7bf1e1acdef7d335a05d6326fbf498f7826a42d1
[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
4 *** Changes since GDB 7.11
5
6 * Fortran: Support structures with fields of dynamic types and
7 arrays of dynamic types.
8
9 * GDB now supports multibit bitfields and enums in target register
10 descriptions.
11
12 * New Python-based convenience function $_as_string(val), which returns
13 the textual representation of a value. This function is especially
14 useful to obtain the text label of an enum value.
15
16 * Intel MPX bound violation handling.
17
18 Segmentation faults caused by a Intel MPX boundary violation
19 now display the kind of violation (upper or lower), the memory
20 address accessed and the memory bounds, along with the usual
21 signal received and code location.
22
23 For example:
24
25 Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault
26 Upper bound violation while accessing address 0x7fffffffc3b3
27 Bounds: [lower = 0x7fffffffc390, upper = 0x7fffffffc3a3]
28 0x0000000000400d7c in upper () at i386-mpx-sigsegv.c:68
29
30 * New commands
31
32 skip -file file
33 skip -gfile file-glob-pattern
34 skip -function function
35 skip -rfunction regular-expression
36 A generalized form of the skip command, with new support for
37 glob-style file names and regular expressions for function names.
38 Additionally, a file spec and a function spec may now be combined.
39
40 maint info line-table REGEXP
41 Display the contents of GDB's internal line table data struture.
42
43 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on s390-linux and s390x-linux
44 was added in GDBserver, including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's
45 conditional expression bytecode into native code.
46
47 * Support for various remote target protocols and ROM monitors has
48 been removed:
49
50 target m32rsdi Remote M32R debugging over SDI
51 target mips MIPS remote debugging protocol
52 target pmon PMON ROM monitor
53 target ddb NEC's DDB variant of PMON for Vr4300
54 target rockhopper NEC RockHopper variant of PMON
55 target lsi LSI variant of PMO
56
57 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on powerpc-linux,
58 powerpc64-linux, and powerpc64le-linux was added in GDBserver,
59 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression
60 bytecode into native code.
61
62 *** Changes in GDB 7.11
63
64 * GDB now supports debugging kernel-based threads on FreeBSD.
65
66 * Per-inferior thread numbers
67
68 Thread numbers are now per inferior instead of global. If you're
69 debugging multiple inferiors, GDB displays thread IDs using a
70 qualified INF_NUM.THR_NUM form. For example:
71
72 (gdb) info threads
73 Id Target Id Frame
74 1.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8155) (running)
75 1.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8168) (running)
76 * 2.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157) (running)
77 2.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8190) (running)
78
79 As consequence, thread numbers as visible in the $_thread
80 convenience variable and in Python's InferiorThread.num attribute
81 are no longer unique between inferiors.
82
83 GDB now maintains a second thread ID per thread, referred to as the
84 global thread ID, which is the new equivalent of thread numbers in
85 previous releases. See also $_gthread below.
86
87 For backwards compatibility, MI's thread IDs always refer to global
88 IDs.
89
90 * Commands that accept thread IDs now accept the qualified
91 INF_NUM.THR_NUM form as well. For example:
92
93 (gdb) thread 2.1
94 [Switching to thread 2.1 (Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157))] (running)
95 (gdb)
96
97 * In commands that accept a list of thread IDs, you can now refer to
98 all threads of an inferior using a star wildcard. GDB accepts
99 "INF_NUM.*", to refer to all threads of inferior INF_NUM, and "*" to
100 refer to all threads of the current inferior. For example, "info
101 threads 2.*".
102
103 * You can use "info threads -gid" to display the global thread ID of
104 all threads.
105
106 * The new convenience variable $_gthread holds the global number of
107 the current thread.
108
109 * The new convenience variable $_inferior holds the number of the
110 current inferior.
111
112 * GDB now displays the ID and name of the thread that hit a breakpoint
113 or received a signal, if your program is multi-threaded. For
114 example:
115
116 Thread 3 "bar" hit Breakpoint 1 at 0x40087a: file program.c, line 20.
117 Thread 1 "main" received signal SIGINT, Interrupt.
118
119 * Record btrace now supports non-stop mode.
120
121 * Support for tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver.
122
123 * The 'record instruction-history' command now indicates speculative execution
124 when using the Intel Processor Trace recording format.
125
126 * GDB now allows users to specify explicit locations, bypassing
127 the linespec parser. This feature is also available to GDB/MI
128 clients.
129
130 * Multi-architecture debugging is supported on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
131 GDB now is able to debug both AArch64 applications and ARM applications
132 at the same time.
133
134 * Support for fast tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver,
135 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression bytecode
136 into native code.
137
138 * GDB now supports displaced stepping on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
139
140 * "info threads", "info inferiors", "info display", "info checkpoints"
141 and "maint info program-spaces" now list the corresponding items in
142 ascending ID order, for consistency with all other "info" commands.
143
144 * In Ada, the overloads selection menu has been enhanced to display the
145 parameter types and the return types for the matching overloaded subprograms.
146
147 * New commands
148
149 maint set target-non-stop (on|off|auto)
150 maint show target-non-stop
151 Control whether GDB targets always operate in non-stop mode even if
152 "set non-stop" is "off". The default is "auto", meaning non-stop
153 mode is enabled if supported by the target.
154
155 maint set bfd-sharing
156 maint show bfd-sharing
157 Control the reuse of bfd objects.
158
159 set debug bfd-cache
160 show debug bfd-cache
161 Control display of debugging info regarding bfd caching.
162
163 set debug fbsd-lwp
164 show debug fbsd-lwp
165 Control display of debugging info regarding FreeBSD threads.
166
167 set remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
168 show remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
169 Set/show the use of the remote protocol multiprocess extensions.
170
171 set remote thread-events
172 show remote thread-events
173 Set/show the use of thread create/exit events.
174
175 set ada print-signatures on|off
176 show ada print-signatures"
177 Control whether parameter types and return types are displayed in overloads
178 selection menus. It is activaled (@code{on}) by default.
179
180 set max-value-size
181 show max-value-size
182 Controls the maximum size of memory, in bytes, that GDB will
183 allocate for value contents. Prevents incorrect programs from
184 causing GDB to allocate overly large buffers. Default is 64k.
185
186 * The "disassemble" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
187 It prints mixed source+disassembly like /m with two differences:
188 - disassembled instructions are now printed in program order, and
189 - and source for all relevant files is now printed.
190 The "/m" option is now considered deprecated: its "source-centric"
191 output hasn't proved useful in practice.
192
193 * The "record instruction-history" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
194 It behaves exactly like /m and prints mixed source+disassembly.
195
196 * The "set scheduler-locking" command supports a new mode "replay".
197 It behaves like "off" in record mode and like "on" in replay mode.
198
199 * Support for various ROM monitors has been removed:
200
201 target dbug dBUG ROM monitor for Motorola ColdFire
202 target picobug Motorola picobug monitor
203 target dink32 DINK32 ROM monitor for PowerPC
204 target m32r Renesas M32R/D ROM monitor
205 target mon2000 mon2000 ROM monitor
206 target ppcbug PPCBUG ROM monitor for PowerPC
207
208 * Support for reading/writing memory and extracting values on architectures
209 whose memory is addressable in units of any integral multiple of 8 bits.
210
211 * New remote packets
212
213 exec stop reason
214 Indicates that an exec system call was executed.
215
216 exec-events feature in qSupported
217 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for exec
218 events using the new 'gdbfeature' exec-event, and the qSupported
219 response can contain the corresponding 'stubfeature'. Set and
220 show commands can be used to display whether these features are enabled.
221
222 vCtrlC
223 Equivalent to interrupting with the ^C character, but works in
224 non-stop mode.
225
226 thread created stop reason (T05 create:...)
227 Indicates that the thread was just created and is stopped at entry.
228
229 thread exit stop reply (w exitcode;tid)
230 Indicates that the thread has terminated.
231
232 QThreadEvents
233 Enables/disables thread create and exit event reporting. For
234 example, this is used in non-stop mode when GDB stops a set of
235 threads and synchronously waits for the their corresponding stop
236 replies. Without exit events, if one of the threads exits, GDB
237 would hang forever not knowing that it should no longer expect a
238 stop for that same thread.
239
240 N stop reply
241
242 Indicates that there are no resumed threads left in the target (all
243 threads are stopped). The remote stub reports support for this stop
244 reply to GDB's qSupported query.
245
246 QCatchSyscalls:1 [;SYSNO]...
247 QCatchSyscalls:0
248 Enable ("QCatchSyscalls:1") or disable ("QCatchSyscalls:0")
249 catching syscalls from the inferior process.
250
251 syscall_entry stop reason
252 Indicates that a syscall was just called.
253
254 syscall_return stop reason
255 Indicates that a syscall just returned.
256
257 QCatchSyscalls:1 in qSupported
258 The qSupported packet may now include QCatchSyscalls:1 in the reply
259 to indicate support for catching syscalls.
260
261 * Extended-remote exec events
262
263 ** GDB now has support for exec events on extended-remote Linux targets.
264 For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later, this enables
265 follow-exec-mode and exec catchpoints.
266
267 set remote exec-event-feature-packet
268 show remote exec-event-feature-packet
269 Set/show the use of the remote exec event feature.
270
271 * Thread names in remote protocol
272
273 The reply to qXfer:threads:read may now include a name attribute for each
274 thread.
275
276 * Target remote mode fork and exec events
277
278 ** GDB now has support for fork and exec events on target remote mode
279 Linux targets. For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later,
280 this enables follow-fork-mode, detach-on-fork, follow-exec-mode, and
281 fork and exec catchpoints.
282
283 * Remote syscall events
284
285 ** GDB now has support for catch syscall on remote Linux targets,
286 currently enabled on x86/x86_64 architectures.
287
288 set remote catch-syscall-packet
289 show remote catch-syscall-packet
290 Set/show the use of the remote catch syscall feature.
291
292 * MI changes
293
294 ** The -var-set-format command now accepts the zero-hexadecimal
295 format. It outputs data in hexadecimal format with zero-padding on the
296 left.
297
298 * Python Scripting
299
300 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "global_num",
301 which refers to the thread's global thread ID. The existing
302 "num" attribute now refers to the thread's per-inferior number.
303 See "Per-inferior thread numbers" above.
304 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "inferior", which
305 is the Inferior object the thread belongs to.
306
307 *** Changes in GDB 7.10
308
309 * Support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on aarch64*-linux*
310 targets has been added. GDB now supports recording of A64 instruction set
311 including advance SIMD instructions.
312
313 * Support for Sun's version of the "stabs" debug file format has been removed.
314
315 * GDB now honors the content of the file /proc/PID/coredump_filter
316 (PID is the process ID) on GNU/Linux systems. This file can be used
317 to specify the types of memory mappings that will be included in a
318 corefile. For more information, please refer to the manual page of
319 "core(5)". GDB also has a new command: "set use-coredump-filter
320 on|off". It allows to set whether GDB will read the content of the
321 /proc/PID/coredump_filter file when generating a corefile.
322
323 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
324 cpu information :
325 "info os cpus" Listing of all cpus/cores on the system
326
327 * GDB has two new commands: "set serial parity odd|even|none" and
328 "show serial parity". These allows to set or show parity for the
329 remote serial I/O.
330
331 * The "info source" command now displays the producer string if it was
332 present in the debug info. This typically includes the compiler version
333 and may include things like its command line arguments.
334
335 * The "info dll", an alias of the "info sharedlibrary" command,
336 is now available on all platforms.
337
338 * Directory names supplied to the "set sysroot" commands may be
339 prefixed with "target:" to tell GDB to access shared libraries from
340 the target system, be it local or remote. This replaces the prefix
341 "remote:". The default sysroot has been changed from "" to
342 "target:". "remote:" is automatically converted to "target:" for
343 backward compatibility.
344
345 * The system root specified by "set sysroot" will be prepended to the
346 filename of the main executable (if reported to GDB as absolute by
347 the operating system) when starting processes remotely, and when
348 attaching to already-running local or remote processes.
349
350 * GDB now supports automatic location and retrieval of executable
351 files from remote targets. Remote debugging can now be initiated
352 using only a "target remote" or "target extended-remote" command
353 (no "set sysroot" or "file" commands are required). See "New remote
354 packets" below.
355
356 * The "dump" command now supports verilog hex format.
357
358 * GDB now supports the vector ABI on S/390 GNU/Linux targets.
359
360 * On GNU/Linux, GDB and gdbserver are now able to access executable
361 and shared library files without a "set sysroot" command when
362 attaching to processes running in different mount namespaces from
363 the debugger. This makes it possible to attach to processes in
364 containers as simply as "gdb -p PID" or "gdbserver --attach PID".
365 See "New remote packets" below.
366
367 * The "tui reg" command now provides completion for all of the
368 available register groups, including target specific groups.
369
370 * The HISTSIZE environment variable is no longer read when determining
371 the size of GDB's command history. GDB now instead reads the dedicated
372 GDBHISTSIZE environment variable. Setting GDBHISTSIZE to "-1" or to "" now
373 disables truncation of command history. Non-numeric values of GDBHISTSIZE
374 are ignored.
375
376 * Guile Scripting
377
378 ** Memory ports can now be unbuffered.
379
380 * Python Scripting
381
382 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "username",
383 which is the name of the objfile as specified by the user,
384 without, for example, resolving symlinks.
385 ** You can now write frame unwinders in Python.
386 ** gdb.Type objects have a new method "optimized_out",
387 returning optimized out gdb.Value instance of this type.
388 ** gdb.Value objects have new methods "reference_value" and
389 "const_value" which return a reference to the value and a
390 "const" version of the value respectively.
391
392 * New commands
393
394 maint print symbol-cache
395 Print the contents of the symbol cache.
396
397 maint print symbol-cache-statistics
398 Print statistics of symbol cache usage.
399
400 maint flush-symbol-cache
401 Flush the contents of the symbol cache.
402
403 record btrace bts
404 record bts
405 Start branch trace recording using Branch Trace Store (BTS) format.
406
407 compile print
408 Evaluate expression by using the compiler and print result.
409
410 tui enable
411 tui disable
412 Explicit commands for enabling and disabling tui mode.
413
414 show mpx bound
415 set mpx bound on i386 and amd64
416 Support for bound table investigation on Intel MPX enabled applications.
417
418 record btrace pt
419 record pt
420 Start branch trace recording using Intel Processor Trace format.
421
422 maint info btrace
423 Print information about branch tracing internals.
424
425 maint btrace packet-history
426 Print the raw branch tracing data.
427
428 maint btrace clear-packet-history
429 Discard the stored raw branch tracing data.
430
431 maint btrace clear
432 Discard all branch tracing data. It will be fetched and processed
433 anew by the next "record" command.
434
435 * New options
436
437 set debug dwarf-die
438 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-die".
439 show debug dwarf-die
440 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-die".
441
442 set debug dwarf-read
443 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-read".
444 show debug dwarf-read
445 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-read".
446
447 maint set dwarf always-disassemble
448 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 always-disassemble".
449 maint show dwarf always-disassemble
450 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 always-disassemble".
451
452 maint set dwarf max-cache-age
453 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 max-cache-age".
454 maint show dwarf max-cache-age
455 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 max-cache-age".
456
457 set debug dwarf-line
458 show debug dwarf-line
459 Control display of debugging info regarding DWARF line processing.
460
461 set max-completions
462 show max-completions
463 Set the maximum number of candidates to be considered during
464 completion. The default value is 200. This limit allows GDB
465 to avoid generating large completion lists, the computation of
466 which can cause the debugger to become temporarily unresponsive.
467
468 set history remove-duplicates
469 show history remove-duplicates
470 Control the removal of duplicate history entries.
471
472 maint set symbol-cache-size
473 maint show symbol-cache-size
474 Control the size of the symbol cache.
475
476 set|show record btrace bts buffer-size
477 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
478 BTS format.
479 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
480 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
481
482 set debug linux-namespaces
483 show debug linux-namespaces
484 Control display of debugging info regarding Linux namespaces.
485
486 set|show record btrace pt buffer-size
487 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
488 Intel Processor Trace format.
489 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
490 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
491
492 maint set|show btrace pt skip-pad
493 Set and show whether PAD packets are skipped when computing the
494 packet history.
495
496 * The command 'thread apply all' can now support new option '-ascending'
497 to call its specified command for all threads in ascending order.
498
499 * Python/Guile scripting
500
501 ** GDB now supports auto-loading of Python/Guile scripts contained in the
502 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts'.
503
504 * New remote packets
505
506 qXfer:btrace-conf:read
507 Return the branch trace configuration for the current thread.
508
509 Qbtrace-conf:bts:size
510 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in BTS format.
511
512 Qbtrace:pt
513 Enable Intel Procesor Trace-based branch tracing for the current
514 process. The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's
515 qSupported query.
516
517 Qbtrace-conf:pt:size
518 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in Intel Processor
519 Trace format.
520
521 swbreak stop reason
522 Indicates a memory breakpoint instruction was executed, irrespective
523 of whether it was GDB that planted the breakpoint or the breakpoint
524 is hardcoded in the program. This is required for correct non-stop
525 mode operation.
526
527 hwbreak stop reason
528 Indicates the target stopped for a hardware breakpoint. This is
529 required for correct non-stop mode operation.
530
531 vFile:fstat:
532 Return information about files on the remote system.
533
534 qXfer:exec-file:read
535 Return the full absolute name of the file that was executed to
536 create a process running on the remote system.
537
538 vFile:setfs:
539 Select the filesystem on which vFile: operations with filename
540 arguments will operate. This is required for GDB to be able to
541 access files on remote targets where the remote stub does not
542 share a common filesystem with the inferior(s).
543
544 fork stop reason
545 Indicates that a fork system call was executed.
546
547 vfork stop reason
548 Indicates that a vfork system call was executed.
549
550 vforkdone stop reason
551 Indicates that a vfork child of the specified process has executed
552 an exec or exit, allowing the vfork parent to resume execution.
553
554 fork-events and vfork-events features in qSupported
555 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for fork and
556 vfork events using new 'gdbfeatures' fork-events and vfork-events,
557 and the qSupported response can contain the corresponding
558 'stubfeatures'. Set and show commands can be used to display
559 whether these features are enabled.
560
561 * Extended-remote fork events
562
563 ** GDB now has support for fork events on extended-remote Linux
564 targets. For targets with Linux kernels 2.5.60 and later, this
565 enables follow-fork-mode and detach-on-fork for both fork and
566 vfork, as well as fork and vfork catchpoints.
567
568 * The info record command now shows the recording format and the
569 branch tracing configuration for the current thread when using
570 the btrace record target.
571 For the BTS format, it shows the ring buffer size.
572
573 * GDB now has support for DTrace USDT (Userland Static Defined
574 Tracing) probes. The supported targets are x86_64-*-linux-gnu.
575
576 * GDB now supports access to vector registers on S/390 GNU/Linux
577 targets.
578
579 * Removed command line options
580
581 -xdb HP-UX XDB compatibility mode.
582
583 * Removed targets and native configurations
584
585 HP/PA running HP-UX hppa*-*-hpux*
586 Itanium running HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
587
588 * New configure options
589
590 --with-intel-pt
591 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with support for
592 Intel Processor Trace (default: auto). This requires libipt.
593
594 --with-libipt-prefix=PATH
595 Specify the path to the version of libipt that GDB should use.
596 $PATH/include should contain the intel-pt.h header and
597 $PATH/lib should contain the libipt.so library.
598
599 *** Changes in GDB 7.9.1
600
601 * Python Scripting
602
603 ** Xmethods can now specify a result type.
604
605 *** Changes in GDB 7.9
606
607 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on x86 GNU Hurd.
608
609 * Python Scripting
610
611 ** You can now access frame registers from Python scripts.
612 ** New attribute 'producer' for gdb.Symtab objects.
613 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "progspace",
614 which is the gdb.Progspace object of the containing program space.
615 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "owner".
616 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "build_id",
617 which is the build ID generated when the file was built.
618 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new method "add_separate_debug_file".
619 ** A new event "gdb.clear_objfiles" has been added, triggered when
620 selecting a new file to debug.
621 ** You can now add attributes to gdb.Objfile and gdb.Progspace objects.
622 ** New function gdb.lookup_objfile.
623
624 New events which are triggered when GDB modifies the state of the
625 inferior.
626
627 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_pre: Function call is about to be made.
628 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_post: Function call has just been made.
629 ** gdb.events.memory_changed: A memory location has been altered.
630 ** gdb.events.register_changed: A register has been altered.
631
632 * New Python-based convenience functions:
633
634 ** $_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
635 ** $_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
636 ** $_any_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
637 ** $_any_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
638
639 * GDB now supports the compilation and injection of source code into
640 the inferior. GDB will use GCC 5.0 or higher built with libcc1.so
641 to compile the source code to object code, and if successful, inject
642 and execute that code within the current context of the inferior.
643 Currently the C language is supported. The commands used to
644 interface with this new feature are:
645
646 compile code [-raw|-r] [--] [source code]
647 compile file [-raw|-r] filename
648
649 * New commands
650
651 demangle [-l language] [--] name
652 Demangle "name" in the specified language, or the current language
653 if elided. This command is renamed from the "maint demangle" command.
654 The latter is kept as a no-op to avoid "maint demangle" being interpreted
655 as "maint demangler-warning".
656
657 queue-signal signal-name-or-number
658 Queue a signal to be delivered to the thread when it is resumed.
659
660 add-auto-load-scripts-directory directory
661 Add entries to the list of directories from which to load auto-loaded
662 scripts.
663
664 maint print user-registers
665 List all currently available "user" registers.
666
667 compile code [-r|-raw] [--] [source code]
668 Compile, inject, and execute in the inferior the executable object
669 code produced by compiling the provided source code.
670
671 compile file [-r|-raw] filename
672 Compile and inject into the inferior the executable object code
673 produced by compiling the source code stored in the filename
674 provided.
675
676 * On resume, GDB now always passes the signal the program had stopped
677 for to the thread the signal was sent to, even if the user changed
678 threads before resuming. Previously GDB would often (but not
679 always) deliver the signal to the thread that happens to be current
680 at resume time.
681
682 * Conversely, the "signal" command now consistently delivers the
683 requested signal to the current thread. GDB now asks for
684 confirmation if the program had stopped for a signal and the user
685 switched threads meanwhile.
686
687 * "breakpoint always-inserted" modes "off" and "auto" merged.
688
689 Now, when 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' is set to "off", GDB
690 won't remove breakpoints from the target until all threads stop,
691 even in non-stop mode. The "auto" mode has been removed, and "off"
692 is now the default mode.
693
694 * New options
695
696 set debug symbol-lookup
697 show debug symbol-lookup
698 Control display of debugging info regarding symbol lookup.
699
700 * MI changes
701
702 ** The -list-thread-groups command outputs an exit-code field for
703 inferiors that have exited.
704
705 * New targets
706
707 MIPS SDE mips*-sde*-elf*
708
709 * Removed targets
710
711 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
712
713 Alpha running OSF/1 (or Tru64) alpha*-*-osf*
714 SGI Irix-5.x mips-*-irix5*
715 SGI Irix-6.x mips-*-irix6*
716 VAX running (4.2 - 4.3 Reno) BSD vax-*-bsd*
717 VAX running Ultrix vax-*-ultrix*
718
719 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
720 and "assf"), have been removed. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
721 its alias "share", instead.
722
723 *** Changes in GDB 7.8
724
725 * New command line options
726
727 -D data-directory
728 This is an alias for the --data-directory option.
729
730 * GDB supports printing and modifying of variable length automatic arrays
731 as specified in ISO C99.
732
733 * The ARM simulator now supports instruction level tracing
734 with or without disassembly.
735
736 * Guile scripting
737
738 GDB now has support for scripting using Guile. Whether this is
739 available is determined at configure time.
740 Guile version 2.0 or greater is required.
741 Guile version 2.0.9 is well tested, earlier 2.0 versions are not.
742
743 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
744
745 guile [code]
746 gu [code]
747 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Guile interpreter.
748
749 guile-repl
750 gr
751 Start a Guile interactive prompt (or "repl" for "read-eval-print loop").
752
753 info auto-load guile-scripts [regexp]
754 Print the list of automatically loaded Guile scripts.
755
756 * The source command is now capable of sourcing Guile scripts.
757 This feature is dependent on the debugger being built with Guile support.
758
759 * New options
760
761 set print symbol-loading (off|brief|full)
762 show print symbol-loading
763 Control whether to print informational messages when loading symbol
764 information for a file. The default is "full", but when debugging
765 programs with large numbers of shared libraries the amount of output
766 becomes less useful.
767
768 set guile print-stack (none|message|full)
769 show guile print-stack
770 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Guile script.
771
772 set auto-load guile-scripts (on|off)
773 show auto-load guile-scripts
774 Control auto-loading of Guile script files.
775
776 maint ada set ignore-descriptive-types (on|off)
777 maint ada show ignore-descriptive-types
778 Control whether the debugger should ignore descriptive types in Ada
779 programs. The default is not to ignore the descriptive types. See
780 the user manual for more details on descriptive types and the intended
781 usage of this option.
782
783 set auto-connect-native-target
784
785 Control whether GDB is allowed to automatically connect to the
786 native target for the run, attach, etc. commands when not connected
787 to any target yet. See also "target native" below.
788
789 set record btrace replay-memory-access (read-only|read-write)
790 show record btrace replay-memory-access
791 Control what memory accesses are allowed during replay.
792
793 maint set target-async (on|off)
794 maint show target-async
795 This controls whether GDB targets operate in synchronous or
796 asynchronous mode. Normally the default is asynchronous, if it is
797 available; but this can be changed to more easily debug problems
798 occurring only in synchronous mode.
799
800 set mi-async (on|off)
801 show mi-async
802 Control whether MI asynchronous mode is preferred. This supersedes
803 "set target-async" of previous GDB versions.
804
805 * "set target-async" is deprecated as a CLI option and is now an alias
806 for "set mi-async" (only puts MI into async mode).
807
808 * Background execution commands (e.g., "c&", "s&", etc.) are now
809 possible ``out of the box'' if the target supports them. Previously
810 the user would need to explicitly enable the possibility with the
811 "set target-async on" command.
812
813 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
814
815 ** New option --debug-format=option1[,option2,...] allows one to add
816 additional text to each output. At present only timestamps
817 are supported: --debug-format=timestamps.
818 Timestamps can also be turned on with the
819 "monitor set debug-format timestamps" command from GDB.
820
821 * The 'record instruction-history' command now starts counting instructions
822 at one. This also affects the instruction ranges reported by the
823 'record function-call-history' command when given the /i modifier.
824
825 * The command 'record function-call-history' supports a new modifier '/c' to
826 indent the function names based on their call stack depth.
827 The fields for the '/i' and '/l' modifier have been reordered.
828 The source line range is now prefixed with 'at'.
829 The instruction range is now prefixed with 'inst'.
830 Both ranges are now printed as '<from>, <to>' to allow copy&paste to the
831 "record instruction-history" and "list" commands.
832
833 * The ranges given as arguments to the 'record function-call-history' and
834 'record instruction-history' commands are now inclusive.
835
836 * The btrace record target now supports the 'record goto' command.
837 For locations inside the execution trace, the back trace is computed
838 based on the information stored in the execution trace.
839
840 * The btrace record target supports limited reverse execution and replay.
841 The target does not record data and therefore does not allow reading
842 memory or registers.
843
844 * The "catch syscall" command now works on s390*-linux* targets.
845
846 * The "compare-sections" command is no longer specific to target
847 remote. It now works with all targets.
848
849 * All native targets are now consistently called "native".
850 Consequently, the "target child", "target GNU", "target djgpp",
851 "target procfs" (Solaris/Irix/OSF/AIX) and "target darwin-child"
852 commands have been replaced with "target native". The QNX/NTO port
853 leaves the "procfs" target in place and adds a "native" target for
854 consistency with other ports. The impact on users should be minimal
855 as these commands previously either throwed an error, or were
856 no-ops. The target's name is visible in the output of the following
857 commands: "help target", "info target", "info files", "maint print
858 target-stack".
859
860 * The "target native" command now connects to the native target. This
861 can be used to launch native programs even when "set
862 auto-connect-native-target" is set to off.
863
864 * GDB now supports access to Intel MPX registers on GNU/Linux.
865
866 * Support for Intel AVX-512 registers on GNU/Linux.
867 Support displaying and modifying Intel AVX-512 registers
868 $zmm0 - $zmm31 and $k0 - $k7 on GNU/Linux.
869
870 * New remote packets
871
872 qXfer:btrace:read's annex
873 The qXfer:btrace:read packet supports a new annex 'delta' to read
874 branch trace incrementally.
875
876 * Python Scripting
877
878 ** Valid Python operations on gdb.Value objects representing
879 structs/classes invoke the corresponding overloaded operators if
880 available.
881 ** New `Xmethods' feature in the Python API. Xmethods are
882 additional methods or replacements for existing methods of a C++
883 class. This feature is useful for those cases where a method
884 defined in C++ source code could be inlined or optimized out by
885 the compiler, making it unavailable to GDB.
886
887 * New targets
888 PowerPC64 GNU/Linux little-endian powerpc64le-*-linux*
889
890 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
891 and "assf"), have been deprecated. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
892 its alias "share", instead.
893
894 * The commands "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" are no longer
895 supported. Use "set serial baud" and "show serial baud" (respectively)
896 instead.
897
898 * MI changes
899
900 ** A new option "-gdb-set mi-async" replaces "-gdb-set
901 target-async". The latter is left as a deprecated alias of the
902 former for backward compatibility. If the target supports it,
903 CLI background execution commands are now always possible by
904 default, independently of whether the frontend stated a
905 preference for asynchronous execution with "-gdb-set mi-async".
906 Previously "-gdb-set target-async off" affected both MI execution
907 commands and CLI execution commands.
908
909 *** Changes in GDB 7.7
910
911 * Improved support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on
912 arm*-linux* targets. Support for thumb32 and syscall instruction
913 recording has been added.
914
915 * GDB now supports SystemTap SDT probes on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
916
917 * GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
918 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
919
920 * New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
921 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
922 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
923 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
924 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
925 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
926 "void".
927
928 * The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
929
930 * The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
931
932 * GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
933 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
934 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
935 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
936
937 (gdb) p $rax
938 $1 = <not saved>
939
940 (gdb) info registers rax
941 rax <not saved>
942
943 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
944 "*value not available*".
945
946 * New script contrib/gdb-add-index.sh for adding .gdb_index sections
947 to binaries.
948
949 * Python scripting
950
951 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
952 ** Temporary breakpoints are now supported.
953 ** Line tables representation has been added.
954 ** New attribute 'parent_type' for gdb.Field objects.
955 ** gdb.Field objects can be used as subscripts on gdb.Value objects.
956 ** New attribute 'name' for gdb.Type objects.
957
958 * New targets
959
960 Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
961 Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
962 Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
963
964 * Removed native configurations
965
966 Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
967 been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
968
969 arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
970 i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
971 i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
972 i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
973 m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
974 sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
975 vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
976
977 * New commands:
978 catch rethrow
979 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
980 maint check-psymtabs
981 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
982 maint check-symtabs
983 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
984 maint expand-symtabs
985 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
986
987 show configuration
988 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
989
990 maint set|show per-command
991 maint set|show per-command space
992 maint set|show per-command time
993 maint set|show per-command symtab
994 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
995
996 remove-symbol-file FILENAME
997 remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
998 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
999 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
1000 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
1001
1002 info exceptions
1003 info exceptions REGEXP
1004 Display the list of Ada exceptions defined in the program being
1005 debugged. If provided, only the exceptions whose names match REGEXP
1006 are listed.
1007
1008 * New options
1009
1010 set debug symfile off|on
1011 show debug symfile
1012 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
1013 symbol tables within those files
1014
1015 set print raw frame-arguments
1016 show print raw frame-arguments
1017 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
1018 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
1019
1020 set remote trace-status-packet
1021 show remote trace-status-packet
1022 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
1023
1024 set debug nios2
1025 show debug nios2
1026 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
1027
1028 set range-stepping
1029 show range-stepping
1030 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
1031
1032 set startup-with-shell
1033 show startup-with-shell
1034 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
1035 directly.
1036
1037 set code-cache
1038 show code-cache
1039 Use the target memory cache for accesses to the code segment. This
1040 improves performance of remote debugging (particularly disassembly).
1041
1042 * You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
1043 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
1044 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
1045 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
1046 "set height 0".
1047
1048 * The "set debug symtab-create" debugging option of GDB has been changed to
1049 accept a verbosity level. 0 means "off", 1 provides basic debugging
1050 output, and values of 2 or greater provides more verbose output.
1051
1052 * New command-line options
1053 --configuration
1054 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
1055
1056 * The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
1057 buffer in Common Trace Format.
1058
1059 * Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
1060 GDB command gcore.
1061
1062 * GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
1063
1064 * The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
1065 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
1066
1067 * The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
1068 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
1069
1070 * The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
1071 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
1072 due to an uncaught signal.
1073
1074 * MI changes
1075
1076 ** All MI commands now accept an optional "--language" option.
1077 Support for this feature can be verified by using the "-list-features"
1078 command, which should contain "language-option".
1079
1080 ** The new command -info-gdb-mi-command allows the user to determine
1081 whether a GDB/MI command is supported or not.
1082
1083 ** The "^error" result record returned when trying to execute an undefined
1084 GDB/MI command now provides a variable named "code" whose content is the
1085 "undefined-command" error code. Support for this feature can be verified
1086 by using the "-list-features" command, which should contain
1087 "undefined-command-error-code".
1088
1089 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
1090 Trace Format now.
1091
1092 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
1093
1094 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
1095 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
1096 are displayed.
1097
1098 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
1099 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
1100
1101 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
1102 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
1103 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
1104
1105 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
1106 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
1107 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
1108 main subprogram. Support for this feature can be verified using
1109 the "-list-features" command, which should contain
1110 "exec-run-start-option".
1111
1112 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
1113 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
1114
1115 ** The new command -info-ada-exceptions provides the equivalent of
1116 the new "info exceptions" command.
1117
1118 * New system-wide configuration scripts
1119 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
1120 configuration scripts for the following systems:
1121 ** ElinOS
1122 ** Wind River Linux
1123
1124 * GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
1125 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
1126 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
1127 below.
1128
1129 * GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
1130 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
1131
1132 * On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
1133 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
1134 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
1135
1136 * New remote packets
1137
1138 vCont;r
1139
1140 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
1141 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
1142 involvemement at each single-step.
1143
1144 qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
1145 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
1146 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
1147 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
1148 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
1149 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
1150 speedup.
1151
1152 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1153
1154 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
1155 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
1156
1157 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
1158 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
1159 trace state variables.
1160
1161 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
1162 target.
1163
1164 * New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
1165 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
1166
1167 * GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
1168
1169 * The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
1170 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
1171 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
1172 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1173
1174 *** Changes in GDB 7.6
1175
1176 * Target record has been renamed to record-full.
1177 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
1178 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
1179 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
1180
1181 set|show record full insn-number-max
1182 set|show record full stop-at-limit
1183 set|show record full memory-query
1184
1185 * A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
1186 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
1187 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
1188 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
1189 This new recording method can be enabled using:
1190
1191 record btrace
1192
1193 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
1194 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
1195
1196 * Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
1197 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
1198 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
1199
1200 record instruction-history prints the execution history at
1201 instruction granularity
1202
1203 record function-call-history prints the execution history at
1204 function granularity
1205
1206 * New native configurations
1207
1208 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
1209 FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
1210 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
1211 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
1212
1213 * New targets
1214
1215 ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
1216 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
1217 Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
1218 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
1219 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
1220
1221 * If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
1222 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
1223 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
1224 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
1225 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
1226 --data-directory command-line option.
1227
1228 * New command line options:
1229
1230 -nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
1231 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
1232
1233 * Removed command line options
1234
1235 -epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
1236 Emacs.
1237
1238 * The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
1239 type formatting.
1240
1241 * 'info proc' now works on some core files.
1242
1243 * Python scripting
1244
1245 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
1246
1247 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
1248
1249 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
1250
1251 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
1252
1253 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
1254 of architecture in the Python API.
1255
1256 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
1257 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
1258
1259 * New Python-based convenience functions:
1260
1261 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
1262 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
1263 ** $_strlen(str)
1264 ** $_regex(str, regex)
1265
1266 * The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
1267 given an argument.
1268
1269 * The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
1270 default for GCC since November 2000.
1271
1272 * The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
1273
1274 * The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
1275 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
1276
1277 * New configure options
1278
1279 --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
1280 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
1281 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
1282 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
1283 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
1284 options allow the user to override that default.
1285 --with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
1286 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
1287 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
1288
1289 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1290
1291 catch signal
1292 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
1293 conditions to be attached.
1294
1295 maint info bfds
1296 List the BFDs known to GDB.
1297
1298 python-interactive [command]
1299 pi [command]
1300 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
1301 and print the result of expressions.
1302
1303 py [command]
1304 "py" is a new alias for "python".
1305
1306 enable type-printer [name]...
1307 disable type-printer [name]...
1308 Enable or disable type printers.
1309
1310 * Removed commands
1311
1312 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
1313 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
1314 instead.
1315
1316 * New options
1317
1318 set print type methods (on|off)
1319 show print type methods
1320 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
1321 The default is to show them.
1322
1323 set print type typedefs (on|off)
1324 show print type typedefs
1325 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
1326 The default is to show them.
1327
1328 set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
1329 show filename-display
1330 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
1331 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
1332
1333 set trace-buffer-size
1334 show trace-buffer-size
1335 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
1336
1337 set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
1338 show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
1339 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
1340
1341 set debug aarch64
1342 show debug aarch64
1343 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
1344 The default is off.
1345
1346 set debug coff-pe-read
1347 show debug coff-pe-read
1348 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
1349 exported symbols.
1350
1351 set debug mach-o
1352 show debug mach-o
1353 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
1354 processing.
1355
1356 set debug notification
1357 show debug notification
1358 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
1359
1360 * MI changes
1361
1362 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
1363 "=cmd-param-changed".
1364 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
1365 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
1366 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
1367 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
1368 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
1369 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
1370 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
1371 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
1372 "=memory-changed".
1373 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
1374 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
1375 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
1376 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
1377 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
1378 library load/unload events.
1379 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
1380 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
1381 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
1382 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
1383 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
1384 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
1385 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
1386 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
1387
1388 * GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
1389 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
1390 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
1391 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
1392
1393 * New remote packets
1394
1395 QTBuffer:size
1396 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
1397 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1398
1399 Qbtrace:bts
1400 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
1401 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
1402 qSupported query.
1403
1404 Qbtrace:off
1405 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
1406 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1407
1408 qXfer:btrace:read
1409 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
1410 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1411
1412 *** Changes in GDB 7.5
1413
1414 * GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
1415 for more x32 ABI info.
1416
1417 * GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
1418
1419 * GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
1420
1421 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
1422 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
1423 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
1424 "info os files" lists file descriptors
1425 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
1426 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
1427 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
1428 "info os msg" lists message queues
1429 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
1430
1431 * GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
1432 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
1433 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
1434 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
1435 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
1436 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
1437
1438 * GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
1439 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
1440 record/replay support.
1441
1442 * The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
1443
1444 * Python scripting
1445
1446 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
1447 "gdb.COMMAND_USER".
1448
1449 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
1450
1451 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
1452 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
1453
1454 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
1455
1456 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
1457 the source at which the symbol was defined.
1458
1459 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
1460 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
1461 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
1462 symbol's value.
1463
1464 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
1465 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
1466
1467 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
1468 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
1469 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
1470
1471 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
1472 object associated with a PC value.
1473
1474 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
1475 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
1476
1477 * Go language support.
1478 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
1479 language.
1480
1481 * GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
1482 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
1483
1484 * The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
1485 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
1486
1487 * GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
1488 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
1489 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
1490 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
1491 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
1492 $1 = (ONE | TWO)
1493
1494 * The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
1495 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
1496 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
1497 build/libcpp/expr.c.
1498
1499 * The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
1500 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
1501
1502 * The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
1503 since December 2007.
1504
1505 * The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
1506 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
1507 command does. For instance:
1508
1509 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
1510
1511 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
1512 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
1513 created, using the "condition" command.
1514
1515 * The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
1516 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
1517
1518 * GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
1519
1520 * The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
1521 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
1522 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
1523 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
1524 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
1525 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
1526 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
1527 files with older .gdb_index sections.
1528
1529 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
1530 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
1531 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
1532 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
1533 the .gdb_index section.
1534
1535 * Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
1536
1537 * GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
1538 target.
1539
1540 * MI changes
1541
1542 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
1543
1544 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
1545
1546 * New commands
1547
1548 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
1549 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
1550 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
1551
1552 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
1553 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
1554
1555 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
1556 several hits.
1557
1558 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
1559 C++ and Java objects.
1560
1561 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
1562 can be used to recursively explore values and types of
1563 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
1564 configured with '--with-python'.
1565
1566 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
1567 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
1568 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
1569 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
1570 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
1571 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
1572 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
1573
1574 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
1575 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
1576 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
1577 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
1578
1579 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
1580 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
1581 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
1582 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
1583
1584 ** "set print symbol"
1585 "show print symbol"
1586 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
1587 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
1588 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
1589
1590 * Deprecated commands
1591
1592 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
1593 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
1594
1595 * New targets
1596
1597 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
1598 HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
1599
1600 * GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
1601 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
1602 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
1603 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
1604 evaluates to true.
1605
1606 * New options
1607
1608 set mips compression
1609 show mips compression
1610 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
1611 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
1612 mips16
1613 micromips
1614 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
1615
1616 set breakpoint condition-evaluation
1617 show breakpoint condition-evaluation
1618 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
1619 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
1620 available mode.
1621 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
1622 target.
1623
1624 set auto-load off
1625 Disable auto-loading globally.
1626
1627 show auto-load
1628 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
1629
1630 set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
1631 show auto-load gdb-scripts
1632 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
1633
1634 set auto-load python-scripts on|off
1635 show auto-load python-scripts
1636 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
1637
1638 set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
1639 show auto-load local-gdbinit
1640 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
1641
1642 set auto-load libthread-db on|off
1643 show auto-load libthread-db
1644 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
1645
1646 set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
1647 show auto-load scripts-directory
1648 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
1649 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
1650 of the directories listed by this option.
1651 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
1652
1653 set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
1654 show auto-load safe-path
1655 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
1656 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
1657
1658 set debug auto-load on|off
1659 show debug auto-load
1660 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
1661
1662 set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
1663 show dprintf-style
1664 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
1665 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
1666 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
1667 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
1668
1669 set dprintf-function <expr>
1670 show dprintf-function
1671 set dprintf-channel <expr>
1672 show dprintf-channel
1673 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
1674 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
1675
1676 set disconnected-dprintf on|off
1677 show disconnected-dprintf
1678 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
1679 after GDB disconnects.
1680
1681 * New configure options
1682
1683 --with-auto-load-dir
1684 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
1685 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
1686 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
1687 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
1688 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
1689
1690 --with-auto-load-safe-path
1691 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
1692 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
1693
1694 --without-auto-load-safe-path
1695 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
1696 security feature.
1697
1698 * New remote packets
1699
1700 z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
1701
1702 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
1703 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
1704 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
1705 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
1706
1707 QProgramSignals:
1708
1709 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
1710 program without GDB involvement.
1711
1712 * New command line options
1713
1714 --init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
1715 before loading inferior.
1716 --init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
1717 execute it before loading inferior.
1718
1719 *** Changes in GDB 7.4
1720
1721 * GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
1722 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
1723 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
1724 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
1725 inferior changes.
1726
1727 * GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
1728 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
1729
1730 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
1731 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
1732 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
1733 target hardware watchpoint.
1734
1735 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
1736 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
1737 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
1738 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
1739
1740 * Python scripting
1741
1742 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
1743 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
1744 existing one.
1745
1746 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
1747 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
1748 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
1749 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
1750 now "message", which just prints the error message without
1751 the stack trace.
1752
1753 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
1754 Python API.
1755
1756 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
1757 modules library. This module provides functionality for
1758 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
1759 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
1760 corresponding value.
1761
1762 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
1763 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
1764 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
1765 on GDB start-up.
1766
1767 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
1768 static_block will return the global and static blocks
1769 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
1770 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
1771
1772 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
1773
1774 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
1775 "gdb.breakpoints".
1776
1777 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
1778 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
1779 available in the CLI.
1780
1781 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
1782 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
1783 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
1784 "some_type.items()".
1785
1786 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
1787 new object file.
1788
1789 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
1790 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
1791 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
1792 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
1793 any anonymous fields.
1794
1795 * MI changes
1796
1797 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
1798 "solib-event".
1799
1800 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
1801 "=breakpoint-modified".
1802
1803 ** New command -ada-task-info.
1804
1805 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
1806 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
1807 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
1808 lives.
1809
1810 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
1811 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
1812 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
1813 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
1814 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
1815
1816 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
1817 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
1818
1819 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
1820 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
1821 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
1822 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
1823 use this option to specify where to find it.
1824
1825 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
1826 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
1827 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
1828 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
1829 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
1830 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
1831 section in the user manual for more details.
1832
1833 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
1834 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
1835 become available after that.
1836
1837 * New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
1838
1839 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
1840 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
1841 gcc version 4.7.
1842
1843 * New commands
1844
1845 !SHELL COMMAND
1846 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
1847 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
1848
1849 * Changed commands
1850
1851 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
1852 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
1853 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
1854
1855 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
1856 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
1857 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
1858
1859 info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
1860 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
1861 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
1862 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
1863 name starts with a hyphen.
1864
1865 collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
1866 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
1867 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
1868 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
1869 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
1870 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
1871 number of bytes that will be collected.
1872
1873 tstart [NOTES]
1874 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
1875 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
1876 setting the variable trace-notes.
1877
1878 tstop [NOTES]
1879 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
1880 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
1881 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
1882 trace-stop-notes.
1883
1884 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
1885 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
1886 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
1887 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
1888 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
1889 is running.
1890
1891 * Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
1892 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
1893 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
1894
1895 * New options
1896
1897 set debug dwarf2-read
1898 show debug dwarf2-read
1899 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
1900 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
1901
1902 set debug symtab-create
1903 show debug symtab-create
1904 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
1905 creation. The default is off.
1906
1907 set extended-prompt
1908 show extended-prompt
1909 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
1910 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
1911 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
1912 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
1913 prompt is displayed.
1914
1915 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
1916 show print entry-values
1917 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
1918 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
1919 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
1920
1921 set debug entry-values
1922 show debug entry-values
1923 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
1924 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
1925
1926 set basenames-may-differ
1927 show basenames-may-differ
1928 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
1929 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
1930 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
1931 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
1932 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
1933 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
1934 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
1935 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
1936
1937 set trace-user
1938 show trace-user
1939 set trace-notes
1940 show trace-notes
1941 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
1942 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
1943 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
1944 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
1945
1946 set trace-stop-notes
1947 show trace-stop-notes
1948 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
1949 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
1950 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
1951 started by someone else.
1952
1953 * New remote packets
1954
1955 QTEnable
1956
1957 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1958
1959 QTDisable
1960
1961 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1962
1963 QTNotes
1964
1965 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
1966
1967 qTP
1968
1969 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
1970
1971 qTMinFTPILen
1972
1973 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
1974 be placed.
1975
1976 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
1977 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
1978
1979 * New targets
1980
1981 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
1982
1983 * New Simulators
1984
1985 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
1986
1987 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
1988
1989 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
1990
1991 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
1992
1993 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
1994 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
1995 matches the given regular expression.
1996
1997 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
1998
1999 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
2000 dumping the instruction opcodes.
2001
2002 * New command line options
2003
2004 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
2005 This is mostly for testing purposes.
2006
2007 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
2008 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
2009
2010 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
2011 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
2012 source path list instead of augmenting it.
2013
2014 * GDB now understands thread names.
2015
2016 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
2017 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
2018
2019 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
2020 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
2021
2022 * OpenCL C
2023 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
2024 has been integrated into GDB.
2025
2026 * Python scripting
2027
2028 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
2029 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
2030 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
2031
2032 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
2033 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
2034 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
2035 and allows for more dynamic content.
2036
2037 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
2038 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
2039 have an is_valid method.
2040
2041 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
2042 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
2043 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
2044
2045 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
2046
2047 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
2048 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
2049 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
2050 that function like so:
2051
2052 result = some_value (10,20)
2053
2054 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
2055 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
2056 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
2057
2058 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
2059 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
2060 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
2061 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
2062 New function: register_pretty_printer.
2063
2064 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
2065 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
2066
2067 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
2068
2069 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
2070 selected thread.
2071
2072 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
2073 holds the thread's name.
2074
2075 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
2076 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
2077 occurring in the process being debugged.
2078 The following events are currently supported:
2079 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
2080 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
2081 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
2082
2083 * C++ Improvements:
2084
2085 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
2086 instantiation. For example, if you have:
2087
2088 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
2089
2090 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
2091 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
2092 was added to GCC 4.5.
2093
2094 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
2095 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
2096 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
2097 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
2098 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
2099 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
2100
2101 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
2102 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
2103 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
2104 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
2105 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
2106
2107 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
2108 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
2109 execution to a label.
2110
2111 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
2112 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
2113 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
2114 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
2115
2116 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
2117 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
2118 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
2119 of scope.
2120
2121 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
2122
2123 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
2124 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
2125 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
2126 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
2127 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
2128 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
2129
2130 (gdb) info threads
2131 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
2132
2133 While now you see this:
2134
2135 (gdb) info threads
2136 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
2137
2138 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
2139 dumps.
2140
2141 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
2142 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
2143 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
2144 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
2145
2146 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
2147 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
2148 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
2149 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
2150 section in the user manual for more details.
2151
2152 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2153
2154 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
2155 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
2156
2157 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
2158
2159 * New native configurations
2160
2161 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
2162
2163 * New targets:
2164
2165 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
2166
2167 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
2168 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
2169 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
2170 in the GDB user manual.
2171
2172 * Guile support was removed.
2173
2174 * New features in the GNU simulator
2175
2176 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
2177
2178 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
2179
2180 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
2181
2182 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
2183
2184 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
2185 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
2186 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
2187 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
2188 was always disabled for such configurations.
2189
2190 * C++ Improvements:
2191
2192 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
2193
2194 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
2195 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
2196 For example:
2197 namespace A
2198 {
2199 class B { };
2200 void foo (B) { }
2201 }
2202 ...
2203 A::B b
2204 foo(b)
2205 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
2206 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
2207 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
2208
2209 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
2210
2211 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
2212 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
2213 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
2214 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
2215 entry.
2216 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
2217 mentioned flavors of operators.
2218
2219 ** static const class members
2220
2221 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
2222 class definition has been fixed.
2223
2224 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
2225
2226 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
2227 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
2228 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
2229 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
2230 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
2231 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
2232
2233 * Static tracepoints
2234
2235 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
2236 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
2237 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
2238 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
2239 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
2240 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
2241 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
2242 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
2243 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
2244 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
2245 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
2246 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
2247 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
2248 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
2249 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
2250 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
2251 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
2252 the "New remote packets" section below.
2253
2254 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
2255
2256 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
2257 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
2258 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
2259 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
2260
2261 * Observer mode
2262
2263 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
2264 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
2265 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
2266 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
2267 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
2268 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
2269 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
2270
2271 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
2272 current thread.
2273
2274 * New remote packets
2275
2276 qGetTIBAddr
2277
2278 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
2279
2280 qRelocInsn
2281
2282 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
2283 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
2284 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
2285 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
2286 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
2287 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
2288
2289 qTfSTM, qTsSTM
2290
2291 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
2292
2293 qTSTMat
2294
2295 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
2296 program.
2297
2298 qXfer:statictrace:read
2299
2300 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
2301 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
2302 to gdb's qSupported query.
2303
2304 QAllow
2305
2306 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
2307
2308 QTDPsrc
2309
2310 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
2311 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
2312
2313 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
2314 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
2315 a directory.
2316
2317 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2318
2319 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
2320 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
2321 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
2322 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
2323
2324 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
2325 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
2326 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
2327 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
2328 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
2329 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
2330 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
2331
2332 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
2333 for static tracepoints support.
2334
2335 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
2336
2337 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
2338 it understands register description.
2339
2340 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
2341
2342 * X86 general purpose registers
2343
2344 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
2345 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
2346 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
2347 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
2348 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
2349
2350 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
2351 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
2352 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
2353 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
2354 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
2355 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
2356
2357 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
2358 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
2359 in the specified file.
2360
2361 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
2362 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
2363 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
2364 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
2365 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
2366 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
2367 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
2368 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
2369 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
2370 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
2371
2372 * New commands
2373
2374 eval template, expressions...
2375 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
2376 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
2377
2378 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
2379 show target-file-system-kind
2380 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
2381 names.
2382
2383 save breakpoints <filename>
2384 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
2385 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
2386 definitions, use the `source' command.
2387
2388 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
2389 is now deprecated.
2390
2391 info static-tracepoint-markers
2392 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
2393
2394 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
2395 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
2396 function, line, address, or marker ID.
2397
2398 set observer on|off
2399 show observer
2400 Enable and disable observer mode.
2401
2402 set may-write-registers on|off
2403 set may-write-memory on|off
2404 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
2405 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
2406 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
2407 set may-interrupt on|off
2408 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
2409 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
2410 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
2411 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
2412 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
2413 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
2414 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
2415
2416 set record memory-query on|off
2417 show record memory-query
2418 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
2419 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
2420
2421 * Changed commands
2422
2423 disassemble
2424 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
2425
2426 * Python scripting
2427
2428 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
2429 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
2430 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
2431 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
2432 GDB using Python' in the manual.
2433
2434 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
2435 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
2436 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
2437 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
2438
2439 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
2440 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
2441
2442 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
2443
2444 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
2445
2446 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
2447
2448 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
2449 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
2450 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
2451
2452 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
2453 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
2454 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
2455 regular breakpoints.
2456
2457 * New targets
2458
2459 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
2460
2461 * D language support.
2462 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
2463 language.
2464
2465 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
2466 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
2467 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
2468 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
2469 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
2470
2471 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
2472 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
2473 conditions of the form:
2474
2475 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
2476
2477 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
2478 interface mentioned above.
2479
2480 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
2481
2482 * C++ Improvements
2483
2484 ** Namespace Support
2485
2486 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
2487 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
2488 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
2489 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
2490 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
2491
2492 ** Bug Fixes
2493
2494 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
2495 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
2496 qualified name.
2497
2498 ** Cast Operators
2499
2500 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
2501 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
2502
2503 * New targets
2504
2505 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
2506 Renesas RX rx-*-elf
2507
2508 * New Simulators
2509
2510 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
2511 Renesas RX rx
2512
2513 * Multi-program debugging.
2514
2515 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
2516 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
2517 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
2518 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
2519 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
2520 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
2521 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
2522 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
2523
2524 * New tracing features
2525
2526 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
2527
2528 ** Trace state variables
2529
2530 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
2531 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
2532 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
2533 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
2534 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
2535 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
2536 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
2537 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
2538 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
2539 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
2540
2541 ** Fast tracepoints
2542
2543 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
2544 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
2545 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
2546 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
2547 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
2548 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
2549 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
2550 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
2551 the regular trace command.
2552
2553 ** Disconnected tracing
2554
2555 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
2556 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
2557 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
2558 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
2559 connection is lost unexpectedly.
2560
2561 ** Trace files
2562
2563 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
2564 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
2565 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
2566 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
2567 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
2568 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
2569 <name>".
2570
2571 ** Circular trace buffer
2572
2573 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
2574 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
2575 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
2576 not be available for all target agents.
2577
2578 * Changed commands
2579
2580 disassemble
2581 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
2582 the arguments to be comma-separated.
2583
2584 info variables
2585 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
2586 which only declare a variable are not shown.
2587
2588 source
2589 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
2590 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
2591 support.
2592
2593 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
2594 "set script-extension" (see below).
2595
2596 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2597
2598 record save [<FILENAME>]
2599 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
2600 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
2601
2602 record restore <FILENAME>
2603 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
2604 earlier time, for replay debugging.
2605
2606 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
2607 Add a new inferior.
2608
2609 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
2610 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
2611 inferior has loaded.
2612
2613 remove-inferior ID
2614 Remove an inferior.
2615
2616 maint info program-spaces
2617 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
2618
2619 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
2620 show remote interrupt-sequence
2621 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
2622 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
2623 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
2624 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
2625 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
2626
2627 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
2628 show remote interrupt-on-connect
2629 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
2630 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
2631 Linux kernel.
2632
2633 set remotebreak [on | off]
2634 show remotebreak
2635 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
2636
2637 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
2638 Create or modify a trace state variable.
2639
2640 info tvariables
2641 List trace state variables and their values.
2642
2643 delete tvariable $NAME ...
2644 Delete one or more trace state variables.
2645
2646 teval EXPR, ...
2647 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
2648 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
2649
2650 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
2651 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
2652
2653 * New expression syntax
2654
2655 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
2656 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
2657
2658 * New options
2659
2660 set follow-exec-mode new|same
2661 show follow-exec-mode
2662 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
2663 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
2664 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
2665
2666 set default-collect EXPR, ...
2667 show default-collect
2668 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
2669 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
2670 such as registers or a critical global variable.
2671
2672 set disconnected-tracing
2673 show disconnected-tracing
2674 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
2675 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
2676 upon disconnection.
2677
2678 set circular-trace-buffer
2679 show circular-trace-buffer
2680 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
2681 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
2682 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
2683 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
2684
2685 set script-extension off|soft|strict
2686 show script-extension
2687 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
2688 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
2689 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
2690 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
2691 evaluation failed.
2692 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
2693
2694 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
2695 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
2696 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
2697 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
2698 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
2699 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
2700 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
2701 is on.
2702
2703 * Python API Improvements
2704
2705 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
2706 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
2707 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
2708
2709 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
2710 `is_base_class' attribute.
2711
2712 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
2713
2714 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
2715 evaluate an expression.
2716
2717 * New remote packets
2718
2719 QTDV
2720 Define a trace state variable.
2721
2722 qTV
2723 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
2724
2725 QTDisconnected
2726 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
2727
2728 QTBuffer:circular
2729 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
2730
2731 qTfP, qTsP
2732 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
2733
2734 * Bug fixes
2735
2736 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
2737
2738 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
2739 much more reliable. In particular:
2740 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
2741 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
2742 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
2743 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
2744 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
2745 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
2746 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
2747 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
2748 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
2749 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
2750 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
2751 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
2752 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
2753 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
2754 non-threaded programs.
2755
2756 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
2757 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
2758 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
2759 executable program.
2760
2761 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
2762
2763 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
2764 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
2765 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
2766 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
2767 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
2768
2769 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
2770 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
2771 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
2772 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
2773 for tracepoint actions.
2774
2775 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
2776 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
2777 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
2778
2779 * Process record and replay
2780
2781 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
2782 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
2783 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
2784 execute commands.
2785
2786 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
2787 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
2788 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
2789 reverse execution.
2790
2791 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
2792 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
2793 2.6.28 or later.
2794
2795 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
2796 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
2797 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
2798 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
2799 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
2800 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
2801 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
2802 the installation instructions for more information.
2803
2804 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
2805 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
2806 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
2807 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
2808
2809 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
2810 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
2811
2812 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
2813 now complete on file names.
2814
2815 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
2816 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
2817 For instance, consider:
2818
2819 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
2820 # struct example variable;
2821 (gdb) p variable.
2822
2823 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
2824 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
2825
2826 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
2827 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
2828
2829 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
2830 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
2831 macros.
2832
2833 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
2834 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
2835 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
2836
2837 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
2838 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
2839 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
2840 and simulator targets may also provide them.
2841
2842 * New remote packets
2843
2844 qSearch:memory:
2845 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
2846
2847 QStartNoAckMode
2848 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
2849 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
2850 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
2851
2852 vKill
2853 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
2854 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
2855
2856 qXfer:osdata:read
2857 Obtains additional operating system information
2858
2859 qXfer:siginfo:read
2860 qXfer:siginfo:write
2861 Read or write additional signal information.
2862
2863 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
2864
2865 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
2866 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
2867 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
2868
2869 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
2870 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
2871
2872 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
2873 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
2874 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
2875
2876 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
2877 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
2878
2879 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
2880
2881 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
2882
2883 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
2884 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
2885
2886 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
2887 list of section offsets.
2888
2889 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
2890 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
2891 have also been fixed.
2892
2893 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
2894 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
2895 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
2896
2897 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
2898 example, given:
2899
2900 template<typename T> class C { };
2901 C<char const *> c;
2902
2903 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
2904
2905 ptype C<char const *>
2906 ptype C<char const*>
2907 ptype C<const char *>
2908 ptype C<const char*>
2909
2910 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
2911
2912 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
2913 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
2914
2915 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
2916 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
2917 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
2918
2919 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
2920 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
2921
2922 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
2923 gdbserver.
2924
2925 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
2926 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
2927
2928 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
2929 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
2930 as appropriate.
2931
2932 * Python scripting
2933
2934 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
2935 available is determined at configure time.
2936
2937 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
2938
2939 * Ada tasking support
2940
2941 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
2942 been introduced:
2943
2944 info tasks
2945 Print the list of Ada tasks.
2946 info task N
2947 Print detailed information about task number N.
2948 task
2949 Print the task number of the current task.
2950 task N
2951 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
2952
2953 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
2954 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
2955
2956 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
2957
2958 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
2959 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
2960 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
2961 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
2962 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
2963 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
2964 below.
2965
2966 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
2967 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
2968 information.
2969
2970 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
2971 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
2972 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
2973 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
2974 more information.
2975
2976 * Multi-architecture debugging.
2977
2978 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
2979 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
2980 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
2981 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
2982 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
2983
2984 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
2985 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
2986 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
2987 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
2988 --enable-targets configure option.
2989
2990 * Non-stop mode debugging.
2991
2992 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
2993 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
2994 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
2995 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
2996 section in the user manual for more information.
2997
2998 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
2999 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
3000 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
3001 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
3002 extensions on linux targets.
3003
3004 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
3005
3006 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
3007 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
3008 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
3009 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
3010 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
3011 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
3012 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
3013 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
3014 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
3015
3016 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
3017 val1 [, val2, ...]
3018 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
3019
3020 maint set python print-stack
3021 maint show python print-stack
3022 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
3023
3024 python [CODE]
3025 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
3026
3027 macro define
3028 macro list
3029 macro undef
3030 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
3031 interactively.
3032
3033 info os processes
3034 Show operating system information about processes.
3035
3036 info inferiors
3037 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
3038
3039 inferior NUM
3040 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
3041
3042 detach inferior NUM
3043 Detach from inferior number NUM.
3044
3045 kill inferior NUM
3046 Kill inferior number NUM.
3047
3048 * New options
3049
3050 set spu stop-on-load
3051 show spu stop-on-load
3052 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
3053
3054 set spu auto-flush-cache
3055 show spu auto-flush-cache
3056 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
3057 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
3058
3059 set sh calling-convention
3060 show sh calling-convention
3061 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
3062
3063 set debug timestamp
3064 show debug timestamp
3065 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
3066
3067 set disassemble-next-line
3068 show disassemble-next-line
3069 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
3070 the debuggee stops.
3071
3072 set remote noack-packet
3073 show remote noack-packet
3074 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
3075 under "New remote packets."
3076
3077 set remote query-attached-packet
3078 show remote query-attached-packet
3079 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
3080
3081 set remote read-siginfo-object
3082 show remote read-siginfo-object
3083 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
3084 packet.
3085
3086 set remote write-siginfo-object
3087 show remote write-siginfo-object
3088 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
3089 packet.
3090
3091 set remote reverse-continue
3092 show remote reverse-continue
3093 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
3094
3095 set remote reverse-step
3096 show remote reverse-step
3097 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
3098
3099 set displaced-stepping
3100 show displaced-stepping
3101 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
3102 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
3103 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
3104
3105 set debug displaced
3106 show debug displaced
3107 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
3108
3109 maint set internal-error
3110 maint show internal-error
3111 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
3112
3113 maint set internal-warning
3114 maint show internal-warning
3115 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
3116
3117 set exec-wrapper
3118 show exec-wrapper
3119 unset exec-wrapper
3120 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
3121
3122 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
3123 show multiple-symbols
3124 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
3125 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
3126 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
3127
3128 set breakpoint always-inserted
3129 show breakpoint always-inserted
3130 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
3131 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
3132 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
3133
3134 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
3135 show arm fallback-mode
3136 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
3137 show arm force-mode
3138 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
3139 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
3140 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
3141 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
3142
3143 set disable-randomization
3144 show disable-randomization
3145 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
3146 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
3147 multiple debugging sessions.
3148
3149 set non-stop
3150 show non-stop
3151 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
3152 a breakpoint.
3153
3154 set target-async
3155 show target-async
3156 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
3157 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
3158 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
3159 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
3160
3161 set target-wide-charset
3162 show target-wide-charset
3163 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
3164 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
3165
3166 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
3167 show tcp auto-retry
3168 set tcp connect-timeout
3169 show tcp connect-timeout
3170 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
3171 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
3172 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
3173
3174 set libthread-db-search-path
3175 show libthread-db-search-path
3176 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
3177 libthread_db.
3178
3179 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
3180 show schedule-multiple
3181 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
3182 the current process.
3183
3184 set stack-cache
3185 show stack-cache
3186 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
3187 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
3188 affecting correctness.
3189
3190 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
3191 show interactive-mode
3192 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
3193 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
3194 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
3195 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
3196 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
3197
3198 * Removed commands
3199
3200 info forks
3201 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
3202 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
3203 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
3204 command.
3205
3206 fork NUM
3207 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
3208 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
3209 alias for the `fork' command.
3210
3211 process PID
3212 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
3213 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
3214 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
3215
3216 delete fork NUM
3217 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
3218 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
3219 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
3220 fork' command.
3221
3222 detach fork NUM
3223 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
3224 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
3225 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
3226 fork' command.
3227
3228 * New native configurations
3229
3230 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
3231
3232 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
3233
3234 * New targets
3235
3236 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
3237 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
3238 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
3239 S+core 3 score-*-*
3240
3241 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
3242 (mingw32ce) debugging.
3243
3244 * Removed commands
3245
3246 catch load
3247 catch unload
3248 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
3249
3250 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
3251
3252 * New native configurations
3253
3254 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
3255 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
3256
3257 * New targets
3258
3259 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
3260 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
3261
3262 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
3263
3264 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
3265 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
3266 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
3267 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
3268
3269 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
3270 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
3271
3272 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
3273 is resolved.
3274
3275 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
3276 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
3277 and in inlined functions.
3278
3279 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
3280 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
3281 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
3282
3283 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
3284
3285 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
3286 registers on PowerPC targets.
3287
3288 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
3289 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
3290
3291 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
3292 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
3293
3294 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
3295 extended-remote mode.
3296
3297 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
3298 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
3299 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
3300 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
3301
3302 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
3303 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
3304 target architectures.
3305
3306 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
3307 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
3308 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
3309 stored in two consecutive float registers.
3310
3311 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
3312 breakpoints now.
3313
3314 * Improved support for debugging Ada
3315 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
3316 include:
3317 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
3318 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
3319 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
3320 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
3321 of an assignment
3322 - Improved command completion in Ada
3323 - Several bug fixes
3324
3325 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
3326 process.
3327
3328 * New commands
3329
3330 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
3331 show print frame-arguments
3332 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
3333 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
3334
3335 remote put
3336 remote get
3337 remote delete
3338 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
3339
3340 * New MI commands
3341
3342 -target-file-put
3343 -target-file-get
3344 -target-file-delete
3345 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
3346
3347 * New remote packets
3348
3349 vFile:open:
3350 vFile:close:
3351 vFile:pread:
3352 vFile:pwrite:
3353 vFile:unlink:
3354 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
3355
3356 vAttach
3357 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
3358 mode.
3359
3360 vRun
3361 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
3362
3363 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
3364
3365 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
3366 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
3367 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
3368
3369 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
3370 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
3371 -Bsymbolic linker option.
3372
3373 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
3374 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
3375 is not supported.
3376
3377 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
3378 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
3379
3380 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
3381 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
3382
3383 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
3384
3385 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
3386 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
3387 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
3388
3389 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
3390 automatically displayed as character or string data.
3391
3392 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
3393 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
3394 as strings.
3395
3396 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
3397 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
3398 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
3399
3400 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
3401 iWMMXt coprocessor.
3402
3403 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
3404 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
3405 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
3406
3407 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
3408
3409 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
3410
3411 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
3412 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
3413 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
3414
3415 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
3416 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
3417
3418 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
3419 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
3420 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
3421 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
3422 Windows and SymbianOS).
3423
3424 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
3425 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
3426
3427 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
3428 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
3429
3430 * New commands
3431
3432 set remoteflow
3433 show remoteflow
3434 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
3435 when debugging using remote targets.
3436
3437 set mem inaccessible-by-default
3438 show mem inaccessible-by-default
3439 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
3440 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
3441 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
3442 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
3443 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
3444
3445 set breakpoint auto-hw
3446 show breakpoint auto-hw
3447 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
3448 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
3449 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
3450 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
3451 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
3452 including "next" and "finish".
3453
3454 catch exception
3455 catch exception unhandled
3456 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
3457
3458 catch assert
3459 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
3460
3461 set sysroot
3462 show sysroot
3463 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
3464 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
3465 an alias to "set sysroot".
3466
3467 info spu
3468 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
3469 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
3470 architecture.
3471
3472 * New native configurations
3473
3474 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
3475
3476 set tdesc filename
3477 unset tdesc filename
3478 show tdesc filename
3479 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
3480 not query the target for its built-in description.
3481
3482 * New targets
3483
3484 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
3485 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
3486 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
3487
3488 * New remote packets
3489
3490 QPassSignals:
3491 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
3492 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
3493
3494 qXfer:features:read:
3495 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
3496 features.
3497
3498 qXfer:spu:read:
3499 qXfer:spu:write:
3500 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
3501 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
3502
3503 qXfer:libraries:read:
3504 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
3505 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
3506 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
3507 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
3508
3509 * Removed targets
3510
3511 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
3512
3513 alpha*-*-osf1*
3514 alpha*-*-osf2*
3515 d10v-*-*
3516 hppa*-*-hiux*
3517 i[34567]86-ncr-*
3518 i[34567]86-*-dgux*
3519 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
3520 i[34567]86-*-netware*
3521 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
3522 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
3523 i[34567]86-*-sco*
3524 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
3525 i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
3526 i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
3527 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
3528 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
3529 i[34567]86-*-sysv*
3530 i[34567]86-*-isc*
3531 m68*-cisco*-*
3532 m68*-tandem-*
3533 mips*-*-pe
3534 rs6000-*-lynxos*
3535 sh*-*-pe
3536
3537 * Other removed features
3538
3539 target abug
3540 target cpu32bug
3541 target est
3542 target rom68k
3543
3544 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
3545
3546 target hms
3547 target e7000
3548 target sh3
3549 target sh3e
3550
3551 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
3552 H8/300.
3553
3554 target ocd
3555
3556 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
3557 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
3558 interfaces.
3559
3560 DWARF 1 support
3561
3562 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
3563 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
3564
3565 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
3566
3567 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
3568 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
3569 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
3570 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
3571
3572 MIPS ".pdr" sections
3573
3574 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
3575 in debugging information.
3576
3577 Scheme support
3578
3579 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
3580 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
3581
3582 set mips stack-arg-size
3583 set mips saved-gpreg-size
3584
3585 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
3586
3587 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
3588
3589 * New targets
3590
3591 Xtensa xtensa-elf
3592 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
3593
3594 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
3595 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
3596 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
3597
3598 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
3599 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
3600 supported.
3601
3602 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
3603 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
3604
3605 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
3606 stub provides the required support.
3607
3608 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
3609 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
3610
3611 * New commands
3612
3613 set substitute-path
3614 unset substitute-path
3615 show substitute-path
3616 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
3617 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
3618 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
3619 between compilation and debugging.
3620
3621 set trace-commands
3622 show trace-commands
3623 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
3624 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
3625 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
3626
3627 * REMOVED features
3628
3629 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
3630
3631 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
3632 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
3633
3634 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
3635
3636 * New remote packets
3637
3638 qSupported:
3639 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
3640 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
3641 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
3642 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
3643 target.
3644
3645 qXfer:auxv:read:
3646 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
3647 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
3648
3649 qXfer:memory-map:read:
3650 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
3651 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
3652
3653 vFlashErase:
3654 vFlashWrite:
3655 vFlashDone:
3656 Erase and program a flash memory device.
3657
3658 * Removed remote packets
3659
3660 qPart:auxv:read:
3661 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
3662 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
3663
3664 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
3665
3666 * New targets
3667
3668 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
3669
3670 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
3671
3672 * New commands
3673
3674 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
3675 only if it doesn't already have a value.
3676
3677 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
3678
3679 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
3680
3681 restart <n> Return the program state to a
3682 previously saved state.
3683
3684 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
3685
3686 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
3687
3688 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
3689 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
3690
3691 info forks List forks of the user program that
3692 are available to be debugged.
3693
3694 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
3695 forks of the user program that are
3696 available to be debugged.
3697
3698 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
3699 that are available to be debugged (and
3700 kill the forked process).
3701
3702 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
3703 that are available to be debugged (and
3704 allow the process to continue).
3705
3706 * New architecture
3707
3708 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
3709
3710 * Improved Windows host support
3711
3712 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
3713 native console support, and remote communications using either
3714 network sockets or serial ports.
3715
3716 * Improved Modula-2 language support
3717
3718 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
3719 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
3720 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
3721 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
3722 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
3723 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
3724
3725 * REMOVED features
3726
3727 The ARM rdi-share module.
3728
3729 The Netware NLM debug server.
3730
3731 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
3732
3733 * New native configurations
3734
3735 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
3736 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
3737
3738 * New targets
3739
3740 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
3741
3742 * New command line options
3743
3744 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
3745 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
3746 the child (debugged) program exited with.
3747 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
3748 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
3749 specified multiple times and in conjunction
3750 with the --command (-x) option.
3751
3752 * Deprecated commands removed
3753
3754 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
3755 removed:
3756
3757 Command Replacement
3758 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
3759 othernames set arm disassembler
3760 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
3761 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
3762 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
3763 regs info registers
3764
3765 * New BSD user-level threads support
3766
3767 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
3768 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
3769 configurations are:
3770
3771 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3772 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
3773 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
3774
3775 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
3776 are not yet supported.
3777
3778 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
3779 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
3780
3781 * REMOVED configurations and files
3782
3783 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
3784 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
3785 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
3786
3787 * New "set print array-indexes" command
3788
3789 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
3790 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
3791 behavior.
3792
3793 * VAX floating point support
3794
3795 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
3796
3797 * User-defined command support
3798
3799 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
3800 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
3801 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
3802
3803 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
3804
3805 * New command line option
3806
3807 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
3808 debugging.
3809
3810 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
3811
3812 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
3813 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
3814 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
3815 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
3816 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
3817
3818 * Internationalization
3819
3820 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
3821 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
3822 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
3823
3824 * Ada
3825
3826 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
3827 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
3828 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
3829
3830 * New native configurations
3831
3832 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
3833
3834 * Remote 'p' packet
3835
3836 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
3837 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
3838
3839 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
3840
3841 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
3842 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
3843 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
3844 i386 application).
3845
3846 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
3847 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
3848 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
3849 configurations:
3850
3851 hppa-*-hpux
3852 ia64-*-aix
3853 mips-*-irix*
3854 *-*-lynx
3855 mips-*-linux-gnu
3856 sds protocol
3857 xdr protocol
3858 powerpc bdm protocol
3859
3860 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
3861 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
3862
3863 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3864
3865 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3866 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3867 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3868 permanently REMOVED.
3869
3870 h8300-*-*
3871 mcore-*-*
3872 mn10300-*-*
3873 ns32k-*-*
3874 sh64-*-*
3875 v850-*-*
3876
3877 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
3878
3879 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
3880
3881 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
3882 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
3883 been fixed.
3884
3885 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
3886
3887 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
3888 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
3889 IRIX long double values).
3890
3891 * VAX and "next"
3892
3893 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
3894 command. This problem has been fixed.
3895
3896 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
3897
3898 * Fix for ``many threads''
3899
3900 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
3901 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
3902 error message:
3903
3904 ptrace: No such process.
3905 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
3906
3907 This problem has been fixed.
3908
3909 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
3910
3911 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
3912 GDB to dump core).
3913
3914 * New ``start'' command.
3915
3916 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
3917
3918 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
3919
3920 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
3921 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
3922 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
3923
3924 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3925 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
3926 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
3927 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
3928 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
3929 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
3930 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
3931 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
3932 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
3933
3934 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
3935
3936 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
3937 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
3938 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
3939 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
3940 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
3941
3942 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
3943 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
3944 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3945
3946 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
3947
3948 * New native configurations
3949
3950 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
3951 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
3952 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
3953 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
3954 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
3955 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
3956 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
3957
3958 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
3959
3960 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
3961 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
3962 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
3963 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
3964 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
3965 work, was also included.
3966
3967 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
3968 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
3969
3970 h8300-*-*
3971 mcore-*-*
3972 mn10300-*-*
3973 ns32k-*-*
3974 sh64-*-*
3975 v850-*-*
3976 xstormy16-*-*
3977
3978 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
3979 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
3980
3981 * REMOVED configurations and files
3982
3983 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3984 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3985 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3986 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3987 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3988 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3989 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
3990 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3991 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3992 sonymips mips-sony-*
3993 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
3994
3995 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
3996
3997 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
3998
3999 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
4000 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
4001 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
4002 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
4003 with GDB".
4004
4005 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
4006
4007 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
4008 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
4009 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
4010 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
4011 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
4012 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
4013 are created.
4014
4015 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
4016
4017 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
4018
4019 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
4020 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
4021 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
4022
4023 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
4024
4025 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
4026 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
4027
4028 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
4029
4030 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
4031 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
4032 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
4033
4034 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
4035
4036 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
4037 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
4038
4039 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
4040
4041 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
4042 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
4043 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
4044
4045 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
4046
4047 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
4048 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
4049 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
4050
4051 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
4052
4053 * Removed --with-mmalloc
4054
4055 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
4056 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
4057
4058 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
4059
4060 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
4061 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
4062 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
4063 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
4064
4065 * Revised SPARC target
4066
4067 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
4068 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
4069 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
4070 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
4071 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
4072
4073 * New C++ demangler
4074
4075 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
4076 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
4077 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
4078 programs.
4079
4080 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
4081
4082 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
4083 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
4084 encountered these.
4085
4086 * C++ nested types and namespaces
4087
4088 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
4089 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
4090 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
4091 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
4092 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
4093 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
4094 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
4095 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
4096 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
4097
4098 * New native configurations
4099
4100 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
4101 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
4102 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
4103 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
4104 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
4105
4106 * New debugging protocols
4107
4108 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
4109
4110 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
4111
4112 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
4113 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
4114 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
4115
4116 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4117
4118 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4119 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4120 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4121 permanently REMOVED.
4122
4123 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
4124 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
4125 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
4126 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
4127 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
4128 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
4129 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
4130 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
4131 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
4132 sonymips mips-sony-*
4133 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
4134
4135 * REMOVED configurations and files
4136
4137 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
4138 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4139 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4140 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4141 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4142 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
4143 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4144 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
4145 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
4146 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4147 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
4148 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
4149 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
4150 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
4151 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4152 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4153 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
4154
4155 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
4156
4157 * Objective-C
4158
4159 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
4160 integrated into GDB.
4161
4162 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
4163
4164 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
4165 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
4166 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
4167 backtraces.
4168
4169 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
4170 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
4171 DWARF 2 CFI support.
4172
4173 * Hosted file I/O.
4174
4175 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
4176 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
4177 remote protocol documentation for details.
4178
4179 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
4180
4181 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
4182 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
4183 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
4184 ppc32 on ppc64).
4185
4186 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
4187
4188 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
4189 per-thread variables.
4190
4191 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
4192
4193 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
4194 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
4195
4196 * Separate debug info.
4197
4198 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
4199 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
4200 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
4201 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
4202 and optional debug files.
4203
4204 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
4205
4206 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
4207 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
4208 debugger.
4209
4210 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
4211 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
4212
4213 * Java
4214
4215 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
4216 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
4217 considered "useable".
4218
4219 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
4220
4221 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
4222 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
4223 kernel.
4224
4225 * GDB supports logging output to a file
4226
4227 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
4228 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
4229
4230 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
4231
4232 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
4233 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
4234 command.
4235
4236 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
4237
4238 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
4239 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
4240
4241 * Profiling support
4242
4243 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
4244 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
4245 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
4246 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
4247 data, for more informative profiling results.
4248
4249 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
4250
4251 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
4252 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
4253 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
4254
4255 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
4256 removed.
4257
4258 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
4259 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
4260 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
4261 in a subsequent -var-update.
4262
4263 * New native configurations.
4264
4265 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
4266
4267 * Multi-arched targets.
4268
4269 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
4270 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
4271
4272 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4273
4274 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4275 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4276 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4277 permanently REMOVED.
4278
4279 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4280 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4281 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4282 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
4283 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4284 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
4285 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
4286 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
4287 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
4288 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
4289 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4290 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
4291
4292 * REMOVED configurations and files
4293
4294 V850EA ISA
4295 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4296 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
4297 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
4298 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
4299 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
4300 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
4301 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
4302 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4303 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4304 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4305 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4306 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4307 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4308
4309 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
4310
4311 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
4312 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
4313 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
4314 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
4315 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
4316
4317 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
4318
4319 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
4320
4321 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
4322 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
4323 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
4324 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
4325 shared libs like mad''.
4326
4327 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
4328
4329 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
4330 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
4331 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
4332 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
4333
4334 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
4335
4336 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
4337 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
4338 they expand.
4339
4340 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
4341 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
4342
4343 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
4344 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
4345
4346 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
4347 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
4348 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
4349 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
4350
4351 * Multi-arched targets.
4352
4353 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
4354 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
4355 NEC V850 v850-*-*
4356 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
4357 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
4358 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
4359
4360 * New targets.
4361
4362 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
4363
4364
4365 * New native configurations
4366
4367 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
4368 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
4369 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
4370 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
4371
4372 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4373
4374 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4375 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4376 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4377 permanently REMOVED.
4378
4379 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4380 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4381 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
4382 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4383 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4384 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4385 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
4386 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
4387 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
4388 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
4389 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
4390 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4391 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4392
4393 * OBSOLETE languages
4394
4395 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
4396
4397 * REMOVED configurations and files
4398
4399 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
4400 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4401 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4402 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4403 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4404
4405 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
4406
4407 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
4408
4409 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
4410 commands. The default is 1024.
4411
4412 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
4413
4414 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
4415
4416 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
4417
4418 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
4419 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
4420 from a file into memory (restore).
4421
4422 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
4423
4424 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
4425 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
4426 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
4427
4428 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
4429
4430 * New targets.
4431
4432 Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
4433
4434 * Bug fixes
4435
4436 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
4437 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
4438 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
4439
4440 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
4441 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
4442 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
4443
4444 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
4445 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
4446 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
4447
4448 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
4449 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
4450 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
4451
4452 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
4453
4454 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
4455
4456 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
4457 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
4458 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
4459 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
4460 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
4461 (notably embedded) targets.
4462
4463 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
4464
4465 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
4466 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
4467 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
4468 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
4469
4470 * New command line option
4471
4472 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
4473
4474 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
4475
4476 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
4477 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
4478 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
4479 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
4480 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
4481 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
4482 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
4483 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
4484 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
4485 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
4486
4487 * Changes in ARM configurations.
4488
4489 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
4490 configuration is fully multi-arch.
4491
4492 * New native configurations
4493
4494 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
4495 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
4496 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
4497 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
4498
4499 * New targets
4500
4501 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
4502
4503 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4504
4505 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4506 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4507 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4508 permanently REMOVED.
4509
4510 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
4511 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4512 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4513 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4514 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4515
4516 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
4517
4518 * REMOVED configurations and files
4519
4520 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4521 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4522 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4523 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4524 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
4525 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
4526 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
4527 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
4528 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
4529 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
4530 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4531 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
4532 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
4533
4534 * Changes to command line processing
4535
4536 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
4537 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
4538
4539 * Changes to key bindings
4540
4541 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
4542
4543 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
4544
4545 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
4546
4547 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
4548 corrupted.
4549
4550 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
4551
4552 Numerous documentation fixes.
4553
4554 Numerous testsuite fixes.
4555
4556 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
4557
4558 * New native configurations
4559
4560 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
4561 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
4562 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
4563 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4564 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
4565 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
4566
4567 * New targets
4568
4569 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
4570 CRIS cris-axis
4571 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
4572
4573 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4574
4575 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
4576 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
4577 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
4578 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
4579 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4580 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4581 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
4582 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4583 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4584 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
4585 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
4586 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4587 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
4588 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
4589
4590 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
4591 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
4592
4593 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4594 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4595 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4596 permanently REMOVED.
4597
4598 * REMOVED configurations and files
4599
4600 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
4601 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
4602 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
4603 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
4604 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
4605 ser-ocd.c *-*-*
4606
4607 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
4608
4609 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
4610 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
4611 present.
4612
4613 * Other news:
4614
4615 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
4616
4617 * The MI enabled by default.
4618
4619 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
4620 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
4621 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
4622 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
4623 which is now deprecated.
4624
4625 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
4626
4627 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
4628 main features are supported:
4629
4630 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
4631
4632 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
4633 extension;
4634
4635 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
4636
4637 - a Pascal expression parser.
4638
4639 However, some important features are not yet supported.
4640
4641 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
4642
4643 - there are some problems with boolean types;
4644
4645 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
4646 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
4647
4648 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
4649
4650 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
4651
4652 * Changes in completion.
4653
4654 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
4655 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
4656 users expect at the shell prompt.
4657
4658 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
4659 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
4660 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
4661 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
4662 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
4663 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
4664 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
4665
4666 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
4667
4668 * New platform-independent commands:
4669
4670 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
4671 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
4672 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
4673
4674 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
4675
4676 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
4677 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
4678 many threads as your system allows you to have.
4679
4680 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
4681
4682 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
4683 multi-threaded programs though.
4684
4685 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
4686
4687 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
4688
4689 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
4690 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
4691 supported.)
4692
4693 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
4694
4695 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
4696 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
4697 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
4698 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
4699 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
4700 registers.
4701
4702 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
4703 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
4704 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
4705
4706 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
4707
4708 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
4709 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
4710
4711 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
4712 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
4713 IDT.
4714
4715 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
4716 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
4717 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
4718 a given linear address.
4719
4720 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
4721 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
4722 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
4723
4724 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
4725
4726 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
4727
4728 * Changes in documentation.
4729
4730 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
4731 Documentation License.
4732
4733 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
4734 manual.
4735
4736 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
4737
4738 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
4739 manual.
4740
4741 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
4742 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
4743 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
4744
4745 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
4746
4747 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
4748 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
4749 contents of this file.
4750
4751 * gdba.el deleted
4752
4753 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
4754
4755 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
4756
4757 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
4758
4759 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
4760 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
4761 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
4762 greater level of detail.
4763
4764 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
4765
4766 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
4767 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
4768 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
4769 written.
4770
4771 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
4772
4773 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
4774 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
4775 machines ``out of the box''.
4776
4777 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
4778 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
4779 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
4780 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
4781 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
4782
4783 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
4784 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
4785 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
4786 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
4787 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
4788
4789 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
4790 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
4791 also works.
4792
4793 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
4794 GDB.
4795
4796 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
4797 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
4798 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
4799 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
4800
4801 * New native configurations
4802
4803 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
4804 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
4805
4806 * New targets
4807
4808 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
4809 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
4810 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
4811 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4812
4813 * OBSOLETE configurations
4814
4815 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
4816 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
4817 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
4818 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
4819 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
4820
4821 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
4822 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
4823 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
4824 be permanently REMOVED.
4825
4826 * Gould support removed
4827
4828 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
4829
4830 * New features for SVR4
4831
4832 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
4833 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
4834 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
4835
4836 * Many C++ enhancements
4837
4838 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
4839 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
4840
4841 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
4842
4843 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
4844 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
4845 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
4846 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
4847
4848 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
4849 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
4850
4851 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
4852
4853 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
4854 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
4855 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
4856
4857 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
4858 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
4859
4860 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
4861
4862 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
4863 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
4864 include ``set remote P-packet''.
4865
4866 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
4867
4868 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
4869 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
4870 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
4871
4872 * ``apropos'' command added.
4873
4874 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
4875 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
4876 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
4877
4878 * New MI interface
4879
4880 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
4881 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
4882 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
4883 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
4884 enabled by configuring with:
4885
4886 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
4887
4888 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
4889
4890 * New native configurations
4891
4892 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
4893 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
4894 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
4895
4896 * New targets
4897
4898 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4899 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
4900 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4901
4902 * OBSOLETE configurations
4903
4904 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
4905
4906 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
4907 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
4908 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
4909 be permanently REMOVED.
4910
4911 * ANSI/ISO C
4912
4913 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
4914 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
4915 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
4916 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
4917 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
4918 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
4919 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
4920 already.
4921
4922 * Readline 2.2
4923
4924 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
4925
4926 * set extension-language
4927
4928 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
4929 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
4930 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
4931 set extension-language .c c++
4932 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
4933 and their associated languages.
4934
4935 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
4936
4937 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
4938 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
4939 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
4940
4941 set processor NAME
4942
4943 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
4944 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
4945
4946 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
4947 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
4948 403 IBM PowerPC 403
4949 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
4950 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
4951 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
4952 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
4953 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
4954 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
4955 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
4956 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
4957
4958 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
4959 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
4960 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
4961 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
4962
4963 * HP-UX support
4964
4965 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
4966 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
4967 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
4968 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
4969 for xdb and dbx commands.
4970
4971 * Catchpoints
4972
4973 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
4974 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
4975 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
4976
4977 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
4978 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
4979 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
4980
4981 * Debugging across forks
4982
4983 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
4984 in the inferior.
4985
4986 * TUI
4987
4988 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
4989 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
4990 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
4991
4992 * GDB remote protocol additions
4993
4994 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
4995 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
4996 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
4997 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
4998
4999 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
5000 full 64-bit address. The command
5001
5002 set remoteaddresssize 32
5003
5004 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
5005 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
5006 will be discarded.
5007
5008 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
5009 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
5010
5011 maint packet heythere
5012
5013 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
5014 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
5015 time.
5016
5017 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
5018 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
5019 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
5020
5021 * Tracing can collect general expressions
5022
5023 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
5024 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
5025 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
5026
5027 * mask-address variable for Mips
5028
5029 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
5030 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
5031 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
5032
5033 * Higher serial baud rates
5034
5035 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
5036 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
5037 to achieve all of these rates.)
5038
5039 * i960 simulator
5040
5041 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
5042 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
5043
5044
5045 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
5046
5047 * New native configurations
5048
5049 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
5050 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
5051 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
5052 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
5053 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
5054 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
5055 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
5056
5057 * New targets
5058
5059 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
5060 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
5061 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
5062 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
5063 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
5064 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
5065 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
5066 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
5067 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
5068 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5069 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
5070
5071 * New debugging protocols
5072
5073 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
5074 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
5075 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
5076 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
5077 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
5078 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
5079
5080 * DWARF 2
5081
5082 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
5083 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
5084 information.
5085
5086 * Java frontend
5087
5088 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
5089 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
5090
5091 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
5092
5093 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
5094 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
5095 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
5096
5097 * Live range splitting
5098
5099 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
5100 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
5101 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
5102
5103 * Hurd support
5104
5105 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
5106 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
5107
5108 * ARM Thumb support
5109
5110 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
5111 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
5112 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
5113 accordingly.
5114
5115 * MIPS16 support
5116
5117 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
5118 instruction set.
5119
5120 * Overlay support
5121
5122 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
5123 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
5124 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
5125 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
5126 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
5127 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
5128
5129 * info symbol
5130
5131 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
5132 the symbol at the specified address.
5133
5134 * Trace support
5135
5136 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
5137 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
5138 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
5139 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
5140 file tracepoint.c for more details.
5141
5142 * MIPS simulator
5143
5144 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
5145 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
5146 of most MIPS variants.
5147
5148 * Sparc simulator
5149
5150 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
5151 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
5152 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
5153
5154 * set architecture
5155
5156 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
5157 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
5158 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
5159 the possible architectures.
5160
5161 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
5162
5163 * New native configurations
5164
5165 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
5166 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
5167 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
5168 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
5169 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
5170 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
5171
5172 * New targets
5173
5174 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
5175 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5176 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
5177 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
5178 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
5179 Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
5180 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5181
5182 * PowerPC simulator
5183
5184 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
5185 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
5186 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
5187 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
5188 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
5189
5190 * Solaris 2.5
5191
5192 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
5193
5194 * Windows 95/NT native
5195
5196 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
5197 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
5198 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
5199 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
5200 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
5201
5202 * dont-repeat command
5203
5204 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
5205 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
5206 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
5207 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
5208
5209 * Send break instead of ^C
5210
5211 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
5212 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
5213 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
5214
5215 * Remote protocol timeout
5216
5217 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
5218 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
5219 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
5220
5221 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
5222
5223 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
5224 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
5225 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
5226 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
5227 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
5228
5229 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
5230 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
5231 automatically on hpux10.
5232
5233 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
5234
5235 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
5236
5237 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
5238
5239 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
5240 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
5241 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
5242 every character. The default value is 1050.
5243
5244 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
5245
5246 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
5247 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
5248 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
5249 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
5250 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
5251 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
5252
5253 * Speedups for remote debugging
5254
5255 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
5256 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
5257 and more efficient S-record downloading.
5258
5259 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
5260
5261 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
5262 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
5263
5264 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
5265
5266 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
5267
5268 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
5269 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
5270
5271 * Remote targets use caching
5272
5273 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
5274 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
5275 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
5276 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
5277 off' turns the the data cache off.
5278
5279 * Remote targets may have threads
5280
5281 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
5282 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
5283 gdb/remote.c for details.
5284
5285 * NetROM support
5286
5287 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
5288 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
5289 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
5290 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
5291 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
5292 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
5293 sequence is something like
5294
5295 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
5296 load <prog>
5297 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
5298
5299 * Macintosh host
5300
5301 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
5302 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
5303 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
5304 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
5305 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
5306 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
5307 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
5308 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
5309
5310 * Autoconf
5311
5312 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
5313 but does simplify configuration and building.
5314
5315 * hpux10
5316
5317 GDB now supports hpux10.
5318
5319 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
5320
5321 * New native configurations
5322
5323 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
5324 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
5325 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
5326 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
5327
5328 * New targets
5329
5330 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
5331 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
5332 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
5333 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
5334 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
5335
5336 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
5337
5338 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
5339 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
5340 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
5341 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
5342 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
5343
5344 * Arguments to user-defined commands
5345
5346 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
5347 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
5348 trivial example:
5349 define adder
5350 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
5351
5352 To execute the command use:
5353 adder 1 2 3
5354
5355 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
5356 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
5357 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
5358
5359 * New `if' and `while' commands
5360
5361 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
5362 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
5363 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
5364 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
5365 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
5366 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
5367 if the expression is zero.
5368
5369 * Fortran source language mode
5370
5371 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
5372 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
5373 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
5374 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
5375 Fortran compilers.
5376
5377 * Better HPUX support
5378
5379 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
5380 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
5381 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
5382 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
5383 that behavior do the following before running the program:
5384
5385 adb -w a.out
5386 __dld_flags?W 0x5
5387 control-d
5388
5389 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
5390 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
5391
5392 adb -w a.out
5393 __dld_flags?W 0x4
5394 control-d
5395
5396 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
5397 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
5398 external linkage.
5399
5400 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
5401 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
5402
5403 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
5404
5405 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
5406 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
5407 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
5408 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
5409 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
5410 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
5411
5412 * New DOS host serial code
5413
5414 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
5415 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
5416 a PC's serial port.
5417
5418 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
5419
5420 * New "complete" command
5421
5422 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
5423 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
5424
5425 * Trailing space optional in prompt
5426
5427 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
5428 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
5429
5430 * Breakpoint hit counts
5431
5432 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
5433 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
5434 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
5435 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
5436 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
5437 that breakpoint.
5438
5439 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
5440
5441 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
5442 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
5443 arrays actually contain only short strings.
5444
5445 * Shared library breakpoints
5446
5447 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
5448 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
5449
5450 * Hardware watchpoints
5451
5452 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
5453 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
5454
5455 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
5456
5457 * Annotations
5458
5459 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
5460 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
5461
5462 * Improved Irix 5 support
5463
5464 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
5465
5466 * Improved HPPA support
5467
5468 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
5469
5470 * New native configurations
5471
5472 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
5473 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
5474 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
5475 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
5476
5477 * New targets
5478
5479 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
5480 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
5481 Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
5482
5483 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
5484
5485 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
5486 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
5487
5488 * Fixes
5489
5490 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
5491 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
5492
5493 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
5494
5495 * Irix 5 is now supported
5496
5497 * HPPA support
5498
5499 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
5500 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
5501 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
5502 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
5503 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
5504
5505
5506 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
5507
5508 * User visible changes:
5509
5510 * Remote Debugging
5511
5512 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
5513 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
5514 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
5515 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
5516 debugging info for the mips target).
5517
5518 * DEC Alpha native support
5519
5520 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
5521 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
5522 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
5523 Alpha-specific notes.
5524
5525 * Preliminary thread implementation
5526
5527 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
5528
5529 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
5530
5531 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
5532 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
5533 for details).
5534
5535 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
5536
5537 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
5538 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
5539 call methods, ...etc.
5540
5541 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
5542
5543 * User visible changes:
5544
5545 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
5546 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
5547 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
5548 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
5549
5550 Filename completion now works.
5551
5552 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
5553 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
5554 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
5555
5556 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
5557 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
5558 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
5559 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
5560 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
5561
5562 * DEC alpha support
5563
5564 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
5565 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
5566
5567
5568 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
5569
5570 * Testsuite
5571
5572 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
5573 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
5574 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
5575
5576 * C++ demangling
5577
5578 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
5579 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
5580 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
5581 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
5582 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
5583
5584 * Simulators
5585
5586 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
5587 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
5588 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
5589
5590 * New targets supported
5591
5592 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5593 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
5594 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
5595 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
5596 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
5597
5598 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
5599 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
5600 GO32 memory extender.
5601
5602 * New remote protocols
5603
5604 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
5605
5606 * New source languages supported
5607
5608 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
5609 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
5610 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
5611
5612
5613 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
5614
5615 * HP Precision Architecture supported
5616
5617 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
5618 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
5619 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
5620 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
5621 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
5622 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
5623
5624 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
5625
5626 * Faster and better demangling
5627
5628 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
5629 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
5630 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
5631 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
5632 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
5633 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
5634 symbol lookups.
5635
5636 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
5637 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
5638 compiler does not actually implement.
5639
5640 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
5641
5642 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
5643 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
5644 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
5645 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
5646 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
5647 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
5648 fix.
5649
5650 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
5651 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
5652
5653 * Improved configure script
5654
5655 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
5656 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
5657 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
5658 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
5659
5660 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
5661 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
5662 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
5663 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
5664 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
5665 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
5666
5667 * Documentation improvements
5668
5669 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
5670 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
5671 before submitting changes.
5672
5673 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
5674 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
5675 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
5676 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
5677 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
5678
5679 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
5680 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
5681 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
5682 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
5683 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
5684 around this problem.
5685
5686 * New features
5687
5688 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
5689 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
5690 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
5691 the target program.
5692
5693 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
5694 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
5695
5696 * New native hosts supported
5697
5698 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
5699 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
5700
5701 * New targets supported
5702
5703 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
5704
5705 * New file formats supported
5706
5707 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
5708 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
5709
5710 * Major bug fixes
5711
5712 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
5713
5714 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
5715 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
5716
5717 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
5718 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
5719 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
5720
5721 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
5722 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
5723
5724 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
5725 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
5726 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
5727 libraries.
5728
5729 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
5730 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
5731 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
5732 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
5733 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
5734
5735 * Internal improvements
5736
5737 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
5738 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
5739
5740 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
5741 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
5742 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
5743 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
5744 shared code that handles any of them.
5745
5746 * New command line options
5747
5748 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
5749
5750 * Mmalloc licensing
5751
5752 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
5753 General Public License.
5754
5755 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
5756
5757 * Host/native/target split
5758
5759 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
5760 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
5761 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
5762 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
5763 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
5764
5765 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
5766 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
5767 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
5768 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
5769 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
5770 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
5771 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
5772
5773 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
5774 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
5775 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
5776
5777 * New hosts supported
5778
5779 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
5780 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
5781 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
5782
5783 * New targets supported
5784
5785 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
5786 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
5787
5788 * New native hosts supported
5789
5790 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
5791 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
5792 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
5793
5794 * New file formats supported
5795
5796 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
5797 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
5798 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
5799
5800 * New commands
5801
5802 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
5803 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
5804 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
5805
5806 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
5807
5808 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
5809 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
5810 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
5811 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
5812
5813 * C++ improvements
5814
5815 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
5816 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
5817 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
5818
5819 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
5820
5821 * Major bug fixes
5822
5823 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
5824 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
5825 by the compiler.
5826
5827 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
5828 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
5829
5830 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
5831 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
5832 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
5833 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
5834 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
5835 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
5836
5837 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
5838 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
5839 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
5840 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
5841
5842 * AMD 29k support
5843
5844 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
5845 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
5846 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
5847 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
5848 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
5849
5850 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
5851 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
5852 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
5853 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
5854
5855 * Remote interfaces
5856
5857 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
5858 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
5859 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
5860 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
5861 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
5862 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
5863 each instruction being stepped through.
5864
5865 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
5866 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
5867
5868 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
5869 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
5870 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
5871 processor with a serial port.
5872
5873 * Configuration
5874
5875 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
5876 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
5877 supported, and what files each one uses.
5878
5879 * Library changes
5880
5881 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
5882 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
5883 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
5884 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
5885
5886 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
5887 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
5888 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
5889 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
5890
5891 * Documentation
5892
5893 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
5894 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
5895 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
5896 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
5897 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
5898 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
5899
5900 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
5901
5902
5903 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
5904
5905 * Better support for C++ function names
5906
5907 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
5908 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
5909 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
5910 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
5911 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
5912
5913 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
5914 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
5915 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
5916 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
5917 for the list of formats.
5918
5919 * G++ symbol mangling problem
5920
5921 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
5922 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
5923 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
5924 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
5925 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
5926 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
5927 this problem.)
5928
5929 * New 'maintenance' command
5930
5931 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
5932 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
5933 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
5934
5935 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
5936 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
5937 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
5938 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
5939 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
5940 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
5941
5942 The following commands are new:
5943
5944 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
5945 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
5946 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
5947
5948 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
5949
5950 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
5951 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
5952 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
5953 read after argv processing.
5954
5955 * New hosts supported
5956
5957 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
5958
5959 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
5960
5961 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
5962 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
5963 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
5964 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
5965 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
5966 It costs extra.
5967
5968 * New targets supported
5969
5970 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5971
5972 * More smarts about finding #include files
5973
5974 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
5975 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
5976 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
5977 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
5978 the one that contains your sources.
5979
5980 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
5981 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
5982 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
5983
5984 * Interesting infernals change
5985
5986 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
5987 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
5988 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
5989 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
5990
5991 * Bug fixes (of course!)
5992
5993 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
5994 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
5995 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
5996
5997 See the ChangeLog for details.
5998
5999 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
6000
6001 * New machines supported (host and target)
6002
6003 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
6004
6005 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
6006
6007 * New malloc package
6008
6009 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
6010 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
6011 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
6012 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
6013 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
6014 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
6015
6016 * info proc
6017
6018 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
6019 'help info proc' for details.
6020
6021 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
6022
6023 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
6024 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
6025 possible.
6026
6027 * File name changes for MS-DOS
6028
6029 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
6030 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
6031 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
6032 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
6033 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
6034 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
6035
6036 * Cross byte order fixes
6037
6038 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
6039 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
6040
6041 * New -mapped and -readnow options
6042
6043 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
6044 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
6045 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
6046 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
6047 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
6048 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
6049 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
6050 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
6051 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
6052 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
6053
6054 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
6055 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
6056 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
6057 slower, but makes future operations faster.
6058
6059 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
6060 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
6061 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
6062 use is:
6063
6064 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
6065
6066 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
6067 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
6068 shared across multiple host platforms.
6069
6070 * longjmp() handling
6071
6072 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
6073 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
6074 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
6075 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
6076
6077 * Solaris 2.0
6078
6079 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
6080 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
6081 reading symbols.
6082
6083 * Bug fixes
6084
6085 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
6086 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
6087 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
6088
6089 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
6090
6091 * New machines supported (host and target)
6092
6093 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
6094 (except core files)
6095 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
6096 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
6097
6098 * New machines supported (target)
6099
6100 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
6101
6102 * C++ support
6103
6104 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
6105 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
6106 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
6107
6108 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
6109 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
6110 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
6111 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
6112 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
6113 released.
6114
6115 * New features for SVR4
6116
6117 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
6118 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
6119 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
6120
6121 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
6122 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
6123 it prints the address mappings of the process.
6124
6125 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
6126 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
6127
6128 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
6129
6130 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
6131 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
6132 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
6133 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
6134 same code linked statically.
6135
6136 * New Getopt
6137
6138 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
6139 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
6140 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
6141 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
6142 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
6143 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
6144
6145 * Bugs fixed
6146
6147 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
6148 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
6149 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
6150
6151
6152 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
6153
6154 * New machines supported (host and target)
6155
6156 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
6157 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
6158 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
6159
6160 * Almost SCO Unix support
6161
6162 We had hoped to support:
6163 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
6164 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
6165 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
6166 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
6167
6168 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
6169
6170 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
6171 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
6172 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
6173 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
6174 reqired (if any).
6175
6176 * New Readline
6177
6178 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
6179 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
6180 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
6181
6182 * Bugs fixed
6183
6184 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
6185 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
6186 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
6187
6188 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
6189
6190 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
6191 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
6192 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
6193
6194 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
6195 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
6196 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
6197 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
6198 version 2.
6199
6200 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
6201 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
6202 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
6203 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
6204 situation somewhat.
6205
6206 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
6207 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
6208 methods.
6209
6210 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
6211 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
6212 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
6213
6214
6215 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
6216
6217 * Improved configuration
6218
6219 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
6220 Porting BFD is simpler.
6221
6222 * Stepping improved
6223
6224 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
6225 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
6226 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
6227 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
6228
6229 * Bug fixing
6230
6231 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
6232
6233 * New host supported (not target)
6234
6235 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
6236
6237
6238 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
6239
6240 * Multiple source language support
6241
6242 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
6243 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
6244 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
6245 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
6246 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
6247 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
6248
6249 * GDB and Modula-2
6250
6251 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
6252 currently under development at the State University of New York at
6253 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
6254 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
6255
6256 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
6257 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
6258 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
6259
6260 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
6261 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
6262
6263 * set write on/off
6264
6265 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
6266 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
6267 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
6268 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
6269 effect immediately.
6270
6271 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
6272
6273 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
6274 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
6275 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
6276 examining core files.
6277
6278 * set listsize
6279
6280 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
6281 The default is 10.
6282
6283 * New machines supported (host and target)
6284
6285 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
6286 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
6287 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
6288
6289 * New hosts supported (not targets)
6290
6291 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
6292
6293 * New targets supported (not hosts)
6294
6295 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
6296 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
6297 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
6298
6299 * New remote interfaces
6300
6301 AMD 29000 Adapt
6302 AMD 29000 Minimon
6303
6304
6305 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
6306
6307 * New Facilities
6308
6309 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
6310
6311 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
6312 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
6313 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
6314 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
6315 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
6316 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
6317 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
6318 stub on the target system.
6319
6320 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
6321
6322 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
6323 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
6324 object file types such as a.out and coff.
6325
6326 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
6327 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
6328
6329
6330 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
6331
6332 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
6333 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
6334
6335 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
6336 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
6337 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
6338
6339 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
6340 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
6341 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
6342 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
6343
6344 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
6345 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
6346 it is already running. Default is ON.
6347
6348 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
6349 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
6350 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
6351 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
6352 Default is ON.
6353
6354 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
6355 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
6356 or the value of the environment variable
6357 GDBHISTFILE.
6358
6359 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
6360 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
6361 HISTSIZE.
6362
6363 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
6364 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
6365 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
6366
6367 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
6368 history expansion will be performed on
6369 command line input. The default is OFF.
6370
6371 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
6372 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
6373 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
6374
6375 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
6376 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
6377 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
6378 variable TERM.
6379
6380 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
6381 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
6382 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
6383 variable TERM.
6384
6385 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
6386 ``set width'' instead.
6387
6388 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
6389 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
6390 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
6391 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
6392
6393 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
6394 is OFF.
6395
6396 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
6397 "raw" form if off.
6398
6399 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
6400 like instructions.
6401
6402 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
6403
6404
6405 * Support for Epoch Environment.
6406
6407 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
6408 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
6409 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
6410 window.
6411
6412
6413 * Support for Shared Libraries
6414
6415 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
6416 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
6417 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
6418 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
6419 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
6420 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
6421 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
6422 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
6423
6424 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
6425 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
6426 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
6427
6428 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
6429
6430
6431 * Watchpoints
6432
6433 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
6434 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
6435 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
6436 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
6437 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
6438 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
6439
6440 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
6441
6442 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
6443
6444 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6445 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6446 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6447
6448
6449 * C++ multiple inheritance
6450
6451 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
6452 for C++ programs.
6453
6454 * C++ exception handling
6455
6456 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
6457 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
6458 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
6459 handler's context).
6460
6461 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
6462 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
6463 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
6464
6465 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
6466 current stack frame.
6467
6468
6469 * Minor command changes
6470
6471 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
6472 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
6473 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
6474
6475 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
6476 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
6477 frames without printing.
6478
6479 * New directory command
6480
6481 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
6482 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
6483 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
6484 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
6485 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
6486
6487 * Configuring GDB for compilation
6488
6489 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
6490 for more details.
6491
6492 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
6493 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
6494 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
6495 where the program that you are debugging will run.
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