1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 6.3
6 * REMOVED configurations and files
8 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9 Renesas H8/300S h8300*-*-*
10 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
11 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
12 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
15 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
17 * New command line option
19 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
22 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
24 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
25 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
26 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
27 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
28 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
30 * Internationalization
32 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
33 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
34 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
38 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
39 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
40 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
42 * New native configurations
44 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
48 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
49 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
51 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
53 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
54 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
55 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
58 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
59 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
60 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
72 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
73 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
75 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
77 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
78 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
79 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
89 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
91 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
93 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
94 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
97 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
99 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
100 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
101 IRIX long double values).
105 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
106 command. This problem has been fixed.
108 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
110 * Fix for ``many threads''
112 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
113 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
116 ptrace: No such process.
117 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
119 This problem has been fixed.
121 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
123 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
126 * New ``start'' command.
128 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
130 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
132 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
133 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
134 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
136 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
137 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
138 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
139 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
140 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
141 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
142 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
143 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
144 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
146 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
148 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
149 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
150 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
151 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
152 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
154 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
155 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
156 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
158 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
160 * New native configurations
162 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
163 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
164 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
165 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
166 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
167 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
168 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
170 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
172 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
173 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
174 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
175 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
176 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
177 work, was also included.
179 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
180 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
190 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
191 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
193 * REMOVED configurations and files
195 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
196 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
197 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
198 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
199 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
200 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
201 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
202 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
203 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
205 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
207 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
209 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
211 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
212 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
213 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
214 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
217 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
219 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
220 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
221 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
222 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
223 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
224 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
227 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
229 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
231 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
232 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
233 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
235 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
237 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
238 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
240 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
242 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
243 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
244 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
246 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
248 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
249 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
251 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
253 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
254 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
255 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
257 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
259 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
260 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
261 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
263 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
265 * Removed --with-mmalloc
267 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
268 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
270 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
272 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
273 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
274 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
275 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
277 * Revised SPARC target
279 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
280 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
281 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
282 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
283 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
287 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
288 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
289 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
292 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
294 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
295 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
298 * C++ nested types and namespaces
300 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
301 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
302 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
303 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
304 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
305 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
306 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
307 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
308 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
310 * New native configurations
312 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
313 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
314 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
315 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
316 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
318 * New debugging protocols
320 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
322 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
324 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
325 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
326 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
328 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
330 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
331 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
332 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
335 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
336 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
337 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
338 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
339 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
340 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
341 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
342 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
343 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
345 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
347 * REMOVED configurations and files
349 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
350 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
351 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
352 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
353 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
354 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
355 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
356 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
357 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
358 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
359 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
360 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
361 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
362 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
363 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
364 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
365 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
367 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
371 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
374 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
376 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
377 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
378 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
381 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
382 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
387 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
388 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
389 remote protocol documentation for details.
391 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
393 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
394 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
395 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
398 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
400 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
401 per-thread variables.
403 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
405 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
406 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
408 * Separate debug info.
410 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
411 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
412 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
413 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
414 and optional debug files.
416 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
418 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
419 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
422 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
423 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
427 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
428 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
429 considered "useable".
431 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
433 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
434 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
437 * GDB supports logging output to a file
439 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
440 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
442 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
444 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
445 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
448 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
450 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
451 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
455 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
456 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
457 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
458 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
459 data, for more informative profiling results.
461 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
463 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
464 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
465 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
467 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
470 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
471 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
472 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
473 in a subsequent -var-update.
475 * New native configurations.
477 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
479 * Multi-arched targets.
481 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
482 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
484 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
486 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
487 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
488 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
491 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
492 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
493 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
494 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
495 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
496 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
497 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
498 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
499 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
500 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
501 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
502 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
504 * REMOVED configurations and files
507 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
508 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
509 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
510 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
511 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
512 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
514 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
515 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
516 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
517 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
518 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
519 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
521 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
523 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
524 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
525 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
526 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
527 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
529 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
531 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
533 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
534 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
535 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
536 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
537 shared libs like mad''.
539 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
541 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
542 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
543 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
544 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
546 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
548 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
549 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
552 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
553 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
555 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
556 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
558 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
559 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
560 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
561 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
563 * Multi-arched targets.
565 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
566 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
568 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
569 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
570 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
574 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
577 * New native configurations
579 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
580 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
581 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
582 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
584 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
586 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
587 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
588 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
591 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
592 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
593 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
594 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
595 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
596 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
597 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
598 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
599 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
600 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
602 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
603 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
607 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
609 * REMOVED configurations and files
611 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
612 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
613 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
614 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
615 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
617 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
619 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
621 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
622 commands. The default is 1024.
624 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
626 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
628 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
630 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
631 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
632 from a file into memory (restore).
634 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
636 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
637 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
638 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
640 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
648 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
649 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
650 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
652 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
653 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
654 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
656 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
657 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
658 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
660 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
661 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
662 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
664 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
666 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
668 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
669 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
670 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
671 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
672 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
673 (notably embedded) targets.
675 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
677 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
678 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
679 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
680 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
682 * New command line option
684 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
686 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
688 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
689 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
690 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
691 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
692 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
693 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
694 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
695 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
696 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
697 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
699 * Changes in ARM configurations.
701 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
702 configuration is fully multi-arch.
704 * New native configurations
706 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
707 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
708 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
709 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
713 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
715 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
717 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
718 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
719 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
722 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
723 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
724 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
725 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
726 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
728 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
730 * REMOVED configurations and files
732 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
734 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
735 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
736 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
737 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
738 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
739 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
740 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
741 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
742 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
743 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
744 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
746 * Changes to command line processing
748 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
749 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
751 * Changes to key bindings
753 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
755 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
757 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
759 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
762 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
764 Numerous documentation fixes.
766 Numerous testsuite fixes.
768 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
770 * New native configurations
772 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
773 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
774 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
775 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
777 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
781 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
783 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
785 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
787 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
788 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
789 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
790 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
791 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
793 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
794 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
795 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
796 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
797 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
798 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
799 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
800 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
802 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
803 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
805 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
806 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
807 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
810 * REMOVED configurations and files
812 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
813 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
815 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
819 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
821 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
822 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
827 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
829 * The MI enabled by default.
831 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
832 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
833 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
834 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
835 which is now deprecated.
837 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
839 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
840 main features are supported:
842 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
844 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
847 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
849 - a Pascal expression parser.
851 However, some important features are not yet supported.
853 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
855 - there are some problems with boolean types;
857 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
858 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
860 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
862 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
864 * Changes in completion.
866 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
867 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
868 users expect at the shell prompt.
870 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
871 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
872 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
873 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
874 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
875 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
876 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
878 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
880 * New platform-independent commands:
882 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
883 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
884 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
886 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
888 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
889 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
890 many threads as your system allows you to have.
892 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
894 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
895 multi-threaded programs though.
897 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
899 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
901 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
902 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
905 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
907 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
908 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
909 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
910 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
911 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
914 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
915 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
916 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
918 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
920 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
921 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
923 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
924 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
927 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
928 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
929 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
930 a given linear address.
932 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
933 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
934 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
936 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
938 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
940 * Changes in documentation.
942 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
943 Documentation License.
945 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
948 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
950 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
953 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
954 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
955 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
957 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
959 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
960 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
961 contents of this file.
965 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
967 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
969 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
971 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
972 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
973 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
974 greater level of detail.
976 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
978 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
979 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
980 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
983 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
985 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
986 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
987 machines ``out of the box''.
989 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
990 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
991 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
992 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
993 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
995 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
996 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
997 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
998 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
999 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
1001 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
1002 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
1005 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
1008 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
1009 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
1010 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
1011 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
1013 * New native configurations
1015 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
1016 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1020 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
1021 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
1022 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
1023 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1025 * OBSOLETE configurations
1027 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1028 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
1030 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
1033 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1034 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1035 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1036 be permanently REMOVED.
1038 * Gould support removed
1040 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
1042 * New features for SVR4
1044 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
1045 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
1046 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
1048 * Many C++ enhancements
1050 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
1051 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
1053 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
1055 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
1056 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
1057 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
1058 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
1060 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
1061 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
1063 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
1065 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
1066 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
1067 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
1069 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
1070 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1072 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
1074 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
1075 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
1076 include ``set remote P-packet''.
1078 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
1080 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
1081 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
1082 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
1084 * ``apropos'' command added.
1086 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
1087 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
1088 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
1092 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
1093 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
1094 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
1095 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
1096 enabled by configuring with:
1098 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
1100 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
1102 * New native configurations
1104 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
1105 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
1106 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
1110 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1111 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
1112 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1114 * OBSOLETE configurations
1116 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
1118 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1119 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1120 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1121 be permanently REMOVED.
1125 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
1126 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
1127 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
1128 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
1129 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
1130 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
1131 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
1136 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
1138 * set extension-language
1140 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
1141 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
1142 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
1143 set extension-language .c c++
1144 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
1145 and their associated languages.
1147 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
1149 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
1150 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
1151 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
1155 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
1156 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
1158 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
1159 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
1161 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
1162 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
1163 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
1164 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
1165 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
1166 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
1167 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
1168 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
1170 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
1171 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
1172 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
1173 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
1177 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
1178 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
1179 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
1180 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
1181 for xdb and dbx commands.
1185 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
1186 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
1187 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
1189 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
1190 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
1191 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
1193 * Debugging across forks
1195 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
1200 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
1201 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
1202 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
1204 * GDB remote protocol additions
1206 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
1207 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
1208 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
1209 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
1211 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
1212 full 64-bit address. The command
1214 set remoteaddresssize 32
1216 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
1217 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
1220 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
1221 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
1223 maint packet heythere
1225 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
1226 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
1229 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
1230 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
1231 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
1233 * Tracing can collect general expressions
1235 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
1236 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
1237 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
1239 * mask-address variable for Mips
1241 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
1242 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
1243 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
1245 * Higher serial baud rates
1247 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
1248 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
1249 to achieve all of these rates.)
1253 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
1254 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
1257 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
1259 * New native configurations
1261 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
1262 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
1263 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1264 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1265 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1266 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
1267 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
1271 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1272 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
1273 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1274 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
1275 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
1276 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
1277 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
1278 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
1279 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
1280 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1281 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
1283 * New debugging protocols
1285 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
1286 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
1287 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
1288 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1289 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1290 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1294 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
1295 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
1300 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
1301 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
1303 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
1305 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
1306 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
1307 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
1309 * Live range splitting
1311 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
1312 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
1313 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
1317 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
1318 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
1322 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
1323 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
1324 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
1329 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
1334 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
1335 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
1336 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
1337 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
1338 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
1339 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
1343 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
1344 the symbol at the specified address.
1348 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
1349 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
1350 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
1351 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
1352 file tracepoint.c for more details.
1356 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
1357 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
1358 of most MIPS variants.
1362 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
1363 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
1364 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
1368 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
1369 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
1370 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
1371 the possible architectures.
1373 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
1375 * New native configurations
1377 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
1378 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
1379 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
1380 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
1381 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1382 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
1386 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
1387 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1388 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
1389 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
1390 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
1392 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1396 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
1397 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
1398 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
1399 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
1400 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
1404 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
1406 * Windows 95/NT native
1408 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
1409 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
1410 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
1411 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
1412 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
1414 * dont-repeat command
1416 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
1417 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
1418 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
1419 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
1421 * Send break instead of ^C
1423 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
1424 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
1425 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
1427 * Remote protocol timeout
1429 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
1430 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
1431 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
1433 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
1435 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
1436 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
1437 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
1438 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
1439 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
1441 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
1442 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
1443 automatically on hpux10.
1445 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
1447 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
1449 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
1451 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
1452 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
1453 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
1454 every character. The default value is 1050.
1456 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
1458 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
1459 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
1460 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
1461 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
1462 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
1463 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
1465 * Speedups for remote debugging
1467 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
1468 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
1469 and more efficient S-record downloading.
1471 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
1473 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
1474 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
1476 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
1478 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
1480 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
1481 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
1483 * Remote targets use caching
1485 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
1486 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
1487 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
1488 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
1489 off' turns the the data cache off.
1491 * Remote targets may have threads
1493 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
1494 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
1495 gdb/remote.c for details.
1499 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
1500 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
1501 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
1502 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
1503 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
1504 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
1505 sequence is something like
1507 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
1509 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
1513 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
1514 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
1515 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
1516 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
1517 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
1518 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
1519 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
1520 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
1524 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
1525 but does simplify configuration and building.
1529 GDB now supports hpux10.
1531 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
1533 * New native configurations
1535 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
1536 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
1537 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
1538 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
1542 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1543 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
1544 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
1545 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
1548 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
1550 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
1551 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
1552 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
1553 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
1554 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
1556 * Arguments to user-defined commands
1558 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
1559 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
1562 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
1564 To execute the command use:
1567 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
1568 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
1569 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
1571 * New `if' and `while' commands
1573 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
1574 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
1575 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
1576 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
1577 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
1578 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
1579 if the expression is zero.
1581 * Fortran source language mode
1583 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
1584 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
1585 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
1586 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
1589 * Better HPUX support
1591 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
1592 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
1593 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
1594 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
1595 that behavior do the following before running the program:
1601 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
1602 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
1608 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
1609 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
1612 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
1613 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
1615 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
1617 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
1618 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
1619 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
1620 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
1621 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
1622 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
1624 * New DOS host serial code
1626 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
1627 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
1630 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
1632 * New "complete" command
1634 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
1635 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
1637 * Trailing space optional in prompt
1639 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
1640 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
1642 * Breakpoint hit counts
1644 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
1645 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
1646 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
1647 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
1648 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
1651 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
1653 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
1654 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
1655 arrays actually contain only short strings.
1657 * Shared library breakpoints
1659 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
1660 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
1662 * Hardware watchpoints
1664 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
1665 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
1667 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
1671 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
1672 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
1674 * Improved Irix 5 support
1676 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
1678 * Improved HPPA support
1680 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
1682 * New native configurations
1684 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
1685 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1686 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
1687 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
1691 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1692 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
1695 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
1697 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
1698 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
1702 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
1703 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
1705 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
1707 * Irix 5 is now supported
1711 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
1712 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
1713 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
1714 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
1715 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
1718 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
1720 * User visible changes:
1724 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
1725 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
1726 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
1727 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
1728 debugging info for the mips target).
1730 * DEC Alpha native support
1732 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
1733 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
1734 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
1735 Alpha-specific notes.
1737 * Preliminary thread implementation
1739 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
1741 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
1743 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
1744 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
1747 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
1749 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
1750 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
1751 call methods, ...etc.
1753 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
1755 * User visible changes:
1757 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
1758 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
1759 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
1760 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
1762 Filename completion now works.
1764 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
1765 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
1766 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
1768 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
1769 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
1770 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
1771 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
1772 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
1776 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
1777 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
1780 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
1784 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
1785 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
1786 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
1790 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
1791 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
1792 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
1793 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
1794 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
1798 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
1799 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
1800 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
1802 * New targets supported
1804 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1805 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1806 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
1807 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1808 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
1810 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
1811 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
1812 GO32 memory extender.
1814 * New remote protocols
1816 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
1818 * New source languages supported
1820 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
1821 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
1822 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
1825 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
1827 * HP Precision Architecture supported
1829 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
1830 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
1831 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
1832 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
1833 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
1834 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
1836 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
1838 * Faster and better demangling
1840 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
1841 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
1842 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
1843 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
1844 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
1845 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
1848 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
1849 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
1850 compiler does not actually implement.
1852 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
1854 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
1855 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
1856 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
1857 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
1858 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
1859 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
1862 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
1863 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
1865 * Improved configure script
1867 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
1868 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
1869 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
1870 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
1872 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
1873 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
1874 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
1875 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
1876 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
1877 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
1879 * Documentation improvements
1881 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
1882 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
1883 before submitting changes.
1885 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
1886 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
1887 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
1888 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
1889 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
1891 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
1892 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
1893 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
1894 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
1895 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
1896 around this problem.
1900 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
1901 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
1902 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
1905 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
1906 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
1908 * New native hosts supported
1910 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
1911 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
1913 * New targets supported
1915 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
1917 * New file formats supported
1919 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
1920 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
1924 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
1926 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
1927 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
1929 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
1930 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
1931 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
1933 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
1934 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
1936 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
1937 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
1938 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
1941 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
1942 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
1943 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
1944 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
1945 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
1947 * Internal improvements
1949 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
1950 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
1952 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
1953 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
1954 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
1955 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
1956 shared code that handles any of them.
1958 * New command line options
1960 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
1964 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
1965 General Public License.
1967 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
1969 * Host/native/target split
1971 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
1972 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
1973 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
1974 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
1975 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
1977 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
1978 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
1979 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
1980 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
1981 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
1982 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
1983 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
1985 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
1986 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
1987 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
1989 * New hosts supported
1991 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
1992 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1993 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
1995 * New targets supported
1997 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
1998 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
2000 * New native hosts supported
2002 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2003 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
2004 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
2006 * New file formats supported
2008 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
2009 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
2010 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
2014 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
2015 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
2016 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
2018 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
2020 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
2021 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
2022 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
2023 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
2027 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
2028 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
2029 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
2031 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
2035 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
2036 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
2039 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
2040 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
2042 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
2043 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
2044 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
2045 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
2046 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
2047 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
2049 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
2050 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
2051 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
2052 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
2056 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
2057 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
2058 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
2059 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
2060 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
2062 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
2063 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
2064 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
2065 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
2069 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
2070 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
2071 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
2072 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
2073 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
2074 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
2075 each instruction being stepped through.
2077 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
2078 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
2080 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
2081 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
2082 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
2083 processor with a serial port.
2087 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
2088 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
2089 supported, and what files each one uses.
2093 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
2094 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
2095 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
2096 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
2098 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
2099 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
2100 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
2101 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
2105 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
2106 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
2107 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
2108 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
2109 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
2110 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
2112 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
2115 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
2117 * Better support for C++ function names
2119 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
2120 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
2121 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
2122 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
2123 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
2125 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
2126 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
2127 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
2128 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
2129 for the list of formats.
2131 * G++ symbol mangling problem
2133 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
2134 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
2135 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
2136 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
2137 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
2138 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
2141 * New 'maintenance' command
2143 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
2144 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
2145 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
2147 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
2148 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
2149 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
2150 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
2151 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
2152 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
2154 The following commands are new:
2156 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
2157 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
2158 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
2160 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
2162 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
2163 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
2164 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
2165 read after argv processing.
2167 * New hosts supported
2169 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
2171 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
2173 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
2174 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
2175 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
2176 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
2177 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
2180 * New targets supported
2182 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2184 * More smarts about finding #include files
2186 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
2187 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
2188 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
2189 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
2190 the one that contains your sources.
2192 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
2193 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
2194 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
2196 * Interesting infernals change
2198 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
2199 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
2200 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
2201 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
2203 * Bug fixes (of course!)
2205 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
2206 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
2207 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
2209 See the ChangeLog for details.
2211 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
2213 * New machines supported (host and target)
2215 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
2217 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2219 * New malloc package
2221 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
2222 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
2223 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
2224 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
2225 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
2226 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
2230 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
2231 'help info proc' for details.
2233 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
2235 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
2236 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
2239 * File name changes for MS-DOS
2241 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
2242 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
2243 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
2244 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
2245 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
2246 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
2248 * Cross byte order fixes
2250 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
2251 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
2253 * New -mapped and -readnow options
2255 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
2256 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
2257 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
2258 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
2259 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
2260 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
2261 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
2262 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
2263 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
2264 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
2266 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
2267 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
2268 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
2269 slower, but makes future operations faster.
2271 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
2272 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
2273 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
2276 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
2278 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
2279 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
2280 shared across multiple host platforms.
2282 * longjmp() handling
2284 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
2285 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
2286 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
2287 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
2291 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
2292 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
2297 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
2298 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
2299 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
2301 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
2303 * New machines supported (host and target)
2305 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2307 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
2308 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
2310 * New machines supported (target)
2312 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2316 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
2317 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
2318 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
2320 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
2321 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
2322 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
2323 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
2324 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
2327 * New features for SVR4
2329 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
2330 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
2331 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
2333 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
2334 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
2335 it prints the address mappings of the process.
2337 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
2338 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
2340 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
2342 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
2343 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
2344 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
2345 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
2346 same code linked statically.
2350 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
2351 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
2352 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
2353 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
2354 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
2355 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
2359 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2360 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2361 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2364 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
2366 * New machines supported (host and target)
2368 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
2369 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
2370 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2372 * Almost SCO Unix support
2374 We had hoped to support:
2375 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2376 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
2377 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
2378 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
2380 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
2382 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
2383 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
2384 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
2385 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
2390 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
2391 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
2392 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
2396 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2397 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2398 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2400 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
2402 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
2403 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
2404 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
2406 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
2407 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
2408 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
2409 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
2412 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
2413 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
2414 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
2415 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
2418 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
2419 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
2422 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
2423 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
2424 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
2427 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
2429 * Improved configuration
2431 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
2432 Porting BFD is simpler.
2436 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
2437 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
2438 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
2439 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
2443 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
2445 * New host supported (not target)
2447 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
2450 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
2452 * Multiple source language support
2454 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
2455 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
2456 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
2457 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
2458 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
2459 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
2463 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
2464 currently under development at the State University of New York at
2465 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
2466 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
2468 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
2469 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
2470 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
2472 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
2473 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
2477 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
2478 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
2479 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
2480 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
2483 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
2485 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
2486 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
2487 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
2488 examining core files.
2492 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
2495 * New machines supported (host and target)
2497 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2498 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
2499 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
2501 * New hosts supported (not targets)
2503 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
2505 * New targets supported (not hosts)
2507 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2508 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2509 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
2511 * New remote interfaces
2517 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
2521 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
2523 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
2524 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
2525 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
2526 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
2527 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
2528 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
2529 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
2530 stub on the target system.
2532 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
2534 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
2535 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
2536 object file types such as a.out and coff.
2538 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
2539 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
2542 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
2544 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
2545 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
2547 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
2548 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
2549 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
2551 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
2552 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
2553 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
2554 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
2556 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
2557 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
2558 it is already running. Default is ON.
2560 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
2561 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
2562 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
2563 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
2566 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
2567 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
2568 or the value of the environment variable
2571 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
2572 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
2575 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
2576 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
2577 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
2579 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
2580 history expansion will be performed on
2581 command line input. The default is OFF.
2583 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
2584 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
2585 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
2587 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
2588 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
2589 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2592 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
2593 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
2594 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2597 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
2598 ``set width'' instead.
2600 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
2601 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
2602 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
2603 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
2605 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
2608 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
2611 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
2614 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
2617 * Support for Epoch Environment.
2619 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
2620 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
2621 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
2625 * Support for Shared Libraries
2627 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
2628 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
2629 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
2630 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
2631 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
2632 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
2633 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
2634 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
2636 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
2637 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
2638 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
2640 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
2645 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
2646 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
2647 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
2648 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
2649 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
2650 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
2652 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
2654 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
2656 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2657 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2658 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2661 * C++ multiple inheritance
2663 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
2666 * C++ exception handling
2668 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
2669 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
2670 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
2673 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
2674 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
2675 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
2677 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
2678 current stack frame.
2681 * Minor command changes
2683 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
2684 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
2685 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
2687 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
2688 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
2689 frames without printing.
2691 * New directory command
2693 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
2694 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
2695 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
2696 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
2697 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
2699 * Configuring GDB for compilation
2701 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
2704 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
2705 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
2706 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
2707 where the program that you are debugging will run.
projects / deliverable / binutils-gdb.git / blob