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