1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 6.8
6 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
7 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
8 For instance, consider:
10 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
11 # struct example variable;
14 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
15 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
20 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
22 * The "disassemble" command now supports an optional /m modifier to print mixed
25 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
26 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
28 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
29 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
30 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
32 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
33 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
35 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
37 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
38 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
40 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
41 list of section offsets.
43 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
44 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
47 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
49 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
50 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
52 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
53 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
54 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
58 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
60 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
64 Display timestamps with GDB debugging output.
69 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
71 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
73 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
74 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
75 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
77 set breakpoint always-inserted
78 show breakpoint always-inserted
79 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
80 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
81 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
83 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
84 show arm fallback-mode
85 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
87 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
88 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
89 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
90 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
94 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
96 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
98 * New native configurations
100 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
101 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
105 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
106 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
108 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
110 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
111 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
112 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
113 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
115 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
116 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
118 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
121 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
122 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
123 and in inlined functions.
125 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
126 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
127 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
129 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
131 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
132 registers on PowerPC targets.
134 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
135 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
137 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
138 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
140 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
141 extended-remote mode.
143 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
144 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
145 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
146 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
148 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
149 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
150 target architectures.
152 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
153 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
154 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
155 stored in two consecutive float registers.
157 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
160 * Improved support for debugging Ada
161 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
163 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
164 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
165 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
166 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
168 - Improved command completion in Ada
171 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
176 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
177 show print frame-arguments
178 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
179 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
184 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
191 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
200 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
203 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
207 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
209 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
211 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
212 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
213 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
215 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
216 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
217 -Bsymbolic linker option.
219 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
220 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
223 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
224 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
226 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
227 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
229 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
231 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
232 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
233 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
235 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
236 automatically displayed as character or string data.
238 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
239 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
242 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
243 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
244 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
246 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
249 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
250 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
251 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
253 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
255 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
257 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
258 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
259 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
261 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
262 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
264 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
265 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
266 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
267 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
268 Windows and SymbianOS).
270 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
271 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
273 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
274 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
280 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
281 when debugging using remote targets.
283 set mem inaccessible-by-default
284 show mem inaccessible-by-default
285 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
286 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
287 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
288 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
289 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
291 set breakpoint auto-hw
292 show breakpoint auto-hw
293 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
294 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
295 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
296 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
297 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
298 including "next" and "finish".
301 catch exception unhandled
302 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
305 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
309 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
310 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
311 an alias to "set sysroot".
314 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
315 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
318 * New native configurations
320 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
325 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
326 not query the target for its built-in description.
330 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
331 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
332 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
337 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
338 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
341 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
346 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
347 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
349 qXfer:libraries:read:
350 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
351 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
352 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
353 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
357 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
366 i[34567]86-*-netware*
367 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
368 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
370 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
373 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
374 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
383 * Other removed features
390 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
397 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
402 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
403 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
408 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
409 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
411 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
413 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
414 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
415 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
416 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
420 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
421 in debugging information.
425 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
426 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
428 set mips stack-arg-size
429 set mips saved-gpreg-size
431 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
433 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
438 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
440 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
441 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
442 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
444 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
445 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
448 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
449 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
451 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
452 stub provides the required support.
454 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
455 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
460 unset substitute-path
462 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
463 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
464 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
465 between compilation and debugging.
469 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
470 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
471 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
475 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
477 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
478 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
480 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
485 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
486 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
487 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
488 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
492 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
493 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
495 qXfer:memory-map:read:
496 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
497 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
502 Erase and program a flash memory device.
504 * Removed remote packets
507 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
508 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
510 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
514 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
516 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
520 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
521 only if it doesn't already have a value.
523 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
525 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
527 restart <n> Return the program state to a
528 previously saved state.
530 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
532 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
534 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
535 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
537 info forks List forks of the user program that
538 are available to be debugged.
540 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
541 forks of the user program that are
542 available to be debugged.
544 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
545 that are available to be debugged (and
546 kill the forked process).
548 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
549 that are available to be debugged (and
550 allow the process to continue).
554 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
556 * Improved Windows host support
558 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
559 native console support, and remote communications using either
560 network sockets or serial ports.
562 * Improved Modula-2 language support
564 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
565 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
566 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
567 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
568 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
569 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
573 The ARM rdi-share module.
575 The Netware NLM debug server.
577 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
579 * New native configurations
581 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
582 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
586 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
588 * New command line options
590 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
591 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
592 the child (debugged) program exited with.
593 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
594 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
595 specified multiple times and in conjunction
596 with the --command (-x) option.
598 * Deprecated commands removed
600 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
604 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
605 othernames set arm disassembler
606 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
607 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
608 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
611 * New BSD user-level threads support
613 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
614 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
617 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
618 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
619 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
621 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
622 are not yet supported.
624 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
625 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
627 * REMOVED configurations and files
629 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
630 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
631 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
633 * New "set print array-indexes" command
635 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
636 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
639 * VAX floating point support
641 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
643 * User-defined command support
645 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
646 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
647 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
649 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
651 * New command line option
653 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
656 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
658 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
659 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
660 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
661 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
662 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
664 * Internationalization
666 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
667 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
668 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
672 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
673 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
674 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
676 * New native configurations
678 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
682 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
683 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
685 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
687 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
688 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
689 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
692 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
693 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
694 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
706 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
707 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
709 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
711 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
712 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
713 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
723 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
725 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
727 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
728 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
731 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
733 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
734 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
735 IRIX long double values).
739 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
740 command. This problem has been fixed.
742 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
744 * Fix for ``many threads''
746 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
747 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
750 ptrace: No such process.
751 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
753 This problem has been fixed.
755 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
757 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
760 * New ``start'' command.
762 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
764 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
766 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
767 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
768 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
770 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
771 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
772 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
773 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
774 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
775 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
776 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
777 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
778 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
780 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
782 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
783 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
784 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
785 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
786 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
788 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
789 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
790 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
792 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
794 * New native configurations
796 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
797 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
798 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
799 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
800 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
801 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
802 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
804 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
806 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
807 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
808 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
809 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
810 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
811 work, was also included.
813 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
814 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
824 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
825 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
827 * REMOVED configurations and files
829 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
830 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
831 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
832 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
833 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
834 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
835 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
836 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
837 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
839 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
841 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
843 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
845 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
846 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
847 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
848 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
851 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
853 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
854 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
855 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
856 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
857 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
858 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
861 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
863 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
865 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
866 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
867 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
869 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
871 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
872 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
874 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
876 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
877 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
878 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
880 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
882 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
883 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
885 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
887 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
888 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
889 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
891 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
893 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
894 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
895 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
897 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
899 * Removed --with-mmalloc
901 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
902 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
904 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
906 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
907 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
908 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
909 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
911 * Revised SPARC target
913 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
914 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
915 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
916 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
917 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
921 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
922 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
923 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
926 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
928 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
929 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
932 * C++ nested types and namespaces
934 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
935 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
936 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
937 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
938 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
939 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
940 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
941 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
942 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
944 * New native configurations
946 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
947 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
948 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
949 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
950 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
952 * New debugging protocols
954 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
956 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
958 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
959 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
960 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
962 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
964 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
965 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
966 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
969 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
970 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
971 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
972 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
973 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
974 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
975 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
976 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
977 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
979 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
981 * REMOVED configurations and files
983 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
984 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
985 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
986 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
987 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
988 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
989 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
990 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
991 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
992 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
993 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
994 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
995 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
996 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
997 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
998 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
999 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
1001 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
1005 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
1006 integrated into GDB.
1008 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
1010 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
1011 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
1012 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
1015 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
1016 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
1017 DWARF 2 CFI support.
1021 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
1022 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
1023 remote protocol documentation for details.
1025 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
1027 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
1028 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
1029 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
1032 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
1034 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
1035 per-thread variables.
1037 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
1039 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
1040 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
1042 * Separate debug info.
1044 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
1045 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
1046 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
1047 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
1048 and optional debug files.
1050 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
1052 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
1053 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
1056 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
1057 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
1061 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
1062 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
1063 considered "useable".
1065 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
1067 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
1068 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
1071 * GDB supports logging output to a file
1073 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
1074 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
1076 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
1078 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
1079 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
1082 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
1084 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
1085 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
1089 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
1090 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
1091 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
1092 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
1093 data, for more informative profiling results.
1095 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
1097 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
1098 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
1099 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
1101 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
1104 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
1105 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
1106 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
1107 in a subsequent -var-update.
1109 * New native configurations.
1111 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1113 * Multi-arched targets.
1115 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
1116 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
1118 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1120 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1121 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1122 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1123 permanently REMOVED.
1125 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1126 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1127 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1128 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
1129 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1130 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
1131 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
1132 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
1133 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
1134 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
1135 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1136 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
1138 * REMOVED configurations and files
1141 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1142 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
1143 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1144 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1145 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
1146 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1148 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
1149 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1150 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1151 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1152 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1153 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1155 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
1157 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
1158 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
1159 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
1160 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
1161 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
1163 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
1165 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
1167 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
1168 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
1169 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
1170 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
1171 shared libs like mad''.
1173 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
1175 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
1176 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
1177 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
1178 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
1180 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
1182 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
1183 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
1186 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
1187 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
1189 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
1190 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
1192 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
1193 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
1194 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
1195 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
1197 * Multi-arched targets.
1199 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
1200 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
1202 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
1203 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
1204 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
1208 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
1211 * New native configurations
1213 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
1214 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
1215 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
1216 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
1218 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1220 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1221 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1222 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1223 permanently REMOVED.
1225 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1226 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1227 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
1228 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1229 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1230 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1231 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1232 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1233 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
1234 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1236 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
1237 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1239 * OBSOLETE languages
1241 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
1243 * REMOVED configurations and files
1245 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1246 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1247 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1248 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1249 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1251 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
1253 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
1255 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
1256 commands. The default is 1024.
1258 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
1260 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
1262 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
1264 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
1265 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
1266 from a file into memory (restore).
1268 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
1270 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
1271 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
1272 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
1274 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
1282 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
1283 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
1284 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
1286 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
1287 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
1288 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
1290 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
1291 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
1292 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
1294 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
1295 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
1296 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
1298 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
1300 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
1302 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
1303 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
1304 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
1305 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
1306 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
1307 (notably embedded) targets.
1309 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
1311 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
1312 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
1313 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
1314 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
1316 * New command line option
1318 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
1320 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
1322 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
1323 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
1324 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
1325 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
1326 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
1327 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
1328 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
1329 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
1330 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
1331 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
1333 * Changes in ARM configurations.
1335 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
1336 configuration is fully multi-arch.
1338 * New native configurations
1340 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
1341 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
1342 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
1343 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
1347 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
1349 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1351 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1352 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1353 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1354 permanently REMOVED.
1356 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1357 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1358 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1359 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1360 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1362 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
1364 * REMOVED configurations and files
1366 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1368 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1369 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1370 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
1371 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1372 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1373 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
1374 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
1375 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1376 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1377 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
1378 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
1380 * Changes to command line processing
1382 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
1383 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
1385 * Changes to key bindings
1387 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
1389 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
1391 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
1393 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
1396 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
1398 Numerous documentation fixes.
1400 Numerous testsuite fixes.
1402 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
1404 * New native configurations
1406 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
1407 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
1408 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
1409 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1410 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
1411 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
1415 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
1417 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
1419 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1421 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
1422 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1423 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1424 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
1425 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1427 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1428 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1429 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1430 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
1431 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
1432 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1433 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
1434 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
1436 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
1437 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
1439 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1440 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1441 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1442 permanently REMOVED.
1444 * REMOVED configurations and files
1446 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1447 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
1449 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
1453 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
1455 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
1456 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
1461 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
1463 * The MI enabled by default.
1465 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
1466 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
1467 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
1468 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
1469 which is now deprecated.
1471 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
1473 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
1474 main features are supported:
1476 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
1478 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
1481 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
1483 - a Pascal expression parser.
1485 However, some important features are not yet supported.
1487 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
1489 - there are some problems with boolean types;
1491 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
1492 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
1494 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
1496 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
1498 * Changes in completion.
1500 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
1501 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
1502 users expect at the shell prompt.
1504 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
1505 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
1506 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
1507 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
1508 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
1509 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
1510 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
1512 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
1514 * New platform-independent commands:
1516 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
1517 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
1518 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
1520 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
1522 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
1523 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
1524 many threads as your system allows you to have.
1526 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
1528 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
1529 multi-threaded programs though.
1531 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
1533 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
1535 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
1536 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
1539 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
1541 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
1542 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
1543 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
1544 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
1545 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
1548 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
1549 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
1550 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
1552 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
1554 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
1555 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
1557 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
1558 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
1561 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
1562 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
1563 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
1564 a given linear address.
1566 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
1567 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
1568 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
1570 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
1572 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
1574 * Changes in documentation.
1576 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
1577 Documentation License.
1579 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1582 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
1584 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1587 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
1588 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
1589 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
1591 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
1593 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
1594 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
1595 contents of this file.
1599 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
1601 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
1603 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
1605 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
1606 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
1607 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
1608 greater level of detail.
1610 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
1612 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
1613 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
1614 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
1617 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
1619 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
1620 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
1621 machines ``out of the box''.
1623 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
1624 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
1625 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
1626 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
1627 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
1629 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
1630 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
1631 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
1632 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
1633 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
1635 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
1636 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
1639 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
1642 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
1643 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
1644 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
1645 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
1647 * New native configurations
1649 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
1650 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1654 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
1655 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
1656 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
1657 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1659 * OBSOLETE configurations
1661 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1662 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
1664 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
1667 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1668 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1669 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1670 be permanently REMOVED.
1672 * Gould support removed
1674 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
1676 * New features for SVR4
1678 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
1679 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
1680 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
1682 * Many C++ enhancements
1684 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
1685 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
1687 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
1689 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
1690 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
1691 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
1692 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
1694 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
1695 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
1697 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
1699 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
1700 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
1701 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
1703 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
1704 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1706 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
1708 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
1709 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
1710 include ``set remote P-packet''.
1712 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
1714 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
1715 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
1716 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
1718 * ``apropos'' command added.
1720 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
1721 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
1722 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
1726 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
1727 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
1728 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
1729 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
1730 enabled by configuring with:
1732 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
1734 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
1736 * New native configurations
1738 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
1739 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
1740 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
1744 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1745 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
1746 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1748 * OBSOLETE configurations
1750 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
1752 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1753 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1754 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1755 be permanently REMOVED.
1759 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
1760 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
1761 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
1762 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
1763 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
1764 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
1765 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
1770 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
1772 * set extension-language
1774 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
1775 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
1776 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
1777 set extension-language .c c++
1778 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
1779 and their associated languages.
1781 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
1783 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
1784 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
1785 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
1789 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
1790 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
1792 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
1793 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
1795 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
1796 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
1797 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
1798 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
1799 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
1800 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
1801 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
1802 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
1804 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
1805 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
1806 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
1807 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
1811 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
1812 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
1813 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
1814 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
1815 for xdb and dbx commands.
1819 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
1820 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
1821 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
1823 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
1824 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
1825 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
1827 * Debugging across forks
1829 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
1834 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
1835 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
1836 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
1838 * GDB remote protocol additions
1840 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
1841 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
1842 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
1843 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
1845 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
1846 full 64-bit address. The command
1848 set remoteaddresssize 32
1850 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
1851 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
1854 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
1855 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
1857 maint packet heythere
1859 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
1860 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
1863 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
1864 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
1865 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
1867 * Tracing can collect general expressions
1869 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
1870 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
1871 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
1873 * mask-address variable for Mips
1875 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
1876 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
1877 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
1879 * Higher serial baud rates
1881 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
1882 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
1883 to achieve all of these rates.)
1887 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
1888 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
1891 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
1893 * New native configurations
1895 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
1896 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
1897 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1898 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1899 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1900 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
1901 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
1905 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1906 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
1907 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1908 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
1909 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
1910 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
1911 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
1912 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
1913 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
1914 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1915 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
1917 * New debugging protocols
1919 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
1920 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
1921 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
1922 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1923 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1924 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1928 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
1929 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
1934 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
1935 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
1937 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
1939 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
1940 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
1941 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
1943 * Live range splitting
1945 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
1946 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
1947 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
1951 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
1952 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
1956 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
1957 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
1958 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
1963 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
1968 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
1969 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
1970 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
1971 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
1972 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
1973 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
1977 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
1978 the symbol at the specified address.
1982 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
1983 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
1984 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
1985 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
1986 file tracepoint.c for more details.
1990 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
1991 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
1992 of most MIPS variants.
1996 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
1997 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
1998 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
2002 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
2003 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
2004 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
2005 the possible architectures.
2007 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
2009 * New native configurations
2011 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
2012 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
2013 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
2014 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
2015 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2016 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
2020 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
2021 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
2022 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
2023 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
2024 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
2026 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2030 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
2031 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
2032 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
2033 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
2034 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
2038 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
2040 * Windows 95/NT native
2042 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
2043 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
2044 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
2045 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
2046 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
2048 * dont-repeat command
2050 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
2051 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
2052 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
2053 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
2055 * Send break instead of ^C
2057 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
2058 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
2059 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
2061 * Remote protocol timeout
2063 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
2064 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
2065 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
2067 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
2069 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
2070 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
2071 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
2072 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
2073 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
2075 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
2076 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
2077 automatically on hpux10.
2079 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
2081 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
2083 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
2085 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
2086 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
2087 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
2088 every character. The default value is 1050.
2090 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
2092 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
2093 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
2094 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
2095 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
2096 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
2097 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
2099 * Speedups for remote debugging
2101 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
2102 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
2103 and more efficient S-record downloading.
2105 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
2107 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
2108 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
2110 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
2112 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
2114 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
2115 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
2117 * Remote targets use caching
2119 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
2120 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
2121 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
2122 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
2123 off' turns the the data cache off.
2125 * Remote targets may have threads
2127 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
2128 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
2129 gdb/remote.c for details.
2133 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
2134 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
2135 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
2136 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
2137 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
2138 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
2139 sequence is something like
2141 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
2143 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
2147 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
2148 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
2149 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
2150 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
2151 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
2152 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
2153 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
2154 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
2158 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
2159 but does simplify configuration and building.
2163 GDB now supports hpux10.
2165 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
2167 * New native configurations
2169 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
2170 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
2171 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
2172 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
2176 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2177 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
2178 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
2179 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
2182 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
2184 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
2185 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
2186 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
2187 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
2188 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
2190 * Arguments to user-defined commands
2192 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
2193 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
2196 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
2198 To execute the command use:
2201 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
2202 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
2203 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
2205 * New `if' and `while' commands
2207 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
2208 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
2209 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
2210 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
2211 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
2212 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
2213 if the expression is zero.
2215 * Fortran source language mode
2217 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
2218 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
2219 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
2220 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
2223 * Better HPUX support
2225 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
2226 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
2227 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
2228 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
2229 that behavior do the following before running the program:
2235 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
2236 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
2242 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
2243 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
2246 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
2247 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
2249 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
2251 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
2252 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
2253 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
2254 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
2255 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
2256 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
2258 * New DOS host serial code
2260 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
2261 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
2264 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
2266 * New "complete" command
2268 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
2269 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
2271 * Trailing space optional in prompt
2273 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
2274 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
2276 * Breakpoint hit counts
2278 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
2279 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
2280 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
2281 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
2282 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
2285 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
2287 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
2288 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
2289 arrays actually contain only short strings.
2291 * Shared library breakpoints
2293 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
2294 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
2296 * Hardware watchpoints
2298 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
2299 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
2301 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
2305 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
2306 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
2308 * Improved Irix 5 support
2310 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
2312 * Improved HPPA support
2314 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
2316 * New native configurations
2318 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
2319 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2320 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
2321 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
2325 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2326 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
2329 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
2331 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
2332 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
2336 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
2337 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
2339 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
2341 * Irix 5 is now supported
2345 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
2346 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
2347 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
2348 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
2349 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
2352 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
2354 * User visible changes:
2358 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
2359 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
2360 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
2361 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
2362 debugging info for the mips target).
2364 * DEC Alpha native support
2366 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
2367 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
2368 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
2369 Alpha-specific notes.
2371 * Preliminary thread implementation
2373 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
2375 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
2377 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
2378 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
2381 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
2383 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
2384 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
2385 call methods, ...etc.
2387 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
2389 * User visible changes:
2391 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
2392 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
2393 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
2394 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
2396 Filename completion now works.
2398 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
2399 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
2400 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
2402 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
2403 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
2404 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
2405 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
2406 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
2410 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
2411 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
2414 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
2418 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
2419 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
2420 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
2424 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
2425 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
2426 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
2427 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
2428 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
2432 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
2433 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
2434 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
2436 * New targets supported
2438 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2439 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2440 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
2441 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2442 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
2444 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
2445 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
2446 GO32 memory extender.
2448 * New remote protocols
2450 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
2452 * New source languages supported
2454 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
2455 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
2456 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
2459 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
2461 * HP Precision Architecture supported
2463 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
2464 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
2465 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
2466 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
2467 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
2468 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
2470 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
2472 * Faster and better demangling
2474 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
2475 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
2476 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
2477 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
2478 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
2479 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
2482 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
2483 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
2484 compiler does not actually implement.
2486 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
2488 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
2489 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
2490 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
2491 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
2492 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
2493 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
2496 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
2497 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
2499 * Improved configure script
2501 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
2502 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
2503 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
2504 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
2506 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
2507 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
2508 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
2509 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
2510 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
2511 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
2513 * Documentation improvements
2515 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
2516 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
2517 before submitting changes.
2519 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
2520 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
2521 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
2522 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
2523 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
2525 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
2526 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
2527 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
2528 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
2529 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
2530 around this problem.
2534 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
2535 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
2536 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
2539 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
2540 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
2542 * New native hosts supported
2544 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
2545 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
2547 * New targets supported
2549 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
2551 * New file formats supported
2553 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
2554 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
2558 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
2560 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
2561 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
2563 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
2564 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
2565 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
2567 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
2568 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
2570 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
2571 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
2572 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
2575 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
2576 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
2577 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
2578 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
2579 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
2581 * Internal improvements
2583 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
2584 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
2586 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
2587 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
2588 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
2589 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
2590 shared code that handles any of them.
2592 * New command line options
2594 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
2598 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
2599 General Public License.
2601 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
2603 * Host/native/target split
2605 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
2606 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
2607 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
2608 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
2609 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
2611 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
2612 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
2613 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
2614 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
2615 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
2616 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
2617 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
2619 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
2620 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
2621 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
2623 * New hosts supported
2625 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
2626 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2627 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
2629 * New targets supported
2631 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
2632 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
2634 * New native hosts supported
2636 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2637 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
2638 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
2640 * New file formats supported
2642 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
2643 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
2644 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
2648 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
2649 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
2650 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
2652 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
2654 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
2655 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
2656 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
2657 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
2661 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
2662 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
2663 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
2665 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
2669 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
2670 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
2673 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
2674 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
2676 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
2677 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
2678 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
2679 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
2680 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
2681 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
2683 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
2684 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
2685 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
2686 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
2690 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
2691 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
2692 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
2693 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
2694 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
2696 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
2697 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
2698 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
2699 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
2703 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
2704 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
2705 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
2706 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
2707 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
2708 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
2709 each instruction being stepped through.
2711 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
2712 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
2714 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
2715 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
2716 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
2717 processor with a serial port.
2721 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
2722 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
2723 supported, and what files each one uses.
2727 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
2728 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
2729 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
2730 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
2732 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
2733 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
2734 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
2735 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
2739 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
2740 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
2741 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
2742 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
2743 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
2744 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
2746 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
2749 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
2751 * Better support for C++ function names
2753 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
2754 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
2755 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
2756 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
2757 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
2759 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
2760 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
2761 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
2762 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
2763 for the list of formats.
2765 * G++ symbol mangling problem
2767 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
2768 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
2769 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
2770 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
2771 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
2772 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
2775 * New 'maintenance' command
2777 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
2778 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
2779 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
2781 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
2782 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
2783 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
2784 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
2785 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
2786 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
2788 The following commands are new:
2790 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
2791 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
2792 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
2794 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
2796 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
2797 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
2798 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
2799 read after argv processing.
2801 * New hosts supported
2803 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
2805 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
2807 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
2808 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
2809 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
2810 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
2811 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
2814 * New targets supported
2816 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2818 * More smarts about finding #include files
2820 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
2821 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
2822 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
2823 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
2824 the one that contains your sources.
2826 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
2827 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
2828 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
2830 * Interesting infernals change
2832 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
2833 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
2834 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
2835 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
2837 * Bug fixes (of course!)
2839 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
2840 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
2841 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
2843 See the ChangeLog for details.
2845 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
2847 * New machines supported (host and target)
2849 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
2851 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2853 * New malloc package
2855 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
2856 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
2857 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
2858 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
2859 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
2860 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
2864 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
2865 'help info proc' for details.
2867 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
2869 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
2870 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
2873 * File name changes for MS-DOS
2875 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
2876 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
2877 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
2878 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
2879 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
2880 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
2882 * Cross byte order fixes
2884 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
2885 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
2887 * New -mapped and -readnow options
2889 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
2890 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
2891 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
2892 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
2893 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
2894 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
2895 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
2896 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
2897 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
2898 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
2900 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
2901 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
2902 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
2903 slower, but makes future operations faster.
2905 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
2906 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
2907 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
2910 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
2912 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
2913 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
2914 shared across multiple host platforms.
2916 * longjmp() handling
2918 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
2919 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
2920 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
2921 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
2925 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
2926 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
2931 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
2932 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
2933 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
2935 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
2937 * New machines supported (host and target)
2939 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2941 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
2942 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
2944 * New machines supported (target)
2946 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2950 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
2951 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
2952 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
2954 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
2955 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
2956 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
2957 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
2958 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
2961 * New features for SVR4
2963 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
2964 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
2965 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
2967 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
2968 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
2969 it prints the address mappings of the process.
2971 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
2972 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
2974 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
2976 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
2977 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
2978 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
2979 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
2980 same code linked statically.
2984 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
2985 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
2986 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
2987 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
2988 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
2989 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
2993 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2994 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2995 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2998 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
3000 * New machines supported (host and target)
3002 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
3003 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
3004 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3006 * Almost SCO Unix support
3008 We had hoped to support:
3009 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
3010 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
3011 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
3012 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
3014 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
3016 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
3017 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
3018 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
3019 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
3024 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
3025 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
3026 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
3030 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
3031 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
3032 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
3034 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
3036 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
3037 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
3038 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
3040 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
3041 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
3042 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
3043 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
3046 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
3047 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
3048 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
3049 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
3052 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
3053 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
3056 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
3057 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
3058 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
3061 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
3063 * Improved configuration
3065 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
3066 Porting BFD is simpler.
3070 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
3071 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
3072 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
3073 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
3077 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
3079 * New host supported (not target)
3081 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
3084 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
3086 * Multiple source language support
3088 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
3089 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
3090 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
3091 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
3092 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
3093 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
3097 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
3098 currently under development at the State University of New York at
3099 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
3100 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
3102 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
3103 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
3104 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
3106 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
3107 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
3111 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
3112 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
3113 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
3114 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
3117 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
3119 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
3120 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
3121 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
3122 examining core files.
3126 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
3129 * New machines supported (host and target)
3131 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
3132 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
3133 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
3135 * New hosts supported (not targets)
3137 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
3139 * New targets supported (not hosts)
3141 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3142 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3143 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
3145 * New remote interfaces
3151 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
3155 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
3157 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
3158 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
3159 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
3160 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
3161 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
3162 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
3163 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
3164 stub on the target system.
3166 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
3168 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
3169 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
3170 object file types such as a.out and coff.
3172 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
3173 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
3176 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
3178 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
3179 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
3181 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
3182 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
3183 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
3185 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
3186 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
3187 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
3188 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
3190 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
3191 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
3192 it is already running. Default is ON.
3194 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
3195 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
3196 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
3197 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
3200 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
3201 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
3202 or the value of the environment variable
3205 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
3206 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
3209 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
3210 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
3211 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
3213 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
3214 history expansion will be performed on
3215 command line input. The default is OFF.
3217 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
3218 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
3219 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
3221 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
3222 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
3223 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3226 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
3227 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
3228 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3231 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
3232 ``set width'' instead.
3234 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
3235 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
3236 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
3237 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
3239 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
3242 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
3245 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
3248 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
3251 * Support for Epoch Environment.
3253 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
3254 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
3255 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
3259 * Support for Shared Libraries
3261 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
3262 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
3263 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
3264 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
3265 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
3266 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
3267 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
3268 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
3270 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
3271 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
3272 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
3274 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
3279 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
3280 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
3281 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
3282 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
3283 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
3284 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
3286 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
3288 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
3290 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3291 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3292 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3295 * C++ multiple inheritance
3297 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
3300 * C++ exception handling
3302 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
3303 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
3304 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
3307 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
3308 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
3309 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
3311 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
3312 current stack frame.
3315 * Minor command changes
3317 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
3318 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
3319 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
3321 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
3322 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
3323 frames without printing.
3325 * New directory command
3327 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
3328 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
3329 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
3330 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
3331 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
3333 * Configuring GDB for compilation
3335 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
3338 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
3339 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
3340 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
3341 where the program that you are debugging will run.
projects / deliverable / binutils-gdb.git / blob