1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 6.3
6 * New native configurations
8 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
9 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
13 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
15 * Deprecated commands removed
17 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
21 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
22 othernames set arm disassembler
23 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
24 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
25 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
28 * New BSD user-level threads support
30 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
31 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
34 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
35 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
36 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
38 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
39 are not yet supported.
41 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
42 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
44 * REMOVED configurations and files
46 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
47 Renesas H8/300S h8300*-*-*
48 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
49 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
50 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
53 * New "set print array-indexes" command
55 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
56 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
59 * VAX floating point support
61 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
63 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
65 * New command line option
67 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
70 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
72 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
73 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
74 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
75 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
76 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
78 * Internationalization
80 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
81 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
82 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
86 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
87 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
88 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
90 * New native configurations
92 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
96 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
97 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
99 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
101 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
102 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
103 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
106 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
107 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
108 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
120 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
121 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
123 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
125 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
126 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
127 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
137 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
139 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
141 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
142 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
145 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
147 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
148 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
149 IRIX long double values).
153 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
154 command. This problem has been fixed.
156 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
158 * Fix for ``many threads''
160 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
161 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
164 ptrace: No such process.
165 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
167 This problem has been fixed.
169 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
171 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
174 * New ``start'' command.
176 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
178 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
180 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
181 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
182 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
184 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
185 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
186 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
187 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
188 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
189 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
190 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
191 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
192 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
194 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
196 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
197 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
198 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
199 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
200 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
202 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
203 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
204 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
206 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
208 * New native configurations
210 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
211 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
212 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
213 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
214 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
215 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
216 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
218 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
220 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
221 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
222 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
223 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
224 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
225 work, was also included.
227 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
228 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
238 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
239 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
241 * REMOVED configurations and files
243 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
244 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
245 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
246 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
247 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
248 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
249 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
250 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
251 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
253 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
255 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
257 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
259 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
260 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
261 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
262 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
265 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
267 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
268 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
269 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
270 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
271 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
272 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
275 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
277 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
279 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
280 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
281 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
283 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
285 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
286 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
288 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
290 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
291 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
292 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
294 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
296 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
297 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
299 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
301 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
302 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
303 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
305 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
307 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
308 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
309 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
311 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
313 * Removed --with-mmalloc
315 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
316 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
318 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
320 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
321 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
322 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
323 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
325 * Revised SPARC target
327 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
328 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
329 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
330 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
331 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
335 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
336 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
337 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
340 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
342 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
343 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
346 * C++ nested types and namespaces
348 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
349 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
350 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
351 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
352 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
353 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
354 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
355 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
356 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
358 * New native configurations
360 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
361 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
362 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
363 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
364 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
366 * New debugging protocols
368 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
370 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
372 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
373 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
374 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
376 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
378 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
379 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
380 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
383 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
384 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
385 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
386 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
387 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
388 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
389 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
390 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
391 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
393 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
395 * REMOVED configurations and files
397 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
398 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
399 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
400 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
401 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
402 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
403 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
404 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
405 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
406 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
407 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
408 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
409 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
410 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
411 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
412 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
413 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
415 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
419 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
422 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
424 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
425 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
426 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
429 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
430 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
435 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
436 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
437 remote protocol documentation for details.
439 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
441 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
442 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
443 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
446 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
448 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
449 per-thread variables.
451 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
453 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
454 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
456 * Separate debug info.
458 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
459 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
460 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
461 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
462 and optional debug files.
464 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
466 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
467 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
470 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
471 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
475 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
476 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
477 considered "useable".
479 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
481 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
482 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
485 * GDB supports logging output to a file
487 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
488 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
490 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
492 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
493 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
496 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
498 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
499 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
503 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
504 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
505 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
506 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
507 data, for more informative profiling results.
509 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
511 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
512 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
513 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
515 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
518 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
519 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
520 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
521 in a subsequent -var-update.
523 * New native configurations.
525 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
527 * Multi-arched targets.
529 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
530 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
532 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
534 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
535 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
536 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
539 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
540 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
541 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
542 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
543 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
544 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
545 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
546 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
547 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
548 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
549 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
550 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
552 * REMOVED configurations and files
555 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
556 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
557 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
558 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
559 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
560 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
562 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
563 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
564 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
565 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
566 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
567 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
569 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
571 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
572 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
573 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
574 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
575 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
577 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
579 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
581 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
582 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
583 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
584 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
585 shared libs like mad''.
587 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
589 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
590 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
591 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
592 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
594 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
596 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
597 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
600 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
601 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
603 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
604 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
606 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
607 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
608 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
609 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
611 * Multi-arched targets.
613 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
614 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
616 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
617 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
618 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
622 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
625 * New native configurations
627 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
628 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
629 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
630 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
632 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
634 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
635 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
636 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
639 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
640 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
641 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
642 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
643 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
644 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
645 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
646 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
647 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
648 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
650 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
651 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
655 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
657 * REMOVED configurations and files
659 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
660 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
661 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
662 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
663 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
665 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
667 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
669 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
670 commands. The default is 1024.
672 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
674 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
676 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
678 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
679 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
680 from a file into memory (restore).
682 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
684 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
685 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
686 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
688 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
696 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
697 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
698 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
700 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
701 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
702 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
704 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
705 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
706 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
708 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
709 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
710 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
712 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
714 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
716 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
717 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
718 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
719 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
720 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
721 (notably embedded) targets.
723 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
725 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
726 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
727 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
728 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
730 * New command line option
732 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
734 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
736 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
737 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
738 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
739 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
740 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
741 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
742 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
743 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
744 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
745 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
747 * Changes in ARM configurations.
749 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
750 configuration is fully multi-arch.
752 * New native configurations
754 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
755 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
756 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
757 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
761 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
763 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
765 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
766 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
767 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
770 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
771 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
772 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
773 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
774 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
776 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
778 * REMOVED configurations and files
780 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
782 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
783 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
784 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
785 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
786 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
787 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
788 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
789 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
790 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
791 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
792 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
794 * Changes to command line processing
796 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
797 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
799 * Changes to key bindings
801 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
803 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
805 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
807 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
810 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
812 Numerous documentation fixes.
814 Numerous testsuite fixes.
816 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
818 * New native configurations
820 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
821 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
822 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
823 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
825 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
829 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
831 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
833 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
835 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
836 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
837 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
838 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
839 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
841 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
842 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
843 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
844 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
845 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
846 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
847 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
848 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
850 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
851 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
853 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
854 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
855 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
858 * REMOVED configurations and files
860 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
861 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
863 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
867 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
869 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
870 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
875 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
877 * The MI enabled by default.
879 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
880 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
881 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
882 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
883 which is now deprecated.
885 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
887 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
888 main features are supported:
890 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
892 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
895 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
897 - a Pascal expression parser.
899 However, some important features are not yet supported.
901 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
903 - there are some problems with boolean types;
905 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
906 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
908 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
910 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
912 * Changes in completion.
914 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
915 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
916 users expect at the shell prompt.
918 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
919 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
920 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
921 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
922 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
923 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
924 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
926 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
928 * New platform-independent commands:
930 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
931 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
932 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
934 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
936 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
937 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
938 many threads as your system allows you to have.
940 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
942 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
943 multi-threaded programs though.
945 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
947 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
949 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
950 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
953 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
955 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
956 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
957 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
958 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
959 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
962 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
963 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
964 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
966 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
968 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
969 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
971 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
972 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
975 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
976 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
977 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
978 a given linear address.
980 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
981 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
982 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
984 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
986 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
988 * Changes in documentation.
990 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
991 Documentation License.
993 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
996 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
998 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1001 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
1002 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
1003 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
1005 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
1007 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
1008 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
1009 contents of this file.
1013 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
1015 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
1017 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
1019 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
1020 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
1021 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
1022 greater level of detail.
1024 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
1026 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
1027 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
1028 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
1031 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
1033 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
1034 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
1035 machines ``out of the box''.
1037 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
1038 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
1039 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
1040 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
1041 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
1043 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
1044 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
1045 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
1046 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
1047 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
1049 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
1050 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
1053 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
1056 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
1057 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
1058 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
1059 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
1061 * New native configurations
1063 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
1064 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1068 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
1069 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
1070 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
1071 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1073 * OBSOLETE configurations
1075 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1076 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
1078 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
1081 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1082 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1083 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1084 be permanently REMOVED.
1086 * Gould support removed
1088 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
1090 * New features for SVR4
1092 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
1093 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
1094 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
1096 * Many C++ enhancements
1098 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
1099 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
1101 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
1103 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
1104 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
1105 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
1106 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
1108 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
1109 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
1111 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
1113 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
1114 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
1115 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
1117 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
1118 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1120 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
1122 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
1123 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
1124 include ``set remote P-packet''.
1126 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
1128 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
1129 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
1130 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
1132 * ``apropos'' command added.
1134 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
1135 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
1136 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
1140 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
1141 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
1142 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
1143 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
1144 enabled by configuring with:
1146 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
1148 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
1150 * New native configurations
1152 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
1153 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
1154 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
1158 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1159 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
1160 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1162 * OBSOLETE configurations
1164 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
1166 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1167 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1168 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1169 be permanently REMOVED.
1173 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
1174 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
1175 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
1176 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
1177 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
1178 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
1179 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
1184 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
1186 * set extension-language
1188 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
1189 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
1190 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
1191 set extension-language .c c++
1192 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
1193 and their associated languages.
1195 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
1197 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
1198 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
1199 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
1203 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
1204 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
1206 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
1207 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
1209 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
1210 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
1211 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
1212 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
1213 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
1214 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
1215 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
1216 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
1218 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
1219 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
1220 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
1221 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
1225 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
1226 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
1227 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
1228 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
1229 for xdb and dbx commands.
1233 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
1234 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
1235 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
1237 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
1238 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
1239 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
1241 * Debugging across forks
1243 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
1248 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
1249 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
1250 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
1252 * GDB remote protocol additions
1254 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
1255 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
1256 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
1257 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
1259 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
1260 full 64-bit address. The command
1262 set remoteaddresssize 32
1264 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
1265 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
1268 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
1269 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
1271 maint packet heythere
1273 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
1274 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
1277 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
1278 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
1279 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
1281 * Tracing can collect general expressions
1283 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
1284 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
1285 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
1287 * mask-address variable for Mips
1289 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
1290 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
1291 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
1293 * Higher serial baud rates
1295 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
1296 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
1297 to achieve all of these rates.)
1301 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
1302 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
1305 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
1307 * New native configurations
1309 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
1310 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
1311 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1312 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1313 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1314 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
1315 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
1319 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1320 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
1321 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1322 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
1323 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
1324 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
1325 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
1326 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
1327 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
1328 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1329 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
1331 * New debugging protocols
1333 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
1334 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
1335 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
1336 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1337 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1338 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1342 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
1343 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
1348 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
1349 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
1351 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
1353 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
1354 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
1355 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
1357 * Live range splitting
1359 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
1360 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
1361 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
1365 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
1366 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
1370 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
1371 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
1372 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
1377 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
1382 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
1383 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
1384 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
1385 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
1386 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
1387 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
1391 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
1392 the symbol at the specified address.
1396 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
1397 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
1398 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
1399 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
1400 file tracepoint.c for more details.
1404 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
1405 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
1406 of most MIPS variants.
1410 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
1411 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
1412 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
1416 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
1417 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
1418 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
1419 the possible architectures.
1421 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
1423 * New native configurations
1425 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
1426 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
1427 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
1428 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
1429 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1430 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
1434 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
1435 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1436 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
1437 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
1438 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
1440 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1444 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
1445 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
1446 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
1447 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
1448 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
1452 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
1454 * Windows 95/NT native
1456 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
1457 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
1458 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
1459 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
1460 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
1462 * dont-repeat command
1464 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
1465 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
1466 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
1467 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
1469 * Send break instead of ^C
1471 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
1472 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
1473 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
1475 * Remote protocol timeout
1477 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
1478 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
1479 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
1481 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
1483 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
1484 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
1485 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
1486 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
1487 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
1489 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
1490 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
1491 automatically on hpux10.
1493 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
1495 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
1497 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
1499 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
1500 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
1501 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
1502 every character. The default value is 1050.
1504 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
1506 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
1507 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
1508 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
1509 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
1510 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
1511 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
1513 * Speedups for remote debugging
1515 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
1516 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
1517 and more efficient S-record downloading.
1519 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
1521 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
1522 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
1524 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
1526 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
1528 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
1529 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
1531 * Remote targets use caching
1533 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
1534 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
1535 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
1536 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
1537 off' turns the the data cache off.
1539 * Remote targets may have threads
1541 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
1542 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
1543 gdb/remote.c for details.
1547 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
1548 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
1549 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
1550 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
1551 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
1552 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
1553 sequence is something like
1555 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
1557 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
1561 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
1562 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
1563 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
1564 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
1565 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
1566 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
1567 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
1568 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
1572 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
1573 but does simplify configuration and building.
1577 GDB now supports hpux10.
1579 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
1581 * New native configurations
1583 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
1584 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
1585 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
1586 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
1590 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1591 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
1592 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
1593 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
1596 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
1598 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
1599 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
1600 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
1601 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
1602 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
1604 * Arguments to user-defined commands
1606 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
1607 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
1610 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
1612 To execute the command use:
1615 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
1616 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
1617 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
1619 * New `if' and `while' commands
1621 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
1622 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
1623 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
1624 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
1625 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
1626 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
1627 if the expression is zero.
1629 * Fortran source language mode
1631 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
1632 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
1633 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
1634 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
1637 * Better HPUX support
1639 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
1640 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
1641 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
1642 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
1643 that behavior do the following before running the program:
1649 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
1650 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
1656 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
1657 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
1660 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
1661 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
1663 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
1665 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
1666 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
1667 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
1668 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
1669 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
1670 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
1672 * New DOS host serial code
1674 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
1675 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
1678 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
1680 * New "complete" command
1682 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
1683 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
1685 * Trailing space optional in prompt
1687 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
1688 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
1690 * Breakpoint hit counts
1692 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
1693 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
1694 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
1695 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
1696 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
1699 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
1701 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
1702 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
1703 arrays actually contain only short strings.
1705 * Shared library breakpoints
1707 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
1708 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
1710 * Hardware watchpoints
1712 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
1713 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
1715 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
1719 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
1720 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
1722 * Improved Irix 5 support
1724 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
1726 * Improved HPPA support
1728 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
1730 * New native configurations
1732 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
1733 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1734 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
1735 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
1739 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1740 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
1743 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
1745 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
1746 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
1750 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
1751 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
1753 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
1755 * Irix 5 is now supported
1759 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
1760 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
1761 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
1762 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
1763 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
1766 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
1768 * User visible changes:
1772 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
1773 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
1774 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
1775 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
1776 debugging info for the mips target).
1778 * DEC Alpha native support
1780 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
1781 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
1782 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
1783 Alpha-specific notes.
1785 * Preliminary thread implementation
1787 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
1789 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
1791 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
1792 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
1795 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
1797 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
1798 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
1799 call methods, ...etc.
1801 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
1803 * User visible changes:
1805 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
1806 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
1807 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
1808 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
1810 Filename completion now works.
1812 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
1813 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
1814 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
1816 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
1817 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
1818 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
1819 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
1820 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
1824 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
1825 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
1828 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
1832 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
1833 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
1834 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
1838 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
1839 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
1840 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
1841 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
1842 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
1846 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
1847 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
1848 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
1850 * New targets supported
1852 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1853 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1854 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
1855 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1856 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
1858 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
1859 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
1860 GO32 memory extender.
1862 * New remote protocols
1864 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
1866 * New source languages supported
1868 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
1869 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
1870 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
1873 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
1875 * HP Precision Architecture supported
1877 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
1878 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
1879 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
1880 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
1881 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
1882 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
1884 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
1886 * Faster and better demangling
1888 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
1889 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
1890 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
1891 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
1892 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
1893 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
1896 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
1897 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
1898 compiler does not actually implement.
1900 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
1902 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
1903 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
1904 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
1905 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
1906 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
1907 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
1910 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
1911 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
1913 * Improved configure script
1915 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
1916 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
1917 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
1918 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
1920 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
1921 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
1922 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
1923 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
1924 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
1925 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
1927 * Documentation improvements
1929 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
1930 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
1931 before submitting changes.
1933 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
1934 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
1935 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
1936 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
1937 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
1939 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
1940 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
1941 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
1942 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
1943 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
1944 around this problem.
1948 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
1949 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
1950 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
1953 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
1954 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
1956 * New native hosts supported
1958 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
1959 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
1961 * New targets supported
1963 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
1965 * New file formats supported
1967 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
1968 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
1972 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
1974 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
1975 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
1977 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
1978 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
1979 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
1981 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
1982 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
1984 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
1985 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
1986 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
1989 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
1990 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
1991 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
1992 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
1993 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
1995 * Internal improvements
1997 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
1998 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
2000 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
2001 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
2002 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
2003 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
2004 shared code that handles any of them.
2006 * New command line options
2008 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
2012 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
2013 General Public License.
2015 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
2017 * Host/native/target split
2019 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
2020 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
2021 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
2022 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
2023 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
2025 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
2026 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
2027 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
2028 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
2029 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
2030 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
2031 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
2033 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
2034 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
2035 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
2037 * New hosts supported
2039 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
2040 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2041 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
2043 * New targets supported
2045 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
2046 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
2048 * New native hosts supported
2050 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2051 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
2052 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
2054 * New file formats supported
2056 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
2057 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
2058 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
2062 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
2063 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
2064 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
2066 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
2068 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
2069 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
2070 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
2071 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
2075 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
2076 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
2077 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
2079 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
2083 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
2084 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
2087 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
2088 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
2090 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
2091 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
2092 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
2093 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
2094 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
2095 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
2097 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
2098 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
2099 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
2100 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
2104 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
2105 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
2106 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
2107 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
2108 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
2110 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
2111 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
2112 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
2113 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
2117 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
2118 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
2119 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
2120 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
2121 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
2122 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
2123 each instruction being stepped through.
2125 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
2126 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
2128 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
2129 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
2130 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
2131 processor with a serial port.
2135 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
2136 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
2137 supported, and what files each one uses.
2141 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
2142 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
2143 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
2144 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
2146 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
2147 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
2148 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
2149 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
2153 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
2154 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
2155 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
2156 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
2157 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
2158 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
2160 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
2163 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
2165 * Better support for C++ function names
2167 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
2168 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
2169 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
2170 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
2171 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
2173 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
2174 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
2175 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
2176 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
2177 for the list of formats.
2179 * G++ symbol mangling problem
2181 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
2182 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
2183 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
2184 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
2185 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
2186 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
2189 * New 'maintenance' command
2191 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
2192 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
2193 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
2195 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
2196 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
2197 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
2198 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
2199 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
2200 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
2202 The following commands are new:
2204 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
2205 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
2206 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
2208 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
2210 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
2211 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
2212 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
2213 read after argv processing.
2215 * New hosts supported
2217 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
2219 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
2221 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
2222 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
2223 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
2224 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
2225 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
2228 * New targets supported
2230 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2232 * More smarts about finding #include files
2234 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
2235 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
2236 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
2237 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
2238 the one that contains your sources.
2240 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
2241 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
2242 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
2244 * Interesting infernals change
2246 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
2247 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
2248 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
2249 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
2251 * Bug fixes (of course!)
2253 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
2254 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
2255 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
2257 See the ChangeLog for details.
2259 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
2261 * New machines supported (host and target)
2263 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
2265 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2267 * New malloc package
2269 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
2270 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
2271 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
2272 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
2273 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
2274 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
2278 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
2279 'help info proc' for details.
2281 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
2283 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
2284 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
2287 * File name changes for MS-DOS
2289 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
2290 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
2291 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
2292 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
2293 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
2294 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
2296 * Cross byte order fixes
2298 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
2299 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
2301 * New -mapped and -readnow options
2303 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
2304 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
2305 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
2306 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
2307 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
2308 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
2309 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
2310 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
2311 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
2312 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
2314 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
2315 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
2316 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
2317 slower, but makes future operations faster.
2319 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
2320 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
2321 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
2324 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
2326 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
2327 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
2328 shared across multiple host platforms.
2330 * longjmp() handling
2332 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
2333 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
2334 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
2335 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
2339 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
2340 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
2345 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
2346 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
2347 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
2349 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
2351 * New machines supported (host and target)
2353 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2355 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
2356 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
2358 * New machines supported (target)
2360 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2364 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
2365 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
2366 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
2368 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
2369 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
2370 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
2371 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
2372 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
2375 * New features for SVR4
2377 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
2378 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
2379 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
2381 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
2382 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
2383 it prints the address mappings of the process.
2385 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
2386 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
2388 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
2390 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
2391 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
2392 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
2393 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
2394 same code linked statically.
2398 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
2399 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
2400 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
2401 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
2402 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
2403 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
2407 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2408 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2409 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2412 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
2414 * New machines supported (host and target)
2416 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
2417 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
2418 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2420 * Almost SCO Unix support
2422 We had hoped to support:
2423 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2424 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
2425 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
2426 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
2428 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
2430 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
2431 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
2432 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
2433 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
2438 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
2439 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
2440 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
2444 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2445 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2446 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2448 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
2450 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
2451 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
2452 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
2454 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
2455 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
2456 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
2457 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
2460 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
2461 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
2462 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
2463 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
2466 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
2467 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
2470 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
2471 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
2472 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
2475 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
2477 * Improved configuration
2479 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
2480 Porting BFD is simpler.
2484 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
2485 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
2486 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
2487 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
2491 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
2493 * New host supported (not target)
2495 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
2498 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
2500 * Multiple source language support
2502 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
2503 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
2504 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
2505 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
2506 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
2507 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
2511 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
2512 currently under development at the State University of New York at
2513 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
2514 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
2516 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
2517 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
2518 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
2520 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
2521 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
2525 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
2526 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
2527 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
2528 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
2531 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
2533 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
2534 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
2535 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
2536 examining core files.
2540 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
2543 * New machines supported (host and target)
2545 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2546 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
2547 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
2549 * New hosts supported (not targets)
2551 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
2553 * New targets supported (not hosts)
2555 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2556 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2557 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
2559 * New remote interfaces
2565 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
2569 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
2571 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
2572 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
2573 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
2574 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
2575 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
2576 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
2577 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
2578 stub on the target system.
2580 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
2582 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
2583 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
2584 object file types such as a.out and coff.
2586 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
2587 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
2590 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
2592 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
2593 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
2595 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
2596 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
2597 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
2599 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
2600 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
2601 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
2602 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
2604 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
2605 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
2606 it is already running. Default is ON.
2608 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
2609 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
2610 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
2611 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
2614 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
2615 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
2616 or the value of the environment variable
2619 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
2620 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
2623 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
2624 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
2625 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
2627 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
2628 history expansion will be performed on
2629 command line input. The default is OFF.
2631 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
2632 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
2633 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
2635 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
2636 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
2637 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2640 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
2641 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
2642 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2645 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
2646 ``set width'' instead.
2648 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
2649 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
2650 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
2651 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
2653 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
2656 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
2659 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
2662 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
2665 * Support for Epoch Environment.
2667 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
2668 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
2669 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
2673 * Support for Shared Libraries
2675 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
2676 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
2677 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
2678 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
2679 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
2680 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
2681 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
2682 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
2684 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
2685 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
2686 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
2688 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
2693 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
2694 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
2695 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
2696 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
2697 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
2698 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
2700 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
2702 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
2704 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2705 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2706 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2709 * C++ multiple inheritance
2711 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
2714 * C++ exception handling
2716 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
2717 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
2718 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
2721 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
2722 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
2723 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
2725 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
2726 current stack frame.
2729 * Minor command changes
2731 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
2732 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
2733 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
2735 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
2736 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
2737 frames without printing.
2739 * New directory command
2741 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
2742 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
2743 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
2744 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
2745 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
2747 * Configuring GDB for compilation
2749 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
2752 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
2753 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
2754 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
2755 where the program that you are debugging will run.
projects / deliverable / binutils-gdb.git / blob