1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 7.9
7 * GDB now honors the content of the file /proc/PID/coredump_filter
8 (PID is the process ID) on GNU/Linux systems. This file can be used
9 to specify the types of memory mappings that will be included in a
10 corefile. For more information, please refer to the manual page of
11 "core(5)". GDB also has a new command: "set use-coredump-filter
12 on|off". It allows to set whether GDB will read the content of the
13 /proc/PID/coredump_filter file when generating a corefile.
15 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
17 "info os cpus" Listing of all cpus/cores on the system
19 * GDB has two new commands: "set serial parity odd|even|none" and
20 "show serial parity". These allows to set or show parity for the
23 * The "info source" command now displays the producer string if it was
24 present in the debug info. This typically includes the compiler version
25 and may include things like its command line arguments.
27 * Directory names supplied to the "set sysroot" commands may be
28 prefixed with "target:" to tell GDB to access shared libraries from
29 the target system, be it local or remote. This replaces the prefix
30 "remote:". The default sysroot has been changed from "" to
31 "target:". "remote:" is automatically converted to "target:" for
32 backward compatibility.
34 * The system root specified by "set sysroot" will be prepended to the
35 filename of the main executable (if reported to GDB as absolute by
36 the operating system) when starting processes remotely, and when
37 attaching to already-running local or remote processes.
39 * GDB now supports automatic location and retrieval of executable
40 files from remote targets. Remote debugging can now be initiated
41 using only a "target remote" or "target extended-remote" command
42 (no "set sysroot" or "file" commands are required). See "New remote
45 * The "dump" command now supports verilog hex format.
49 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "username",
50 which is the name of the objfile as specified by the user,
51 without, for example, resolving symlinks.
52 ** You can now write frame unwinders in Python.
56 maint print symbol-cache
57 Print the contents of the symbol cache.
59 maint print symbol-cache-statistics
60 Print statistics of symbol cache usage.
62 maint flush-symbol-cache
63 Flush the contents of the symbol cache.
67 Start branch trace recording using Branch Trace Store (BTS) format.
73 Set the maximum number of candidates to be considered during
74 completion. The default value is 200. This limit allows GDB
75 to avoid generating large completion lists, the computation of
76 which can cause the debugger to become temporarily unresponsive.
78 maint set symbol-cache-size
79 maint show symbol-cache-size
80 Control the size of the symbol cache.
82 set|show record btrace bts buffer-size
83 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
85 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
86 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
88 * The command 'thread apply all' can now support new option '-ascending'
89 to call its specified command for all threads in ascending order.
91 * Python/Guile scripting
93 ** GDB now supports auto-loading of Python/Guile scripts contained in the
94 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts'.
98 qXfer:btrace-conf:read
99 Return the branch trace configuration for the current thread.
101 Qbtrace-conf:bts:size
102 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in BTS format.
105 Indicates a memory breakpoint instruction was executed, irrespective
106 of whether it was GDB that planted the breakpoint or the breakpoint
107 is hardcoded in the program. This is required for correct non-stop
111 Indicates the target stopped for a hardware breakpoint. This is
112 required for correct non-stop mode operation.
115 Return information about files on the remote system.
118 Return the full absolute name of the file that was executed to
119 create a process running on the remote system.
121 * The info record command now shows the recording format and the
122 branch tracing configuration for the current thread when using
123 the btrace record target.
124 For the BTS format, it shows the ring buffer size.
126 * GDB now has support for DTrace USDT (Userland Static Defined
127 Tracing) probes. The supported targets are x86_64-*-linux-gnu.
129 * GDB now supports access to vector registers on S/390 GNU/Linux
132 * Removed command line options
134 -xdb HP-UX XDB compatibility mode.
136 * Removed targets and native configurations
138 HP/PA running HP-UX hppa*-*-hpux*
139 Itanium running HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
141 *** Changes in GDB 7.9
143 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on x86 GNU Hurd.
147 ** You can now access frame registers from Python scripts.
148 ** New attribute 'producer' for gdb.Symtab objects.
149 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "progspace",
150 which is the gdb.Progspace object of the containing program space.
151 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "owner".
152 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "build_id",
153 which is the build ID generated when the file was built.
154 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new method "add_separate_debug_file".
155 ** A new event "gdb.clear_objfiles" has been added, triggered when
156 selecting a new file to debug.
157 ** You can now add attributes to gdb.Objfile and gdb.Progspace objects.
158 ** New function gdb.lookup_objfile.
160 New events which are triggered when GDB modifies the state of the
163 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_pre: Function call is about to be made.
164 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_post: Function call has just been made.
165 ** gdb.events.memory_changed: A memory location has been altered.
166 ** gdb.events.register_changed: A register has been altered.
168 * New Python-based convenience functions:
170 ** $_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
171 ** $_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
172 ** $_any_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
173 ** $_any_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
175 * GDB now supports the compilation and injection of source code into
176 the inferior. GDB will use GCC 5.0 or higher built with libcc1.so
177 to compile the source code to object code, and if successful, inject
178 and execute that code within the current context of the inferior.
179 Currently the C language is supported. The commands used to
180 interface with this new feature are:
182 compile code [-raw|-r] [--] [source code]
183 compile file [-raw|-r] filename
187 demangle [-l language] [--] name
188 Demangle "name" in the specified language, or the current language
189 if elided. This command is renamed from the "maint demangle" command.
190 The latter is kept as a no-op to avoid "maint demangle" being interpreted
191 as "maint demangler-warning".
193 queue-signal signal-name-or-number
194 Queue a signal to be delivered to the thread when it is resumed.
196 add-auto-load-scripts-directory directory
197 Add entries to the list of directories from which to load auto-loaded
200 maint print user-registers
201 List all currently available "user" registers.
203 compile code [-r|-raw] [--] [source code]
204 Compile, inject, and execute in the inferior the executable object
205 code produced by compiling the provided source code.
207 compile file [-r|-raw] filename
208 Compile and inject into the inferior the executable object code
209 produced by compiling the source code stored in the filename
212 * On resume, GDB now always passes the signal the program had stopped
213 for to the thread the signal was sent to, even if the user changed
214 threads before resuming. Previously GDB would often (but not
215 always) deliver the signal to the thread that happens to be current
218 * Conversely, the "signal" command now consistently delivers the
219 requested signal to the current thread. GDB now asks for
220 confirmation if the program had stopped for a signal and the user
221 switched threads meanwhile.
223 * "breakpoint always-inserted" modes "off" and "auto" merged.
225 Now, when 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' is set to "off", GDB
226 won't remove breakpoints from the target until all threads stop,
227 even in non-stop mode. The "auto" mode has been removed, and "off"
228 is now the default mode.
232 set debug symbol-lookup
233 show debug symbol-lookup
234 Control display of debugging info regarding symbol lookup.
238 ** The -list-thread-groups command outputs an exit-code field for
239 inferiors that have exited.
243 MIPS SDE mips*-sde*-elf*
247 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
249 Alpha running OSF/1 (or Tru64) alpha*-*-osf*
250 SGI Irix-5.x mips-*-irix5*
251 SGI Irix-6.x mips-*-irix6*
252 VAX running (4.2 - 4.3 Reno) BSD vax-*-bsd*
253 VAX running Ultrix vax-*-ultrix*
255 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
256 and "assf"), have been removed. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
257 its alias "share", instead.
259 *** Changes in GDB 7.8
261 * New command line options
264 This is an alias for the --data-directory option.
266 * GDB supports printing and modifying of variable length automatic arrays
267 as specified in ISO C99.
269 * The ARM simulator now supports instruction level tracing
270 with or without disassembly.
274 GDB now has support for scripting using Guile. Whether this is
275 available is determined at configure time.
276 Guile version 2.0 or greater is required.
277 Guile version 2.0.9 is well tested, earlier 2.0 versions are not.
279 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
283 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Guile interpreter.
287 Start a Guile interactive prompt (or "repl" for "read-eval-print loop").
289 info auto-load guile-scripts [regexp]
290 Print the list of automatically loaded Guile scripts.
292 * The source command is now capable of sourcing Guile scripts.
293 This feature is dependent on the debugger being built with Guile support.
297 set print symbol-loading (off|brief|full)
298 show print symbol-loading
299 Control whether to print informational messages when loading symbol
300 information for a file. The default is "full", but when debugging
301 programs with large numbers of shared libraries the amount of output
304 set guile print-stack (none|message|full)
305 show guile print-stack
306 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Guile script.
308 set auto-load guile-scripts (on|off)
309 show auto-load guile-scripts
310 Control auto-loading of Guile script files.
312 maint ada set ignore-descriptive-types (on|off)
313 maint ada show ignore-descriptive-types
314 Control whether the debugger should ignore descriptive types in Ada
315 programs. The default is not to ignore the descriptive types. See
316 the user manual for more details on descriptive types and the intended
317 usage of this option.
319 set auto-connect-native-target
321 Control whether GDB is allowed to automatically connect to the
322 native target for the run, attach, etc. commands when not connected
323 to any target yet. See also "target native" below.
325 set record btrace replay-memory-access (read-only|read-write)
326 show record btrace replay-memory-access
327 Control what memory accesses are allowed during replay.
329 maint set target-async (on|off)
330 maint show target-async
331 This controls whether GDB targets operate in synchronous or
332 asynchronous mode. Normally the default is asynchronous, if it is
333 available; but this can be changed to more easily debug problems
334 occurring only in synchronous mode.
336 set mi-async (on|off)
338 Control whether MI asynchronous mode is preferred. This supersedes
339 "set target-async" of previous GDB versions.
341 * "set target-async" is deprecated as a CLI option and is now an alias
342 for "set mi-async" (only puts MI into async mode).
344 * Background execution commands (e.g., "c&", "s&", etc.) are now
345 possible ``out of the box'' if the target supports them. Previously
346 the user would need to explicitly enable the possibility with the
347 "set target-async on" command.
349 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
351 ** New option --debug-format=option1[,option2,...] allows one to add
352 additional text to each output. At present only timestamps
353 are supported: --debug-format=timestamps.
354 Timestamps can also be turned on with the
355 "monitor set debug-format timestamps" command from GDB.
357 * The 'record instruction-history' command now starts counting instructions
358 at one. This also affects the instruction ranges reported by the
359 'record function-call-history' command when given the /i modifier.
361 * The command 'record function-call-history' supports a new modifier '/c' to
362 indent the function names based on their call stack depth.
363 The fields for the '/i' and '/l' modifier have been reordered.
364 The source line range is now prefixed with 'at'.
365 The instruction range is now prefixed with 'inst'.
366 Both ranges are now printed as '<from>, <to>' to allow copy&paste to the
367 "record instruction-history" and "list" commands.
369 * The ranges given as arguments to the 'record function-call-history' and
370 'record instruction-history' commands are now inclusive.
372 * The btrace record target now supports the 'record goto' command.
373 For locations inside the execution trace, the back trace is computed
374 based on the information stored in the execution trace.
376 * The btrace record target supports limited reverse execution and replay.
377 The target does not record data and therefore does not allow reading
380 * The "catch syscall" command now works on s390*-linux* targets.
382 * The "compare-sections" command is no longer specific to target
383 remote. It now works with all targets.
385 * All native targets are now consistently called "native".
386 Consequently, the "target child", "target GNU", "target djgpp",
387 "target procfs" (Solaris/Irix/OSF/AIX) and "target darwin-child"
388 commands have been replaced with "target native". The QNX/NTO port
389 leaves the "procfs" target in place and adds a "native" target for
390 consistency with other ports. The impact on users should be minimal
391 as these commands previously either throwed an error, or were
392 no-ops. The target's name is visible in the output of the following
393 commands: "help target", "info target", "info files", "maint print
396 * The "target native" command now connects to the native target. This
397 can be used to launch native programs even when "set
398 auto-connect-native-target" is set to off.
400 * GDB now supports access to Intel(R) MPX registers on GNU/Linux.
402 * Support for Intel(R) AVX-512 registers on GNU/Linux.
403 Support displaying and modifying Intel(R) AVX-512 registers
404 $zmm0 - $zmm31 and $k0 - $k7 on GNU/Linux.
408 qXfer:btrace:read's annex
409 The qXfer:btrace:read packet supports a new annex 'delta' to read
410 branch trace incrementally.
414 ** Valid Python operations on gdb.Value objects representing
415 structs/classes invoke the corresponding overloaded operators if
417 ** New `Xmethods' feature in the Python API. Xmethods are
418 additional methods or replacements for existing methods of a C++
419 class. This feature is useful for those cases where a method
420 defined in C++ source code could be inlined or optimized out by
421 the compiler, making it unavailable to GDB.
424 PowerPC64 GNU/Linux little-endian powerpc64le-*-linux*
426 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
427 and "assf"), have been deprecated. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
428 its alias "share", instead.
430 * The commands "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" are no longer
431 supported. Use "set serial baud" and "show serial baud" (respectively)
436 ** A new option "-gdb-set mi-async" replaces "-gdb-set
437 target-async". The latter is left as a deprecated alias of the
438 former for backward compatibility. If the target supports it,
439 CLI background execution commands are now always possible by
440 default, independently of whether the frontend stated a
441 preference for asynchronous execution with "-gdb-set mi-async".
442 Previously "-gdb-set target-async off" affected both MI execution
443 commands and CLI execution commands.
445 *** Changes in GDB 7.7
447 * Improved support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on
448 arm*-linux* targets. Support for thumb32 and syscall instruction
449 recording has been added.
451 * GDB now supports SystemTap SDT probes on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
453 * GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
454 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
456 * New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
457 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
458 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
459 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
460 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
461 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
464 * The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
466 * The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
468 * GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
469 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
470 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
471 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
476 (gdb) info registers rax
479 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
480 "*value not available*".
482 * New script contrib/gdb-add-index.sh for adding .gdb_index sections
487 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
488 ** Temporary breakpoints are now supported.
489 ** Line tables representation has been added.
490 ** New attribute 'parent_type' for gdb.Field objects.
491 ** gdb.Field objects can be used as subscripts on gdb.Value objects.
492 ** New attribute 'name' for gdb.Type objects.
496 Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
497 Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
498 Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
500 * Removed native configurations
502 Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
503 been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
505 arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
506 i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
507 i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
508 i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
509 m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
510 sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
511 vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
515 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
517 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
519 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
521 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
524 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
526 maint set|show per-command
527 maint set|show per-command space
528 maint set|show per-command time
529 maint set|show per-command symtab
530 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
532 remove-symbol-file FILENAME
533 remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
534 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
535 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
536 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
539 info exceptions REGEXP
540 Display the list of Ada exceptions defined in the program being
541 debugged. If provided, only the exceptions whose names match REGEXP
546 set debug symfile off|on
548 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
549 symbol tables within those files
551 set print raw frame-arguments
552 show print raw frame-arguments
553 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
554 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
556 set remote trace-status-packet
557 show remote trace-status-packet
558 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
562 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
566 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
568 set startup-with-shell
569 show startup-with-shell
570 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
575 Use the target memory cache for accesses to the code segment. This
576 improves performance of remote debugging (particularly disassembly).
578 * You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
579 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
580 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
581 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
584 * The "set debug symtab-create" debugging option of GDB has been changed to
585 accept a verbosity level. 0 means "off", 1 provides basic debugging
586 output, and values of 2 or greater provides more verbose output.
588 * New command-line options
590 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
592 * The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
593 buffer in Common Trace Format.
595 * Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
598 * GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
600 * The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
601 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
603 * The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
604 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
606 * The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
607 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
608 due to an uncaught signal.
612 ** All MI commands now accept an optional "--language" option.
613 Support for this feature can be verified by using the "-list-features"
614 command, which should contain "language-option".
616 ** The new command -info-gdb-mi-command allows the user to determine
617 whether a GDB/MI command is supported or not.
619 ** The "^error" result record returned when trying to execute an undefined
620 GDB/MI command now provides a variable named "code" whose content is the
621 "undefined-command" error code. Support for this feature can be verified
622 by using the "-list-features" command, which should contain
623 "undefined-command-error-code".
625 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
628 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
630 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
631 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
634 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
635 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
637 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
638 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
639 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
641 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
642 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
643 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
644 main subprogram. Support for this feature can be verified using
645 the "-list-features" command, which should contain
646 "exec-run-start-option".
648 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
649 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
651 ** The new command -info-ada-exceptions provides the equivalent of
652 the new "info exceptions" command.
654 * New system-wide configuration scripts
655 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
656 configuration scripts for the following systems:
660 * GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
661 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
662 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
665 * GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
666 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
668 * On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
669 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
670 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
676 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
677 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
678 involvemement at each single-step.
680 qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
681 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
682 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
683 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
684 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
685 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
688 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
690 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
691 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
693 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
694 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
695 trace state variables.
697 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
700 * New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
701 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
703 * GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
705 * The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
706 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
707 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
708 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
710 *** Changes in GDB 7.6
712 * Target record has been renamed to record-full.
713 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
714 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
715 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
717 set|show record full insn-number-max
718 set|show record full stop-at-limit
719 set|show record full memory-query
721 * A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
722 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
723 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
724 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
725 This new recording method can be enabled using:
729 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
730 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
732 * Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
733 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
734 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
736 record instruction-history prints the execution history at
737 instruction granularity
739 record function-call-history prints the execution history at
742 * New native configurations
744 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
745 FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
746 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
747 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
751 ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
752 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
753 Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
754 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
755 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
757 * If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
758 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
759 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
760 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
761 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
762 --data-directory command-line option.
764 * New command line options:
766 -nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
767 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
769 * Removed command line options
771 -epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
774 * The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
777 * 'info proc' now works on some core files.
781 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
783 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
785 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
787 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
789 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
790 of architecture in the Python API.
792 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
793 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
795 * New Python-based convenience functions:
797 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
798 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
800 ** $_regex(str, regex)
802 * The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
805 * The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
806 default for GCC since November 2000.
808 * The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
810 * The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
811 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
813 * New configure options
815 --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
816 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
817 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
818 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
819 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
820 options allow the user to override that default.
821 --with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
822 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
823 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
825 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
828 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
829 conditions to be attached.
832 List the BFDs known to GDB.
834 python-interactive [command]
836 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
837 and print the result of expressions.
840 "py" is a new alias for "python".
842 enable type-printer [name]...
843 disable type-printer [name]...
844 Enable or disable type printers.
848 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
849 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
854 set print type methods (on|off)
855 show print type methods
856 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
857 The default is to show them.
859 set print type typedefs (on|off)
860 show print type typedefs
861 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
862 The default is to show them.
864 set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
865 show filename-display
866 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
867 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
869 set trace-buffer-size
870 show trace-buffer-size
871 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
873 set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
874 show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
875 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
879 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
882 set debug coff-pe-read
883 show debug coff-pe-read
884 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
889 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
892 set debug notification
893 show debug notification
894 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
898 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
899 "=cmd-param-changed".
900 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
901 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
902 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
903 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
904 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
905 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
906 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
907 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
909 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
910 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
911 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
912 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
913 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
914 library load/unload events.
915 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
916 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
917 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
918 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
919 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
920 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
921 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
922 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
924 * GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
925 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
926 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
927 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
932 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
933 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
936 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
937 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
941 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
942 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
945 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
946 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
948 *** Changes in GDB 7.5
950 * GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
951 for more x32 ABI info.
953 * GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
955 * GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
957 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
958 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
959 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
960 "info os files" lists file descriptors
961 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
962 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
963 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
964 "info os msg" lists message queues
965 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
967 * GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
968 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
969 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
970 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
971 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
972 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
974 * GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
975 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
976 record/replay support.
978 * The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
982 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
985 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
987 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
988 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
990 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
992 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
993 the source at which the symbol was defined.
995 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
996 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
997 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
1000 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
1001 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
1003 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
1004 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
1005 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
1007 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
1008 object associated with a PC value.
1010 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
1011 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
1013 * Go language support.
1014 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
1017 * GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
1018 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
1020 * The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
1021 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
1023 * GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
1024 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
1025 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
1026 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
1027 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
1030 * The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
1031 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
1032 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
1033 build/libcpp/expr.c.
1035 * The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
1036 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
1038 * The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
1039 since December 2007.
1041 * The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
1042 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
1043 command does. For instance:
1045 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
1047 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
1048 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
1049 created, using the "condition" command.
1051 * The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
1052 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
1054 * GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
1056 * The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
1057 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
1058 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
1059 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
1060 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
1061 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
1062 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
1063 files with older .gdb_index sections.
1065 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
1066 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
1067 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
1068 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
1069 the .gdb_index section.
1071 * Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
1073 * GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
1078 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
1080 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
1084 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
1085 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
1086 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
1088 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
1089 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
1091 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
1094 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
1095 C++ and Java objects.
1097 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
1098 can be used to recursively explore values and types of
1099 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
1100 configured with '--with-python'.
1102 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
1103 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
1104 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
1105 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
1106 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
1107 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
1108 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
1110 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
1111 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
1112 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
1113 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
1115 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
1116 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
1117 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
1118 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
1120 ** "set print symbol"
1122 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
1123 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
1124 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
1126 * Deprecated commands
1128 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
1129 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
1133 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
1134 HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
1136 * GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
1137 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
1138 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
1139 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
1144 set mips compression
1145 show mips compression
1146 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
1147 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
1150 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
1152 set breakpoint condition-evaluation
1153 show breakpoint condition-evaluation
1154 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
1155 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
1157 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
1161 Disable auto-loading globally.
1164 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
1166 set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
1167 show auto-load gdb-scripts
1168 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
1170 set auto-load python-scripts on|off
1171 show auto-load python-scripts
1172 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
1174 set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
1175 show auto-load local-gdbinit
1176 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
1178 set auto-load libthread-db on|off
1179 show auto-load libthread-db
1180 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
1182 set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
1183 show auto-load scripts-directory
1184 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
1185 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
1186 of the directories listed by this option.
1187 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
1189 set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
1190 show auto-load safe-path
1191 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
1192 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
1194 set debug auto-load on|off
1195 show debug auto-load
1196 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
1198 set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
1200 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
1201 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
1202 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
1203 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
1205 set dprintf-function <expr>
1206 show dprintf-function
1207 set dprintf-channel <expr>
1208 show dprintf-channel
1209 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
1210 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
1212 set disconnected-dprintf on|off
1213 show disconnected-dprintf
1214 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
1215 after GDB disconnects.
1217 * New configure options
1219 --with-auto-load-dir
1220 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
1221 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
1222 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
1223 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
1224 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
1226 --with-auto-load-safe-path
1227 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
1228 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
1230 --without-auto-load-safe-path
1231 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
1234 * New remote packets
1236 z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
1238 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
1239 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
1240 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
1241 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
1245 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
1246 program without GDB involvement.
1248 * New command line options
1250 --init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
1251 before loading inferior.
1252 --init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
1253 execute it before loading inferior.
1255 *** Changes in GDB 7.4
1257 * GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
1258 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
1259 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
1260 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
1263 * GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
1264 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
1266 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
1267 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
1268 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
1269 target hardware watchpoint.
1271 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
1272 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
1273 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
1274 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
1278 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
1279 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
1282 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
1283 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
1284 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
1285 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
1286 now "message", which just prints the error message without
1289 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
1292 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
1293 modules library. This module provides functionality for
1294 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
1295 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
1296 corresponding value.
1298 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
1299 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
1300 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
1303 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
1304 static_block will return the global and static blocks
1305 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
1306 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
1308 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
1310 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
1313 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
1314 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
1315 available in the CLI.
1317 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
1318 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
1319 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
1320 "some_type.items()".
1322 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
1325 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
1326 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
1327 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
1328 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
1329 any anonymous fields.
1333 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
1336 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
1337 "=breakpoint-modified".
1339 ** New command -ada-task-info.
1341 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
1342 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
1343 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
1346 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
1347 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
1348 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
1349 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
1350 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
1352 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
1353 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
1355 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
1356 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
1357 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
1358 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
1359 use this option to specify where to find it.
1361 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
1362 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
1363 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
1364 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
1365 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
1366 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
1367 section in the user manual for more details.
1369 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
1370 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
1371 become available after that.
1373 * New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
1375 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
1376 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
1382 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
1383 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
1387 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
1388 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
1389 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
1391 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
1392 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
1393 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
1395 info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
1396 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
1397 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
1398 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
1399 name starts with a hyphen.
1401 collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
1402 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
1403 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
1404 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
1405 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
1406 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
1407 number of bytes that will be collected.
1410 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
1411 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
1412 setting the variable trace-notes.
1415 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
1416 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
1417 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
1420 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
1421 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
1422 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
1423 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
1424 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
1427 * Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
1428 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
1429 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
1433 set debug dwarf2-read
1434 show debug dwarf2-read
1435 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
1436 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
1438 set debug symtab-create
1439 show debug symtab-create
1440 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
1441 creation. The default is off.
1444 show extended-prompt
1445 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
1446 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
1447 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
1448 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
1449 prompt is displayed.
1451 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
1452 show print entry-values
1453 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
1454 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
1455 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
1457 set debug entry-values
1458 show debug entry-values
1459 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
1460 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
1462 set basenames-may-differ
1463 show basenames-may-differ
1464 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
1465 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
1466 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
1467 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
1468 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
1469 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
1470 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
1471 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
1477 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
1478 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
1479 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
1480 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
1482 set trace-stop-notes
1483 show trace-stop-notes
1484 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
1485 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
1486 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
1487 started by someone else.
1489 * New remote packets
1493 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1497 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1501 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
1505 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
1509 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
1512 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
1513 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
1517 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
1521 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
1523 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
1525 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
1527 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
1529 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
1530 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
1531 matches the given regular expression.
1533 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
1535 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
1536 dumping the instruction opcodes.
1538 * New command line options
1540 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
1541 This is mostly for testing purposes.
1543 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
1544 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
1546 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
1547 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
1548 source path list instead of augmenting it.
1550 * GDB now understands thread names.
1552 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
1553 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
1555 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
1556 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
1559 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
1560 has been integrated into GDB.
1564 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
1565 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
1566 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
1568 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1569 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
1570 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
1571 and allows for more dynamic content.
1573 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
1574 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
1575 have an is_valid method.
1577 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1578 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
1579 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
1581 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
1583 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
1584 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
1585 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
1586 that function like so:
1588 result = some_value (10,20)
1590 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
1591 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
1592 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
1594 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
1595 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
1596 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
1597 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
1598 New function: register_pretty_printer.
1600 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
1601 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
1603 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
1605 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
1608 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
1609 holds the thread's name.
1611 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
1612 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
1613 occurring in the process being debugged.
1614 The following events are currently supported:
1615 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
1616 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
1617 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
1621 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
1622 instantiation. For example, if you have:
1624 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
1626 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
1627 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
1628 was added to GCC 4.5.
1630 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
1631 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
1632 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
1633 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
1634 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
1635 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
1637 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
1638 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
1639 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
1640 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
1641 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
1643 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
1644 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
1645 execution to a label.
1647 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
1648 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
1649 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
1650 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
1652 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
1653 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
1654 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
1657 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
1659 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
1660 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
1661 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
1662 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
1663 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
1664 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
1667 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
1669 While now you see this:
1672 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
1674 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
1677 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
1678 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
1679 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
1680 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
1682 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
1683 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
1684 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
1685 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
1686 section in the user manual for more details.
1688 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1690 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
1691 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
1693 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
1695 * New native configurations
1697 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
1701 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
1703 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
1704 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
1705 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
1706 in the GDB user manual.
1708 * Guile support was removed.
1710 * New features in the GNU simulator
1712 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
1714 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
1716 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
1718 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
1720 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
1721 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
1722 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
1723 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
1724 was always disabled for such configurations.
1728 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
1730 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
1731 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
1741 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
1742 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
1743 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
1745 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
1747 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
1748 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
1749 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
1750 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
1752 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
1753 mentioned flavors of operators.
1755 ** static const class members
1757 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
1758 class definition has been fixed.
1760 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
1762 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
1763 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
1764 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
1765 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
1766 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
1767 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
1769 * Static tracepoints
1771 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
1772 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
1773 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
1774 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
1775 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
1776 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
1777 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
1778 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
1779 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
1780 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
1781 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
1782 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
1783 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
1784 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
1785 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
1786 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
1787 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
1788 the "New remote packets" section below.
1790 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
1792 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
1793 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
1794 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
1795 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
1799 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
1800 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
1801 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
1802 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
1803 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
1804 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
1805 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
1807 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
1810 * New remote packets
1814 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
1818 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
1819 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
1820 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
1821 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
1822 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
1823 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
1827 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
1831 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
1834 qXfer:statictrace:read
1836 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
1837 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
1838 to gdb's qSupported query.
1842 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
1846 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
1847 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
1849 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
1850 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
1853 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1855 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
1856 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
1857 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
1858 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
1860 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
1861 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
1862 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
1863 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
1864 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
1865 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
1866 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
1868 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
1869 for static tracepoints support.
1871 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
1873 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
1874 it understands register description.
1876 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
1878 * X86 general purpose registers
1880 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
1881 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
1882 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
1883 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
1884 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
1886 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
1887 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
1888 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
1889 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
1890 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
1891 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
1893 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
1894 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
1895 in the specified file.
1897 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
1898 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
1899 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
1900 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
1901 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
1902 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
1903 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
1904 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
1905 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
1906 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
1910 eval template, expressions...
1911 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
1912 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
1914 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
1915 show target-file-system-kind
1916 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
1919 save breakpoints <filename>
1920 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
1921 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
1922 definitions, use the `source' command.
1924 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
1927 info static-tracepoint-markers
1928 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
1930 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
1931 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
1932 function, line, address, or marker ID.
1936 Enable and disable observer mode.
1938 set may-write-registers on|off
1939 set may-write-memory on|off
1940 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
1941 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
1942 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
1943 set may-interrupt on|off
1944 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
1945 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
1946 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
1947 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
1948 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
1949 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
1950 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
1952 set record memory-query on|off
1953 show record memory-query
1954 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
1955 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
1960 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
1964 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
1965 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
1966 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
1967 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
1968 GDB using Python' in the manual.
1970 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
1971 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
1972 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
1973 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
1975 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
1976 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
1978 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
1980 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
1982 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
1984 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
1985 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
1986 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
1988 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
1989 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
1990 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
1991 regular breakpoints.
1995 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
1997 * D language support.
1998 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
2001 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
2002 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
2003 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
2004 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
2005 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
2007 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
2008 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
2009 conditions of the form:
2011 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
2013 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
2014 interface mentioned above.
2016 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
2020 ** Namespace Support
2022 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
2023 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
2024 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
2025 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
2026 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
2030 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
2031 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
2036 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
2037 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
2041 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
2046 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
2049 * Multi-program debugging.
2051 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
2052 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
2053 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
2054 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
2055 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
2056 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
2057 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
2058 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
2060 * New tracing features
2062 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
2064 ** Trace state variables
2066 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
2067 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
2068 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
2069 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
2070 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
2071 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
2072 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
2073 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
2074 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
2075 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
2079 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
2080 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
2081 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
2082 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
2083 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
2084 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
2085 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
2086 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
2087 the regular trace command.
2089 ** Disconnected tracing
2091 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
2092 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
2093 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
2094 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
2095 connection is lost unexpectedly.
2099 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
2100 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
2101 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
2102 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
2103 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
2104 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
2107 ** Circular trace buffer
2109 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
2110 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
2111 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
2112 not be available for all target agents.
2117 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
2118 the arguments to be comma-separated.
2121 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
2122 which only declare a variable are not shown.
2125 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
2126 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
2129 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
2130 "set script-extension" (see below).
2132 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2134 record save [<FILENAME>]
2135 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
2136 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
2138 record restore <FILENAME>
2139 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
2140 earlier time, for replay debugging.
2142 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
2145 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
2146 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
2147 inferior has loaded.
2152 maint info program-spaces
2153 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
2155 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
2156 show remote interrupt-sequence
2157 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
2158 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
2159 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
2160 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
2161 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
2163 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
2164 show remote interrupt-on-connect
2165 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
2166 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
2169 set remotebreak [on | off]
2171 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
2173 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
2174 Create or modify a trace state variable.
2177 List trace state variables and their values.
2179 delete tvariable $NAME ...
2180 Delete one or more trace state variables.
2183 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
2184 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
2186 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
2187 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
2189 * New expression syntax
2191 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
2192 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
2196 set follow-exec-mode new|same
2197 show follow-exec-mode
2198 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
2199 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
2200 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
2202 set default-collect EXPR, ...
2203 show default-collect
2204 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
2205 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
2206 such as registers or a critical global variable.
2208 set disconnected-tracing
2209 show disconnected-tracing
2210 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
2211 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
2214 set circular-trace-buffer
2215 show circular-trace-buffer
2216 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
2217 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
2218 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
2219 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
2221 set script-extension off|soft|strict
2222 show script-extension
2223 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
2224 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
2225 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
2226 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
2228 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
2230 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
2231 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
2232 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
2233 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
2234 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
2235 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
2236 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
2239 * Python API Improvements
2241 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
2242 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
2243 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
2245 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
2246 `is_base_class' attribute.
2248 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
2250 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
2251 evaluate an expression.
2253 * New remote packets
2256 Define a trace state variable.
2259 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
2262 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
2265 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
2268 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
2272 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
2274 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
2275 much more reliable. In particular:
2276 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
2277 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
2278 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
2279 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
2280 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
2281 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
2282 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
2283 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
2284 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
2285 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
2286 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
2287 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
2288 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
2289 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
2290 non-threaded programs.
2292 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
2293 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
2294 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
2297 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
2299 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
2300 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
2301 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
2302 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
2303 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
2305 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
2306 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
2307 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
2308 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
2309 for tracepoint actions.
2311 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
2312 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
2313 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
2315 * Process record and replay
2317 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
2318 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
2319 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
2322 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
2323 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
2324 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
2327 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
2328 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
2331 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
2332 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
2333 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
2334 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
2335 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
2336 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
2337 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
2338 the installation instructions for more information.
2340 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
2341 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
2342 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
2343 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
2345 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
2346 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
2348 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
2349 now complete on file names.
2351 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
2352 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
2353 For instance, consider:
2355 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
2356 # struct example variable;
2359 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
2360 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
2362 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
2363 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
2365 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
2366 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
2369 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
2370 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
2371 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
2373 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
2374 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
2375 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
2376 and simulator targets may also provide them.
2378 * New remote packets
2381 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
2384 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
2385 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
2386 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
2389 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
2390 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
2393 Obtains additional operating system information
2397 Read or write additional signal information.
2399 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
2401 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
2402 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
2403 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
2405 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
2406 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
2408 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
2409 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
2410 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
2412 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
2413 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
2415 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
2417 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
2419 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
2420 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
2422 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
2423 list of section offsets.
2425 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
2426 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
2427 have also been fixed.
2429 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
2430 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
2431 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
2433 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
2436 template<typename T> class C { };
2439 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
2441 ptype C<char const *>
2442 ptype C<char const*>
2443 ptype C<const char *>
2444 ptype C<const char*>
2446 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
2448 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
2449 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
2451 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
2452 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
2453 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
2455 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
2456 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
2458 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
2461 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
2462 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
2464 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
2465 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
2470 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
2471 available is determined at configure time.
2473 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
2475 * Ada tasking support
2477 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
2481 Print the list of Ada tasks.
2483 Print detailed information about task number N.
2485 Print the task number of the current task.
2487 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
2489 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
2490 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
2492 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
2494 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
2495 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
2496 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
2497 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
2498 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
2499 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
2502 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
2503 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
2506 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
2507 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
2508 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
2509 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
2512 * Multi-architecture debugging.
2514 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
2515 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
2516 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
2517 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
2518 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
2520 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
2521 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
2522 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
2523 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
2524 --enable-targets configure option.
2526 * Non-stop mode debugging.
2528 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
2529 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
2530 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
2531 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
2532 section in the user manual for more information.
2534 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
2535 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
2536 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
2537 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
2538 extensions on linux targets.
2540 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2542 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
2543 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
2544 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
2545 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
2546 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
2547 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
2548 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
2549 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
2550 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
2552 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
2554 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
2556 maint set python print-stack
2557 maint show python print-stack
2558 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
2561 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
2566 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
2570 Show operating system information about processes.
2573 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
2576 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
2579 Detach from inferior number NUM.
2582 Kill inferior number NUM.
2586 set spu stop-on-load
2587 show spu stop-on-load
2588 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2590 set spu auto-flush-cache
2591 show spu auto-flush-cache
2592 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
2593 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2595 set sh calling-convention
2596 show sh calling-convention
2597 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
2600 show debug timestamp
2601 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
2603 set disassemble-next-line
2604 show disassemble-next-line
2605 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
2608 set remote noack-packet
2609 show remote noack-packet
2610 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
2611 under "New remote packets."
2613 set remote query-attached-packet
2614 show remote query-attached-packet
2615 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
2617 set remote read-siginfo-object
2618 show remote read-siginfo-object
2619 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
2622 set remote write-siginfo-object
2623 show remote write-siginfo-object
2624 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
2627 set remote reverse-continue
2628 show remote reverse-continue
2629 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
2631 set remote reverse-step
2632 show remote reverse-step
2633 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
2635 set displaced-stepping
2636 show displaced-stepping
2637 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
2638 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
2639 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
2642 show debug displaced
2643 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
2645 maint set internal-error
2646 maint show internal-error
2647 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
2649 maint set internal-warning
2650 maint show internal-warning
2651 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
2656 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
2658 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
2659 show multiple-symbols
2660 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
2661 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
2662 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
2664 set breakpoint always-inserted
2665 show breakpoint always-inserted
2666 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
2667 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
2668 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
2670 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2671 show arm fallback-mode
2672 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2674 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
2675 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
2676 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
2677 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
2679 set disable-randomization
2680 show disable-randomization
2681 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
2682 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
2683 multiple debugging sessions.
2687 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
2692 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
2693 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
2694 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
2695 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
2697 set target-wide-charset
2698 show target-wide-charset
2699 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
2700 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
2702 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
2704 set tcp connect-timeout
2705 show tcp connect-timeout
2706 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
2707 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
2708 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
2710 set libthread-db-search-path
2711 show libthread-db-search-path
2712 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
2715 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
2716 show schedule-multiple
2717 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
2718 the current process.
2722 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
2723 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
2724 affecting correctness.
2726 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
2727 show interactive-mode
2728 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
2729 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
2730 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
2731 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
2732 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
2737 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
2738 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
2739 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
2743 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
2744 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
2745 alias for the `fork' command.
2748 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
2749 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
2750 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
2753 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
2754 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
2755 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
2759 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
2760 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
2761 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
2764 * New native configurations
2766 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
2768 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
2772 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
2773 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
2774 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
2777 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
2778 (mingw32ce) debugging.
2784 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
2786 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
2788 * New native configurations
2790 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
2791 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
2795 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
2796 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
2798 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2800 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
2801 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
2802 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
2803 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
2805 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
2806 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
2808 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
2811 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
2812 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
2813 and in inlined functions.
2815 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
2816 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
2817 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
2819 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
2821 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
2822 registers on PowerPC targets.
2824 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
2825 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
2827 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
2828 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
2830 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
2831 extended-remote mode.
2833 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
2834 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
2835 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
2836 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
2838 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
2839 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
2840 target architectures.
2842 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
2843 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
2844 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
2845 stored in two consecutive float registers.
2847 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
2850 * Improved support for debugging Ada
2851 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
2853 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
2854 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
2855 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
2856 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
2858 - Improved command completion in Ada
2861 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
2866 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
2867 show print frame-arguments
2868 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
2869 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
2874 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2881 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2883 * New remote packets
2890 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
2893 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
2897 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
2899 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
2901 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
2902 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
2903 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
2905 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
2906 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
2907 -Bsymbolic linker option.
2909 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
2910 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
2913 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
2914 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
2916 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
2917 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
2919 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
2921 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
2922 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
2923 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
2925 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
2926 automatically displayed as character or string data.
2928 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
2929 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
2932 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
2933 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
2934 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
2936 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
2939 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
2940 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
2941 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
2943 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
2945 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
2947 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
2948 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
2949 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
2951 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
2952 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
2954 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
2955 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
2956 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
2957 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
2958 Windows and SymbianOS).
2960 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
2961 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
2963 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
2964 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
2970 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
2971 when debugging using remote targets.
2973 set mem inaccessible-by-default
2974 show mem inaccessible-by-default
2975 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2976 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2977 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
2978 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
2979 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
2981 set breakpoint auto-hw
2982 show breakpoint auto-hw
2983 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2984 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2985 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
2986 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
2987 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
2988 including "next" and "finish".
2991 catch exception unhandled
2992 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
2995 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
2999 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
3000 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
3001 an alias to "set sysroot".
3004 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
3005 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
3008 * New native configurations
3010 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
3013 unset tdesc filename
3015 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
3016 not query the target for its built-in description.
3020 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
3021 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
3022 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
3024 * New remote packets
3027 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
3028 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
3030 qXfer:features:read:
3031 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
3036 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
3037 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
3039 qXfer:libraries:read:
3040 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
3041 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
3042 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
3043 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
3047 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
3055 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
3056 i[34567]86-*-netware*
3057 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
3058 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
3060 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
3063 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
3064 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
3073 * Other removed features
3080 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
3087 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
3092 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
3093 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
3098 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
3099 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
3101 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
3103 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
3104 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
3105 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
3106 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
3108 MIPS ".pdr" sections
3110 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
3111 in debugging information.
3115 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
3116 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
3118 set mips stack-arg-size
3119 set mips saved-gpreg-size
3121 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
3123 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
3128 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
3130 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
3131 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
3132 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
3134 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
3135 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
3138 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
3139 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
3141 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
3142 stub provides the required support.
3144 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
3145 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
3150 unset substitute-path
3151 show substitute-path
3152 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
3153 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
3154 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
3155 between compilation and debugging.
3159 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
3160 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
3161 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
3165 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
3167 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
3168 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
3170 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
3172 * New remote packets
3175 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
3176 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
3177 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
3178 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
3182 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
3183 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
3185 qXfer:memory-map:read:
3186 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
3187 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
3192 Erase and program a flash memory device.
3194 * Removed remote packets
3197 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
3198 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
3200 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
3204 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
3206 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
3210 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
3211 only if it doesn't already have a value.
3213 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
3215 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
3217 restart <n> Return the program state to a
3218 previously saved state.
3220 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
3222 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
3224 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
3225 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
3227 info forks List forks of the user program that
3228 are available to be debugged.
3230 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
3231 forks of the user program that are
3232 available to be debugged.
3234 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
3235 that are available to be debugged (and
3236 kill the forked process).
3238 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
3239 that are available to be debugged (and
3240 allow the process to continue).
3244 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
3246 * Improved Windows host support
3248 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
3249 native console support, and remote communications using either
3250 network sockets or serial ports.
3252 * Improved Modula-2 language support
3254 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
3255 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
3256 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
3257 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
3258 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
3259 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
3263 The ARM rdi-share module.
3265 The Netware NLM debug server.
3267 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
3269 * New native configurations
3271 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
3272 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
3276 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
3278 * New command line options
3280 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
3281 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
3282 the child (debugged) program exited with.
3283 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
3284 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
3285 specified multiple times and in conjunction
3286 with the --command (-x) option.
3288 * Deprecated commands removed
3290 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
3294 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
3295 othernames set arm disassembler
3296 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
3297 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
3298 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
3301 * New BSD user-level threads support
3303 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
3304 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
3307 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3308 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
3309 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
3311 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
3312 are not yet supported.
3314 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
3315 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
3317 * REMOVED configurations and files
3319 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
3320 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
3321 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
3323 * New "set print array-indexes" command
3325 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
3326 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
3329 * VAX floating point support
3331 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
3333 * User-defined command support
3335 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
3336 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
3337 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
3339 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
3341 * New command line option
3343 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
3346 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
3348 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
3349 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
3350 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
3351 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
3352 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
3354 * Internationalization
3356 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
3357 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
3358 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
3362 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
3363 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
3364 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
3366 * New native configurations
3368 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
3372 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
3373 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
3375 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
3377 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
3378 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
3379 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
3382 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
3383 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
3384 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
3394 powerpc bdm protocol
3396 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
3397 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
3399 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3401 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3402 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3403 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3404 permanently REMOVED.
3413 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
3415 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
3417 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
3418 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
3421 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
3423 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
3424 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
3425 IRIX long double values).
3429 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
3430 command. This problem has been fixed.
3432 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
3434 * Fix for ``many threads''
3436 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
3437 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
3440 ptrace: No such process.
3441 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
3443 This problem has been fixed.
3445 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
3447 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
3450 * New ``start'' command.
3452 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
3454 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
3456 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
3457 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
3458 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
3460 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3461 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
3462 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
3463 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
3464 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
3465 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
3466 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
3467 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
3468 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
3470 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
3472 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
3473 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
3474 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
3475 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
3476 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
3478 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
3479 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
3480 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3482 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
3484 * New native configurations
3486 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
3487 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
3488 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
3489 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
3490 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
3491 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
3492 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
3494 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
3496 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
3497 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
3498 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
3499 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
3500 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
3501 work, was also included.
3503 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
3504 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
3514 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
3515 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
3517 * REMOVED configurations and files
3519 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3520 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3521 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3522 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3523 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3524 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3525 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
3526 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3527 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3528 sonymips mips-sony-*
3529 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
3531 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
3533 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
3535 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
3536 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
3537 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
3538 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
3541 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
3543 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
3544 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
3545 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
3546 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
3547 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
3548 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
3551 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
3553 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
3555 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
3556 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
3557 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
3559 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
3561 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
3562 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
3564 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
3566 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
3567 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
3568 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
3570 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
3572 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
3573 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
3575 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
3577 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
3578 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
3579 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
3581 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
3583 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
3584 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
3585 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
3587 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
3589 * Removed --with-mmalloc
3591 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
3592 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
3594 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
3596 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
3597 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
3598 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
3599 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
3601 * Revised SPARC target
3603 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
3604 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
3605 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
3606 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
3607 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
3611 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
3612 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
3613 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
3616 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3618 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
3619 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
3622 * C++ nested types and namespaces
3624 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
3625 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
3626 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
3627 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
3628 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
3629 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
3630 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
3631 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
3632 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
3634 * New native configurations
3636 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
3637 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
3638 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
3639 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
3640 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
3642 * New debugging protocols
3644 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
3646 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
3648 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
3649 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
3650 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
3652 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3654 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3655 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3656 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3657 permanently REMOVED.
3659 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3660 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3661 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3662 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3663 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3664 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3665 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
3666 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3667 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3668 sonymips mips-sony-*
3669 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
3671 * REMOVED configurations and files
3673 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
3674 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
3675 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3676 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3677 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3678 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3679 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3680 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
3681 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
3682 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
3683 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3684 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3685 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
3686 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
3687 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
3688 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3689 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
3691 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
3695 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
3696 integrated into GDB.
3698 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
3700 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
3701 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
3702 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
3705 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
3706 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
3707 DWARF 2 CFI support.
3711 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
3712 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
3713 remote protocol documentation for details.
3715 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
3717 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
3718 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
3719 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
3722 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
3724 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
3725 per-thread variables.
3727 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
3729 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
3730 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
3732 * Separate debug info.
3734 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
3735 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
3736 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
3737 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
3738 and optional debug files.
3740 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3742 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
3743 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
3746 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
3747 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
3751 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
3752 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
3753 considered "useable".
3755 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
3757 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
3758 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
3761 * GDB supports logging output to a file
3763 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
3764 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
3766 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
3768 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
3769 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
3772 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
3774 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
3775 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
3779 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
3780 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
3781 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
3782 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
3783 data, for more informative profiling results.
3785 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
3787 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
3788 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
3789 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
3791 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
3794 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
3795 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
3796 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
3797 in a subsequent -var-update.
3799 * New native configurations.
3801 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3803 * Multi-arched targets.
3805 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
3806 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
3808 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3810 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3811 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3812 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3813 permanently REMOVED.
3815 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3816 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3817 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3818 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3819 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3820 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
3821 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
3822 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3823 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3824 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
3825 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3826 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
3828 * REMOVED configurations and files
3831 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3832 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
3833 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3834 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3835 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
3836 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3838 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
3839 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3840 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3841 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3842 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3843 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3845 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
3847 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
3848 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
3849 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
3850 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
3851 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
3853 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
3855 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
3857 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
3858 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
3859 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
3860 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
3861 shared libs like mad''.
3863 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
3865 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
3866 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
3867 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
3868 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
3870 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
3872 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
3873 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
3876 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
3877 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
3879 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
3880 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
3882 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
3883 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
3884 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
3885 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
3887 * Multi-arched targets.
3889 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
3890 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
3892 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
3893 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
3894 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
3898 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
3901 * New native configurations
3903 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
3904 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
3905 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
3906 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
3908 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3910 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3911 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3912 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3913 permanently REMOVED.
3915 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3916 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3917 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
3918 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3919 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3920 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3921 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3922 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3923 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
3924 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3926 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
3927 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3929 * OBSOLETE languages
3931 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
3933 * REMOVED configurations and files
3935 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3936 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3937 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3938 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3939 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3941 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
3943 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
3945 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
3946 commands. The default is 1024.
3948 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
3950 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
3952 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
3954 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
3955 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
3956 from a file into memory (restore).
3958 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
3960 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
3961 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
3962 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
3964 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
3972 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
3973 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
3974 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
3976 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
3977 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
3978 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
3980 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
3981 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
3982 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
3984 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
3985 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
3986 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
3988 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
3990 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
3992 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
3993 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
3994 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
3995 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
3996 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
3997 (notably embedded) targets.
3999 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
4001 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
4002 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
4003 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
4004 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
4006 * New command line option
4008 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
4010 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
4012 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
4013 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
4014 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
4015 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
4016 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
4017 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
4018 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
4019 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
4020 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
4021 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
4023 * Changes in ARM configurations.
4025 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
4026 configuration is fully multi-arch.
4028 * New native configurations
4030 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
4031 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
4032 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
4033 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
4037 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
4039 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4041 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4042 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4043 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4044 permanently REMOVED.
4046 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
4047 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4048 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4049 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4050 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4052 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
4054 * REMOVED configurations and files
4056 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4058 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4059 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4060 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
4061 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
4062 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
4063 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
4064 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
4065 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
4066 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4067 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
4068 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
4070 * Changes to command line processing
4072 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
4073 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
4075 * Changes to key bindings
4077 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
4079 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
4081 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
4083 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
4086 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
4088 Numerous documentation fixes.
4090 Numerous testsuite fixes.
4092 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
4094 * New native configurations
4096 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
4097 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
4098 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
4099 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4100 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
4101 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
4105 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
4107 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
4109 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4111 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
4112 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
4113 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
4114 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
4115 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4117 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
4118 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4119 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4120 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
4121 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
4122 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4123 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
4124 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
4126 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
4127 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
4129 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4130 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4131 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4132 permanently REMOVED.
4134 * REMOVED configurations and files
4136 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
4137 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
4139 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
4143 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
4145 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
4146 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
4151 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
4153 * The MI enabled by default.
4155 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
4156 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
4157 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
4158 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
4159 which is now deprecated.
4161 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
4163 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
4164 main features are supported:
4166 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
4168 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
4171 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
4173 - a Pascal expression parser.
4175 However, some important features are not yet supported.
4177 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
4179 - there are some problems with boolean types;
4181 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
4182 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
4184 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
4186 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
4188 * Changes in completion.
4190 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
4191 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
4192 users expect at the shell prompt.
4194 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
4195 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
4196 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
4197 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
4198 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
4199 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
4200 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
4202 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
4204 * New platform-independent commands:
4206 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
4207 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
4208 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
4210 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
4212 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
4213 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
4214 many threads as your system allows you to have.
4216 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
4218 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
4219 multi-threaded programs though.
4221 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
4223 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
4225 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
4226 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
4229 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
4231 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
4232 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
4233 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
4234 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
4235 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
4238 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
4239 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
4240 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
4242 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
4244 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
4245 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
4247 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
4248 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
4251 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
4252 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
4253 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
4254 a given linear address.
4256 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
4257 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
4258 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
4260 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
4262 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
4264 * Changes in documentation.
4266 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
4267 Documentation License.
4269 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
4272 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
4274 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
4277 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
4278 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
4279 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
4281 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
4283 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
4284 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
4285 contents of this file.
4289 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
4291 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
4293 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
4295 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
4296 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
4297 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
4298 greater level of detail.
4300 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
4302 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
4303 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
4304 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
4307 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
4309 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
4310 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
4311 machines ``out of the box''.
4313 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
4314 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
4315 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
4316 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
4317 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
4319 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
4320 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
4321 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
4322 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
4323 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
4325 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
4326 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
4329 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
4332 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
4333 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
4334 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
4335 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
4337 * New native configurations
4339 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
4340 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
4344 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
4345 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
4346 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
4347 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4349 * OBSOLETE configurations
4351 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
4352 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
4354 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
4357 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
4358 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
4359 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
4360 be permanently REMOVED.
4362 * Gould support removed
4364 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
4366 * New features for SVR4
4368 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
4369 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
4370 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
4372 * Many C++ enhancements
4374 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
4375 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
4377 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
4379 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
4380 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
4381 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
4382 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
4384 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
4385 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
4387 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
4389 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
4390 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
4391 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
4393 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
4394 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
4396 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
4398 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
4399 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
4400 include ``set remote P-packet''.
4402 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
4404 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
4405 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
4406 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
4408 * ``apropos'' command added.
4410 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
4411 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
4412 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
4416 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
4417 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
4418 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
4419 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
4420 enabled by configuring with:
4422 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
4424 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
4426 * New native configurations
4428 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
4429 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
4430 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
4434 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4435 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
4436 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4438 * OBSOLETE configurations
4440 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
4442 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
4443 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
4444 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
4445 be permanently REMOVED.
4449 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
4450 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
4451 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
4452 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
4453 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
4454 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
4455 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
4460 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
4462 * set extension-language
4464 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
4465 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
4466 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
4467 set extension-language .c c++
4468 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
4469 and their associated languages.
4471 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
4473 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
4474 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
4475 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
4479 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
4480 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
4482 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
4483 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
4485 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
4486 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
4487 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
4488 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
4489 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
4490 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
4491 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
4492 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
4494 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
4495 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
4496 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
4497 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
4501 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
4502 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
4503 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
4504 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
4505 for xdb and dbx commands.
4509 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
4510 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
4511 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
4513 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
4514 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
4515 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
4517 * Debugging across forks
4519 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
4524 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
4525 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
4526 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
4528 * GDB remote protocol additions
4530 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
4531 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
4532 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
4533 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
4535 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
4536 full 64-bit address. The command
4538 set remoteaddresssize 32
4540 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
4541 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
4544 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
4545 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
4547 maint packet heythere
4549 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
4550 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
4553 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
4554 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
4555 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
4557 * Tracing can collect general expressions
4559 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
4560 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
4561 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
4563 * mask-address variable for Mips
4565 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
4566 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
4567 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
4569 * Higher serial baud rates
4571 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
4572 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
4573 to achieve all of these rates.)
4577 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
4578 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
4581 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
4583 * New native configurations
4585 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
4586 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
4587 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4588 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
4589 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4590 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
4591 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
4595 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4596 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
4597 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4598 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
4599 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
4600 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
4601 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
4602 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
4603 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
4604 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4605 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
4607 * New debugging protocols
4609 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
4610 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
4611 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
4612 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4613 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4614 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4618 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
4619 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
4624 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
4625 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
4627 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
4629 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
4630 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
4631 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
4633 * Live range splitting
4635 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
4636 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
4637 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
4641 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
4642 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
4646 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
4647 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
4648 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
4653 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
4658 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
4659 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
4660 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
4661 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
4662 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
4663 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
4667 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
4668 the symbol at the specified address.
4672 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
4673 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
4674 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
4675 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
4676 file tracepoint.c for more details.
4680 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
4681 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
4682 of most MIPS variants.
4686 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
4687 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
4688 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
4692 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
4693 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
4694 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
4695 the possible architectures.
4697 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
4699 * New native configurations
4701 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
4702 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
4703 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
4704 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
4705 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4706 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
4710 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
4711 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4712 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
4713 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
4714 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
4716 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4720 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
4721 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
4722 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
4723 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
4724 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
4728 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
4730 * Windows 95/NT native
4732 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
4733 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
4734 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
4735 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
4736 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
4738 * dont-repeat command
4740 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
4741 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
4742 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
4743 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
4745 * Send break instead of ^C
4747 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
4748 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
4749 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
4751 * Remote protocol timeout
4753 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
4754 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
4755 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
4757 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
4759 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
4760 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
4761 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
4762 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
4763 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
4765 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
4766 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
4767 automatically on hpux10.
4769 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
4771 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
4773 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
4775 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
4776 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
4777 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
4778 every character. The default value is 1050.
4780 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
4782 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
4783 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
4784 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
4785 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
4786 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
4787 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
4789 * Speedups for remote debugging
4791 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
4792 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
4793 and more efficient S-record downloading.
4795 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
4797 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
4798 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
4800 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
4802 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
4804 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
4805 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
4807 * Remote targets use caching
4809 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
4810 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
4811 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
4812 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
4813 off' turns the the data cache off.
4815 * Remote targets may have threads
4817 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
4818 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
4819 gdb/remote.c for details.
4823 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
4824 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
4825 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
4826 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
4827 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
4828 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
4829 sequence is something like
4831 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
4833 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
4837 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
4838 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
4839 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
4840 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
4841 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
4842 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
4843 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
4844 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
4848 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
4849 but does simplify configuration and building.
4853 GDB now supports hpux10.
4855 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
4857 * New native configurations
4859 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
4860 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
4861 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
4862 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
4866 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4867 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
4868 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
4869 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
4872 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
4874 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
4875 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
4876 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
4877 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
4878 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
4880 * Arguments to user-defined commands
4882 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
4883 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
4886 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
4888 To execute the command use:
4891 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
4892 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
4893 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
4895 * New `if' and `while' commands
4897 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
4898 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
4899 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
4900 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
4901 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
4902 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
4903 if the expression is zero.
4905 * Fortran source language mode
4907 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
4908 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
4909 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
4910 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
4913 * Better HPUX support
4915 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
4916 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
4917 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
4918 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
4919 that behavior do the following before running the program:
4925 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
4926 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
4932 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
4933 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
4936 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
4937 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
4939 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
4941 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
4942 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
4943 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
4944 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
4945 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
4946 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
4948 * New DOS host serial code
4950 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
4951 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
4954 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
4956 * New "complete" command
4958 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
4959 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
4961 * Trailing space optional in prompt
4963 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
4964 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
4966 * Breakpoint hit counts
4968 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
4969 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
4970 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
4971 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
4972 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
4975 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
4977 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
4978 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
4979 arrays actually contain only short strings.
4981 * Shared library breakpoints
4983 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
4984 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
4986 * Hardware watchpoints
4988 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
4989 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
4991 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
4995 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
4996 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
4998 * Improved Irix 5 support
5000 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
5002 * Improved HPPA support
5004 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
5006 * New native configurations
5008 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
5009 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
5010 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
5011 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
5015 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
5016 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
5019 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
5021 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
5022 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
5026 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
5027 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
5029 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
5031 * Irix 5 is now supported
5035 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
5036 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
5037 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
5038 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
5039 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
5042 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
5044 * User visible changes:
5048 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
5049 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
5050 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
5051 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
5052 debugging info for the mips target).
5054 * DEC Alpha native support
5056 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
5057 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
5058 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
5059 Alpha-specific notes.
5061 * Preliminary thread implementation
5063 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
5065 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
5067 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
5068 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
5071 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
5073 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
5074 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
5075 call methods, ...etc.
5077 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
5079 * User visible changes:
5081 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
5082 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
5083 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
5084 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
5086 Filename completion now works.
5088 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
5089 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
5090 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
5092 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
5093 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
5094 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
5095 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
5096 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
5100 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
5101 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
5104 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
5108 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
5109 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
5110 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
5114 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
5115 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
5116 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
5117 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
5118 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
5122 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
5123 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
5124 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
5126 * New targets supported
5128 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5129 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
5130 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
5131 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
5132 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
5134 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
5135 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
5136 GO32 memory extender.
5138 * New remote protocols
5140 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
5142 * New source languages supported
5144 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
5145 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
5146 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
5149 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
5151 * HP Precision Architecture supported
5153 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
5154 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
5155 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
5156 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
5157 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
5158 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
5160 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
5162 * Faster and better demangling
5164 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
5165 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
5166 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
5167 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
5168 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
5169 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
5172 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
5173 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
5174 compiler does not actually implement.
5176 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
5178 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
5179 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
5180 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
5181 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
5182 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
5183 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
5186 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
5187 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
5189 * Improved configure script
5191 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
5192 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
5193 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
5194 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
5196 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
5197 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
5198 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
5199 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
5200 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
5201 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
5203 * Documentation improvements
5205 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
5206 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
5207 before submitting changes.
5209 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
5210 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
5211 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
5212 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
5213 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
5215 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
5216 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
5217 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
5218 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
5219 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
5220 around this problem.
5224 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
5225 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
5226 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
5229 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
5230 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
5232 * New native hosts supported
5234 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
5235 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
5237 * New targets supported
5239 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
5241 * New file formats supported
5243 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
5244 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
5248 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
5250 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
5251 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
5253 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
5254 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
5255 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
5257 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
5258 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
5260 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
5261 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
5262 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
5265 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
5266 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
5267 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
5268 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
5269 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
5271 * Internal improvements
5273 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
5274 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
5276 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
5277 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
5278 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
5279 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
5280 shared code that handles any of them.
5282 * New command line options
5284 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
5288 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
5289 General Public License.
5291 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
5293 * Host/native/target split
5295 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
5296 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
5297 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
5298 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
5299 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
5301 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
5302 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
5303 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
5304 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
5305 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
5306 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
5307 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
5309 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
5310 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
5311 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
5313 * New hosts supported
5315 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
5316 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
5317 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
5319 * New targets supported
5321 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
5322 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
5324 * New native hosts supported
5326 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
5327 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
5328 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
5330 * New file formats supported
5332 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
5333 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
5334 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
5338 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
5339 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
5340 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
5342 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
5344 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
5345 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
5346 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
5347 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
5351 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
5352 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
5353 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
5355 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
5359 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
5360 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
5363 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
5364 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
5366 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
5367 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
5368 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
5369 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
5370 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
5371 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
5373 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
5374 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
5375 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
5376 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
5380 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
5381 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
5382 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
5383 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
5384 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
5386 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
5387 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
5388 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
5389 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
5393 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
5394 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
5395 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
5396 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
5397 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
5398 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
5399 each instruction being stepped through.
5401 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
5402 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
5404 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
5405 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
5406 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
5407 processor with a serial port.
5411 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
5412 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
5413 supported, and what files each one uses.
5417 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
5418 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
5419 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
5420 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
5422 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
5423 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
5424 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
5425 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
5429 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
5430 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
5431 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
5432 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
5433 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
5434 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
5436 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
5439 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
5441 * Better support for C++ function names
5443 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
5444 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
5445 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
5446 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
5447 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
5449 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
5450 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
5451 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
5452 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
5453 for the list of formats.
5455 * G++ symbol mangling problem
5457 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
5458 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
5459 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
5460 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
5461 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
5462 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
5465 * New 'maintenance' command
5467 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
5468 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
5469 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
5471 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
5472 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
5473 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
5474 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
5475 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
5476 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
5478 The following commands are new:
5480 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
5481 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
5482 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
5484 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
5486 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
5487 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
5488 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
5489 read after argv processing.
5491 * New hosts supported
5493 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
5495 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
5497 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
5498 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
5499 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
5500 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
5501 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
5504 * New targets supported
5506 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5508 * More smarts about finding #include files
5510 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
5511 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
5512 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
5513 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
5514 the one that contains your sources.
5516 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
5517 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
5518 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
5520 * Interesting infernals change
5522 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
5523 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
5524 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
5525 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
5527 * Bug fixes (of course!)
5529 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
5530 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
5531 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
5533 See the ChangeLog for details.
5535 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
5537 * New machines supported (host and target)
5539 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
5541 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
5543 * New malloc package
5545 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
5546 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
5547 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
5548 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
5549 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
5550 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
5554 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
5555 'help info proc' for details.
5557 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
5559 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
5560 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
5563 * File name changes for MS-DOS
5565 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
5566 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
5567 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
5568 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
5569 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
5570 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
5572 * Cross byte order fixes
5574 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
5575 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
5577 * New -mapped and -readnow options
5579 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
5580 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
5581 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
5582 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
5583 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
5584 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
5585 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
5586 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
5587 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
5588 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
5590 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
5591 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
5592 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
5593 slower, but makes future operations faster.
5595 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
5596 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
5597 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
5600 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
5602 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
5603 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
5604 shared across multiple host platforms.
5606 * longjmp() handling
5608 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
5609 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
5610 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
5611 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
5615 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
5616 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
5621 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
5622 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
5623 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
5625 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
5627 * New machines supported (host and target)
5629 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5631 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
5632 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
5634 * New machines supported (target)
5636 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5640 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
5641 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
5642 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
5644 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
5645 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
5646 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
5647 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
5648 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
5651 * New features for SVR4
5653 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
5654 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
5655 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
5657 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
5658 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
5659 it prints the address mappings of the process.
5661 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
5662 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
5664 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
5666 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
5667 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
5668 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
5669 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
5670 same code linked statically.
5674 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
5675 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
5676 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
5677 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
5678 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
5679 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
5683 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5684 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5685 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5688 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
5690 * New machines supported (host and target)
5692 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
5693 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
5694 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5696 * Almost SCO Unix support
5698 We had hoped to support:
5699 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5700 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
5701 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
5702 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
5704 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
5706 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
5707 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
5708 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
5709 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
5714 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
5715 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
5716 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
5720 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5721 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5722 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5724 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
5726 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
5727 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
5728 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
5730 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
5731 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
5732 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
5733 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
5736 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
5737 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
5738 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
5739 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
5742 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
5743 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
5746 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
5747 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
5748 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
5751 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
5753 * Improved configuration
5755 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
5756 Porting BFD is simpler.
5760 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
5761 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
5762 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
5763 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
5767 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
5769 * New host supported (not target)
5771 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
5774 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
5776 * Multiple source language support
5778 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
5779 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
5780 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
5781 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
5782 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
5783 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
5787 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
5788 currently under development at the State University of New York at
5789 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
5790 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
5792 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
5793 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
5794 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
5796 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
5797 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
5801 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
5802 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
5803 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
5804 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
5807 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
5809 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
5810 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
5811 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
5812 examining core files.
5816 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
5819 * New machines supported (host and target)
5821 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
5822 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
5823 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
5825 * New hosts supported (not targets)
5827 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
5829 * New targets supported (not hosts)
5831 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5832 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5833 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
5835 * New remote interfaces
5841 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
5845 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
5847 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
5848 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
5849 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
5850 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
5851 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
5852 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
5853 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
5854 stub on the target system.
5856 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
5858 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
5859 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
5860 object file types such as a.out and coff.
5862 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
5863 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
5866 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
5868 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
5869 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
5871 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
5872 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
5873 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
5875 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
5876 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
5877 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
5878 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
5880 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
5881 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
5882 it is already running. Default is ON.
5884 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
5885 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
5886 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
5887 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
5890 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
5891 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
5892 or the value of the environment variable
5895 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
5896 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
5899 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
5900 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
5901 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
5903 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
5904 history expansion will be performed on
5905 command line input. The default is OFF.
5907 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
5908 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
5909 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
5911 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
5912 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
5913 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5916 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
5917 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
5918 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5921 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
5922 ``set width'' instead.
5924 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
5925 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
5926 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
5927 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
5929 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
5932 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
5935 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
5938 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
5941 * Support for Epoch Environment.
5943 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
5944 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
5945 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
5949 * Support for Shared Libraries
5951 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
5952 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
5953 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
5954 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
5955 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
5956 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
5957 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
5958 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
5960 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
5961 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
5962 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
5964 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
5969 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
5970 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
5971 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
5972 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
5973 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
5974 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
5976 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
5978 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
5980 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5981 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5982 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5985 * C++ multiple inheritance
5987 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
5990 * C++ exception handling
5992 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
5993 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
5994 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
5997 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
5998 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
5999 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
6001 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
6002 current stack frame.
6005 * Minor command changes
6007 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
6008 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
6009 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
6011 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
6012 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
6013 frames without printing.
6015 * New directory command
6017 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
6018 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
6019 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
6020 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
6021 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
6023 * Configuring GDB for compilation
6025 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
6028 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
6029 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
6030 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
6031 where the program that you are debugging will run.
projects / deliverable / binutils-gdb.git / blob