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
3507 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
3509 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
3510 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
3511 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
3513 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
3514 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
3515 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
3517 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
3519 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
3521 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
3522 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
3523 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
3524 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
3525 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
3526 (notably embedded) targets.
3528 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
3530 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
3531 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
3532 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
3533 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
3535 * New command line option
3537 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
3539 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
3541 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
3542 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
3543 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
3544 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
3545 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
3546 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
3547 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
3548 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
3549 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
3550 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
3552 * Changes in ARM configurations.
3554 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
3555 configuration is fully multi-arch.
3557 * New native configurations
3559 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
3560 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
3561 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
3562 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
3566 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
3568 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3570 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3571 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3572 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3573 permanently REMOVED.
3575 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3576 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3577 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3578 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3579 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3581 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
3583 * REMOVED configurations and files
3585 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3587 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3588 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3589 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
3590 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
3591 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
3592 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
3593 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
3594 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3595 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
3596 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
3597 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
3599 * Changes to command line processing
3601 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
3602 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
3604 * Changes to key bindings
3606 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
3608 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
3610 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
3612 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
3615 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
3617 Numerous documentation fixes.
3619 Numerous testsuite fixes.
3621 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
3623 * New native configurations
3625 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
3626 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
3627 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
3628 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
3629 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
3630 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
3634 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
3636 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
3638 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3640 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
3641 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
3642 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
3643 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
3644 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3646 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3647 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3648 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3649 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
3650 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
3651 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
3652 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
3653 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
3655 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
3656 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
3658 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3659 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3660 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3661 permanently REMOVED.
3663 * REMOVED configurations and files
3665 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
3666 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
3668 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
3672 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
3674 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
3675 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
3680 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
3682 * The MI enabled by default.
3684 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
3685 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
3686 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
3687 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
3688 which is now deprecated.
3690 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
3692 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
3693 main features are supported:
3695 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
3697 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
3700 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
3702 - a Pascal expression parser.
3704 However, some important features are not yet supported.
3706 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
3708 - there are some problems with boolean types;
3710 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
3711 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
3713 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
3715 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
3717 * Changes in completion.
3719 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
3720 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
3721 users expect at the shell prompt.
3723 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
3724 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
3725 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
3726 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
3727 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
3728 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
3729 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
3731 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
3733 * New platform-independent commands:
3735 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
3736 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
3737 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
3739 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
3741 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
3742 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
3743 many threads as your system allows you to have.
3745 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
3747 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
3748 multi-threaded programs though.
3750 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
3752 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
3754 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
3755 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
3758 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
3760 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
3761 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
3762 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
3763 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
3764 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
3767 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
3768 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
3769 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
3771 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
3773 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
3774 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
3776 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
3777 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
3780 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
3781 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
3782 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
3783 a given linear address.
3785 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
3786 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
3787 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
3789 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
3791 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
3793 * Changes in documentation.
3795 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
3796 Documentation License.
3798 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3801 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
3803 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3806 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
3807 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
3808 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
3810 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
3812 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
3813 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
3814 contents of this file.
3818 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
3820 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
3822 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
3824 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
3825 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
3826 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
3827 greater level of detail.
3829 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
3831 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
3832 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
3833 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
3836 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
3838 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
3839 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
3840 machines ``out of the box''.
3842 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
3843 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
3844 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
3845 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
3846 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
3848 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
3849 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
3850 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
3851 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
3852 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
3854 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
3855 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
3858 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
3861 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
3862 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
3863 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
3864 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
3866 * New native configurations
3868 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
3869 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
3873 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
3874 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
3875 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
3876 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3878 * OBSOLETE configurations
3880 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
3881 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
3883 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
3886 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3887 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3888 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3889 be permanently REMOVED.
3891 * Gould support removed
3893 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
3895 * New features for SVR4
3897 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
3898 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
3899 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
3901 * Many C++ enhancements
3903 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
3904 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
3906 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
3908 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
3909 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
3910 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
3911 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
3913 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
3914 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
3916 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
3918 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
3919 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
3920 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
3922 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
3923 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
3925 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
3927 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
3928 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
3929 include ``set remote P-packet''.
3931 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
3933 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
3934 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
3935 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
3937 * ``apropos'' command added.
3939 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
3940 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
3941 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
3945 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
3946 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
3947 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
3948 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
3949 enabled by configuring with:
3951 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
3953 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
3955 * New native configurations
3957 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
3958 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
3959 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
3963 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3964 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
3965 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3967 * OBSOLETE configurations
3969 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
3971 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3972 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3973 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3974 be permanently REMOVED.
3978 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
3979 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
3980 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
3981 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
3982 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
3983 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
3984 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
3989 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
3991 * set extension-language
3993 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
3994 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
3995 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
3996 set extension-language .c c++
3997 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
3998 and their associated languages.
4000 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
4002 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
4003 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
4004 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
4008 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
4009 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
4011 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
4012 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
4014 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
4015 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
4016 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
4017 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
4018 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
4019 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
4020 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
4021 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
4023 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
4024 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
4025 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
4026 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
4030 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
4031 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
4032 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
4033 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
4034 for xdb and dbx commands.
4038 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
4039 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
4040 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
4042 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
4043 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
4044 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
4046 * Debugging across forks
4048 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
4053 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
4054 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
4055 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
4057 * GDB remote protocol additions
4059 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
4060 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
4061 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
4062 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
4064 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
4065 full 64-bit address. The command
4067 set remoteaddresssize 32
4069 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
4070 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
4073 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
4074 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
4076 maint packet heythere
4078 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
4079 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
4082 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
4083 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
4084 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
4086 * Tracing can collect general expressions
4088 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
4089 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
4090 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
4092 * mask-address variable for Mips
4094 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
4095 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
4096 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
4098 * Higher serial baud rates
4100 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
4101 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
4102 to achieve all of these rates.)
4106 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
4107 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
4110 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
4112 * New native configurations
4114 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
4115 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
4116 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4117 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
4118 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4119 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
4120 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
4124 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4125 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
4126 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4127 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
4128 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
4129 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
4130 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
4131 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
4132 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
4133 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4134 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
4136 * New debugging protocols
4138 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
4139 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
4140 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
4141 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4142 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4143 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4147 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
4148 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
4153 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
4154 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
4156 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
4158 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
4159 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
4160 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
4162 * Live range splitting
4164 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
4165 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
4166 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
4170 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
4171 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
4175 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
4176 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
4177 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
4182 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
4187 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
4188 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
4189 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
4190 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
4191 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
4192 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
4196 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
4197 the symbol at the specified address.
4201 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
4202 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
4203 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
4204 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
4205 file tracepoint.c for more details.
4209 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
4210 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
4211 of most MIPS variants.
4215 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
4216 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
4217 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
4221 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
4222 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
4223 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
4224 the possible architectures.
4226 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
4228 * New native configurations
4230 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
4231 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
4232 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
4233 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
4234 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4235 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
4239 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
4240 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4241 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
4242 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
4243 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
4245 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4249 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
4250 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
4251 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
4252 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
4253 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
4257 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
4259 * Windows 95/NT native
4261 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
4262 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
4263 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
4264 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
4265 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
4267 * dont-repeat command
4269 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
4270 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
4271 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
4272 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
4274 * Send break instead of ^C
4276 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
4277 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
4278 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
4280 * Remote protocol timeout
4282 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
4283 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
4284 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
4286 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
4288 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
4289 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
4290 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
4291 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
4292 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
4294 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
4295 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
4296 automatically on hpux10.
4298 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
4300 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
4302 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
4304 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
4305 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
4306 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
4307 every character. The default value is 1050.
4309 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
4311 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
4312 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
4313 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
4314 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
4315 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
4316 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
4318 * Speedups for remote debugging
4320 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
4321 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
4322 and more efficient S-record downloading.
4324 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
4326 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
4327 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
4329 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
4331 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
4333 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
4334 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
4336 * Remote targets use caching
4338 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
4339 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
4340 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
4341 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
4342 off' turns the the data cache off.
4344 * Remote targets may have threads
4346 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
4347 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
4348 gdb/remote.c for details.
4352 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
4353 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
4354 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
4355 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
4356 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
4357 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
4358 sequence is something like
4360 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
4362 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
4366 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
4367 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
4368 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
4369 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
4370 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
4371 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
4372 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
4373 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
4377 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
4378 but does simplify configuration and building.
4382 GDB now supports hpux10.
4384 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
4386 * New native configurations
4388 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
4389 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
4390 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
4391 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
4395 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4396 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
4397 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
4398 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
4401 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
4403 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
4404 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
4405 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
4406 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
4407 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
4409 * Arguments to user-defined commands
4411 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
4412 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
4415 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
4417 To execute the command use:
4420 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
4421 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
4422 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
4424 * New `if' and `while' commands
4426 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
4427 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
4428 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
4429 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
4430 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
4431 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
4432 if the expression is zero.
4434 * Fortran source language mode
4436 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
4437 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
4438 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
4439 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
4442 * Better HPUX support
4444 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
4445 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
4446 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
4447 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
4448 that behavior do the following before running the program:
4454 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
4455 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
4461 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
4462 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
4465 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
4466 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
4468 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
4470 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
4471 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
4472 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
4473 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
4474 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
4475 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
4477 * New DOS host serial code
4479 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
4480 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
4483 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
4485 * New "complete" command
4487 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
4488 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
4490 * Trailing space optional in prompt
4492 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
4493 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
4495 * Breakpoint hit counts
4497 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
4498 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
4499 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
4500 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
4501 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
4504 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
4506 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
4507 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
4508 arrays actually contain only short strings.
4510 * Shared library breakpoints
4512 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
4513 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
4515 * Hardware watchpoints
4517 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
4518 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
4520 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
4524 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
4525 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
4527 * Improved Irix 5 support
4529 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
4531 * Improved HPPA support
4533 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
4535 * New native configurations
4537 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
4538 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4539 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
4540 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
4544 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4545 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
4548 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
4550 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
4551 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
4555 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
4556 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
4558 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
4560 * Irix 5 is now supported
4564 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
4565 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
4566 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
4567 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
4568 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
4571 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
4573 * User visible changes:
4577 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
4578 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
4579 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
4580 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
4581 debugging info for the mips target).
4583 * DEC Alpha native support
4585 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
4586 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
4587 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
4588 Alpha-specific notes.
4590 * Preliminary thread implementation
4592 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
4594 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
4596 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
4597 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
4600 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
4602 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
4603 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
4604 call methods, ...etc.
4606 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
4608 * User visible changes:
4610 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
4611 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
4612 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
4613 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
4615 Filename completion now works.
4617 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
4618 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
4619 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
4621 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
4622 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
4623 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
4624 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
4625 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
4629 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
4630 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
4633 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
4637 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
4638 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
4639 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
4643 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
4644 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
4645 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
4646 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
4647 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
4651 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
4652 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
4653 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
4655 * New targets supported
4657 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
4658 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4659 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
4660 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4661 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
4663 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
4664 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
4665 GO32 memory extender.
4667 * New remote protocols
4669 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
4671 * New source languages supported
4673 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
4674 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
4675 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
4678 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
4680 * HP Precision Architecture supported
4682 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
4683 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
4684 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
4685 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
4686 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
4687 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
4689 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
4691 * Faster and better demangling
4693 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
4694 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
4695 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
4696 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
4697 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
4698 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
4701 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
4702 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
4703 compiler does not actually implement.
4705 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
4707 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
4708 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
4709 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
4710 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
4711 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
4712 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
4715 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
4716 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
4718 * Improved configure script
4720 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
4721 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
4722 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
4723 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
4725 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
4726 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
4727 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
4728 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
4729 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
4730 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
4732 * Documentation improvements
4734 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
4735 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
4736 before submitting changes.
4738 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
4739 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
4740 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
4741 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
4742 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
4744 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
4745 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
4746 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
4747 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
4748 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
4749 around this problem.
4753 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
4754 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
4755 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
4758 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
4759 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
4761 * New native hosts supported
4763 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
4764 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
4766 * New targets supported
4768 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
4770 * New file formats supported
4772 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
4773 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
4777 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
4779 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
4780 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
4782 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
4783 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
4784 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
4786 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
4787 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
4789 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
4790 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
4791 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
4794 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
4795 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
4796 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
4797 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
4798 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
4800 * Internal improvements
4802 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
4803 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
4805 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
4806 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
4807 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
4808 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
4809 shared code that handles any of them.
4811 * New command line options
4813 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
4817 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
4818 General Public License.
4820 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
4822 * Host/native/target split
4824 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
4825 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
4826 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
4827 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
4828 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
4830 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
4831 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
4832 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
4833 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
4834 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
4835 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
4836 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
4838 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
4839 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
4840 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
4842 * New hosts supported
4844 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
4845 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4846 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
4848 * New targets supported
4850 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
4851 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
4853 * New native hosts supported
4855 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4856 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
4857 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
4859 * New file formats supported
4861 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
4862 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
4863 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
4867 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
4868 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
4869 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
4871 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
4873 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
4874 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
4875 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
4876 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
4880 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
4881 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
4882 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
4884 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
4888 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
4889 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
4892 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
4893 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
4895 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
4896 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
4897 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
4898 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
4899 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
4900 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
4902 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
4903 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
4904 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
4905 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
4909 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
4910 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
4911 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
4912 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
4913 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
4915 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
4916 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
4917 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
4918 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
4922 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
4923 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
4924 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
4925 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
4926 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
4927 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
4928 each instruction being stepped through.
4930 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
4931 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
4933 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
4934 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
4935 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
4936 processor with a serial port.
4940 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
4941 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
4942 supported, and what files each one uses.
4946 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
4947 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
4948 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
4949 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
4951 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
4952 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
4953 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
4954 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
4958 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
4959 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
4960 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
4961 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
4962 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
4963 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
4965 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
4968 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
4970 * Better support for C++ function names
4972 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
4973 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
4974 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
4975 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
4976 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
4978 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
4979 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
4980 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
4981 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
4982 for the list of formats.
4984 * G++ symbol mangling problem
4986 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
4987 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
4988 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
4989 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
4990 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
4991 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
4994 * New 'maintenance' command
4996 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
4997 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
4998 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
5000 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
5001 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
5002 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
5003 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
5004 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
5005 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
5007 The following commands are new:
5009 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
5010 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
5011 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
5013 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
5015 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
5016 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
5017 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
5018 read after argv processing.
5020 * New hosts supported
5022 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
5024 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
5026 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
5027 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
5028 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
5029 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
5030 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
5033 * New targets supported
5035 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5037 * More smarts about finding #include files
5039 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
5040 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
5041 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
5042 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
5043 the one that contains your sources.
5045 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
5046 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
5047 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
5049 * Interesting infernals change
5051 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
5052 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
5053 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
5054 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
5056 * Bug fixes (of course!)
5058 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
5059 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
5060 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
5062 See the ChangeLog for details.
5064 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
5066 * New machines supported (host and target)
5068 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
5070 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
5072 * New malloc package
5074 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
5075 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
5076 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
5077 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
5078 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
5079 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
5083 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
5084 'help info proc' for details.
5086 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
5088 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
5089 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
5092 * File name changes for MS-DOS
5094 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
5095 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
5096 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
5097 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
5098 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
5099 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
5101 * Cross byte order fixes
5103 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
5104 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
5106 * New -mapped and -readnow options
5108 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
5109 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
5110 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
5111 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
5112 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
5113 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
5114 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
5115 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
5116 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
5117 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
5119 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
5120 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
5121 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
5122 slower, but makes future operations faster.
5124 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
5125 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
5126 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
5129 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
5131 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
5132 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
5133 shared across multiple host platforms.
5135 * longjmp() handling
5137 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
5138 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
5139 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
5140 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
5144 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
5145 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
5150 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
5151 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
5152 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
5154 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
5156 * New machines supported (host and target)
5158 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5160 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
5161 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
5163 * New machines supported (target)
5165 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5169 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
5170 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
5171 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
5173 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
5174 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
5175 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
5176 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
5177 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
5180 * New features for SVR4
5182 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
5183 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
5184 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
5186 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
5187 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
5188 it prints the address mappings of the process.
5190 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
5191 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
5193 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
5195 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
5196 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
5197 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
5198 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
5199 same code linked statically.
5203 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
5204 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
5205 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
5206 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
5207 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
5208 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
5212 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5213 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5214 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5217 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
5219 * New machines supported (host and target)
5221 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
5222 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
5223 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5225 * Almost SCO Unix support
5227 We had hoped to support:
5228 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5229 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
5230 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
5231 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
5233 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
5235 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
5236 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
5237 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
5238 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
5243 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
5244 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
5245 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
5249 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5250 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5251 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5253 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
5255 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
5256 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
5257 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
5259 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
5260 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
5261 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
5262 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
5265 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
5266 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
5267 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
5268 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
5271 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
5272 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
5275 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
5276 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
5277 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
5280 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
5282 * Improved configuration
5284 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
5285 Porting BFD is simpler.
5289 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
5290 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
5291 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
5292 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
5296 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
5298 * New host supported (not target)
5300 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
5303 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
5305 * Multiple source language support
5307 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
5308 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
5309 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
5310 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
5311 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
5312 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
5316 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
5317 currently under development at the State University of New York at
5318 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
5319 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
5321 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
5322 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
5323 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
5325 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
5326 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
5330 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
5331 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
5332 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
5333 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
5336 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
5338 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
5339 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
5340 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
5341 examining core files.
5345 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
5348 * New machines supported (host and target)
5350 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
5351 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
5352 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
5354 * New hosts supported (not targets)
5356 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
5358 * New targets supported (not hosts)
5360 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5361 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5362 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
5364 * New remote interfaces
5370 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
5374 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
5376 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
5377 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
5378 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
5379 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
5380 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
5381 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
5382 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
5383 stub on the target system.
5385 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
5387 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
5388 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
5389 object file types such as a.out and coff.
5391 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
5392 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
5395 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
5397 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
5398 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
5400 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
5401 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
5402 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
5404 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
5405 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
5406 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
5407 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
5409 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
5410 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
5411 it is already running. Default is ON.
5413 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
5414 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
5415 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
5416 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
5419 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
5420 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
5421 or the value of the environment variable
5424 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
5425 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
5428 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
5429 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
5430 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
5432 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
5433 history expansion will be performed on
5434 command line input. The default is OFF.
5436 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
5437 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
5438 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
5440 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
5441 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
5442 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5445 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
5446 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
5447 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5450 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
5451 ``set width'' instead.
5453 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
5454 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
5455 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
5456 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
5458 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
5461 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
5464 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
5467 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
5470 * Support for Epoch Environment.
5472 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
5473 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
5474 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
5478 * Support for Shared Libraries
5480 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
5481 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
5482 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
5483 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
5484 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
5485 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
5486 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
5487 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
5489 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
5490 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
5491 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
5493 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
5498 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
5499 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
5500 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
5501 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
5502 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
5503 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
5505 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
5507 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
5509 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5510 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5511 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5514 * C++ multiple inheritance
5516 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
5519 * C++ exception handling
5521 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
5522 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
5523 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
5526 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
5527 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
5528 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
5530 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
5531 current stack frame.
5534 * Minor command changes
5536 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
5537 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
5538 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
5540 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
5541 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
5542 frames without printing.
5544 * New directory command
5546 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
5547 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
5548 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
5549 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
5550 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
5552 * Configuring GDB for compilation
5554 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
5557 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
5558 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
5559 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
5560 where the program that you are debugging will run.