1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 6.8
6 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
7 now complete on file names.
9 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
10 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
11 For instance, consider:
13 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
14 # struct example variable;
17 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
18 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
23 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
25 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
27 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
28 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
29 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
31 * The "disassemble" command now supports an optional /m modifier to print mixed
34 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
35 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
37 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
38 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
39 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
41 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
42 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
44 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
46 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
47 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
49 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
50 list of section offsets.
52 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
53 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
56 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
58 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
59 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
61 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
62 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
63 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
67 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
69 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
71 set print symbol-loading
72 show print symbol-loading
73 Control printing of symbol loading messages.
77 Display timestamps with GDB debugging output.
82 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
84 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
86 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
87 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
88 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
90 set breakpoint always-inserted
91 show breakpoint always-inserted
92 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
93 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
94 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
96 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
97 show arm fallback-mode
98 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
100 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
101 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
102 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
103 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
105 set disable-randomization
106 show disable-randomization
107 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
108 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
109 multiple debugging sessions.
113 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
118 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
121 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
123 * New native configurations
125 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
126 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
130 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
131 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
133 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
135 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
136 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
137 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
138 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
140 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
141 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
143 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
146 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
147 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
148 and in inlined functions.
150 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
151 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
152 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
154 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
156 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
157 registers on PowerPC targets.
159 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
160 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
162 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
163 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
165 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
166 extended-remote mode.
168 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
169 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
170 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
171 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
173 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
174 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
175 target architectures.
177 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
178 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
179 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
180 stored in two consecutive float registers.
182 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
185 * Improved support for debugging Ada
186 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
188 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
189 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
190 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
191 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
193 - Improved command completion in Ada
196 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
201 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
202 show print frame-arguments
203 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
204 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
209 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
216 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
225 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
228 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
232 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
234 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
236 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
237 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
238 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
240 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
241 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
242 -Bsymbolic linker option.
244 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
245 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
248 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
249 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
251 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
252 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
254 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
256 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
257 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
258 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
260 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
261 automatically displayed as character or string data.
263 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
264 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
267 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
268 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
269 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
271 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
274 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
275 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
276 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
278 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
280 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
282 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
283 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
284 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
286 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
287 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
289 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
290 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
291 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
292 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
293 Windows and SymbianOS).
295 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
296 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
298 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
299 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
305 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
306 when debugging using remote targets.
308 set mem inaccessible-by-default
309 show mem inaccessible-by-default
310 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
311 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
312 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
313 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
314 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
316 set breakpoint auto-hw
317 show breakpoint auto-hw
318 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
319 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
320 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
321 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
322 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
323 including "next" and "finish".
326 catch exception unhandled
327 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
330 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
334 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
335 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
336 an alias to "set sysroot".
339 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
340 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
343 * New native configurations
345 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
350 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
351 not query the target for its built-in description.
355 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
356 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
357 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
362 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
363 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
366 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
371 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
372 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
374 qXfer:libraries:read:
375 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
376 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
377 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
378 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
382 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
391 i[34567]86-*-netware*
392 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
393 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
395 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
398 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
399 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
408 * Other removed features
415 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
422 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
427 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
428 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
433 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
434 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
436 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
438 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
439 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
440 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
441 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
445 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
446 in debugging information.
450 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
451 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
453 set mips stack-arg-size
454 set mips saved-gpreg-size
456 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
458 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
463 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
465 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
466 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
467 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
469 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
470 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
473 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
474 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
476 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
477 stub provides the required support.
479 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
480 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
485 unset substitute-path
487 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
488 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
489 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
490 between compilation and debugging.
494 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
495 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
496 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
500 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
502 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
503 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
505 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
510 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
511 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
512 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
513 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
517 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
518 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
520 qXfer:memory-map:read:
521 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
522 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
527 Erase and program a flash memory device.
529 * Removed remote packets
532 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
533 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
535 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
539 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
541 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
545 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
546 only if it doesn't already have a value.
548 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
550 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
552 restart <n> Return the program state to a
553 previously saved state.
555 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
557 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
559 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
560 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
562 info forks List forks of the user program that
563 are available to be debugged.
565 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
566 forks of the user program that are
567 available to be debugged.
569 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
570 that are available to be debugged (and
571 kill the forked process).
573 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
574 that are available to be debugged (and
575 allow the process to continue).
579 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
581 * Improved Windows host support
583 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
584 native console support, and remote communications using either
585 network sockets or serial ports.
587 * Improved Modula-2 language support
589 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
590 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
591 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
592 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
593 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
594 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
598 The ARM rdi-share module.
600 The Netware NLM debug server.
602 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
604 * New native configurations
606 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
607 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
611 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
613 * New command line options
615 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
616 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
617 the child (debugged) program exited with.
618 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
619 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
620 specified multiple times and in conjunction
621 with the --command (-x) option.
623 * Deprecated commands removed
625 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
629 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
630 othernames set arm disassembler
631 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
632 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
633 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
636 * New BSD user-level threads support
638 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
639 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
642 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
643 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
644 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
646 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
647 are not yet supported.
649 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
650 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
652 * REMOVED configurations and files
654 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
655 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
656 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
658 * New "set print array-indexes" command
660 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
661 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
664 * VAX floating point support
666 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
668 * User-defined command support
670 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
671 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
672 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
674 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
676 * New command line option
678 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
681 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
683 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
684 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
685 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
686 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
687 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
689 * Internationalization
691 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
692 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
693 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
697 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
698 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
699 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
701 * New native configurations
703 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
707 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
708 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
710 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
712 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
713 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
714 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
717 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
718 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
719 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
731 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
732 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
734 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
736 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
737 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
738 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
748 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
750 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
752 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
753 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
756 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
758 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
759 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
760 IRIX long double values).
764 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
765 command. This problem has been fixed.
767 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
769 * Fix for ``many threads''
771 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
772 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
775 ptrace: No such process.
776 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
778 This problem has been fixed.
780 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
782 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
785 * New ``start'' command.
787 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
789 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
791 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
792 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
793 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
795 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
796 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
797 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
798 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
799 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
800 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
801 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
802 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
803 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
805 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
807 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
808 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
809 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
810 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
811 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
813 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
814 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
815 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
817 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
819 * New native configurations
821 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
822 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
823 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
824 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
825 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
826 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
827 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
829 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
831 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
832 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
833 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
834 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
835 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
836 work, was also included.
838 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
839 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
849 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
850 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
852 * REMOVED configurations and files
854 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
855 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
856 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
857 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
858 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
859 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
860 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
861 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
862 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
864 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
866 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
868 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
870 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
871 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
872 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
873 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
876 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
878 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
879 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
880 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
881 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
882 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
883 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
886 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
888 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
890 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
891 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
892 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
894 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
896 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
897 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
899 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
901 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
902 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
903 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
905 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
907 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
908 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
910 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
912 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
913 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
914 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
916 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
918 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
919 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
920 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
922 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
924 * Removed --with-mmalloc
926 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
927 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
929 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
931 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
932 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
933 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
934 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
936 * Revised SPARC target
938 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
939 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
940 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
941 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
942 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
946 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
947 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
948 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
951 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
953 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
954 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
957 * C++ nested types and namespaces
959 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
960 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
961 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
962 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
963 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
964 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
965 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
966 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
967 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
969 * New native configurations
971 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
972 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
973 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
974 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
975 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
977 * New debugging protocols
979 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
981 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
983 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
984 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
985 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
987 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
989 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
990 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
991 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
994 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
995 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
996 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
997 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
998 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
999 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
1000 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
1001 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
1002 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
1003 sonymips mips-sony-*
1004 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
1006 * REMOVED configurations and files
1008 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1009 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
1010 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1011 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1012 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1013 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
1014 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1015 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
1016 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
1017 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
1018 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
1019 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
1020 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
1021 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
1022 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
1023 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1024 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
1026 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
1030 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
1031 integrated into GDB.
1033 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
1035 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
1036 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
1037 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
1040 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
1041 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
1042 DWARF 2 CFI support.
1046 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
1047 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
1048 remote protocol documentation for details.
1050 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
1052 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
1053 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
1054 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
1057 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
1059 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
1060 per-thread variables.
1062 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
1064 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
1065 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
1067 * Separate debug info.
1069 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
1070 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
1071 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
1072 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
1073 and optional debug files.
1075 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
1077 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
1078 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
1081 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
1082 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
1086 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
1087 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
1088 considered "useable".
1090 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
1092 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
1093 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
1096 * GDB supports logging output to a file
1098 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
1099 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
1101 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
1103 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
1104 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
1107 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
1109 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
1110 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
1114 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
1115 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
1116 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
1117 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
1118 data, for more informative profiling results.
1120 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
1122 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
1123 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
1124 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
1126 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
1129 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
1130 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
1131 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
1132 in a subsequent -var-update.
1134 * New native configurations.
1136 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1138 * Multi-arched targets.
1140 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
1141 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
1143 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1145 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1146 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1147 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1148 permanently REMOVED.
1150 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1151 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1152 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1153 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
1154 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1155 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
1156 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
1157 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
1158 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
1159 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
1160 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1161 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
1163 * REMOVED configurations and files
1166 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1167 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
1168 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1169 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1170 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
1171 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1173 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
1174 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1175 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1176 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1177 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1178 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1180 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
1182 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
1183 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
1184 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
1185 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
1186 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
1188 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
1190 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
1192 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
1193 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
1194 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
1195 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
1196 shared libs like mad''.
1198 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
1200 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
1201 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
1202 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
1203 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
1205 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
1207 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
1208 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
1211 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
1212 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
1214 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
1215 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
1217 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
1218 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
1219 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
1220 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
1222 * Multi-arched targets.
1224 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
1225 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
1227 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
1228 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
1229 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
1233 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
1236 * New native configurations
1238 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
1239 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
1240 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
1241 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
1243 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1245 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1246 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1247 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1248 permanently REMOVED.
1250 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1251 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1252 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
1253 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1254 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1255 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1256 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1257 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1258 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
1259 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1261 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
1262 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1264 * OBSOLETE languages
1266 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
1268 * REMOVED configurations and files
1270 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1271 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1272 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1273 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1274 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1276 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
1278 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
1280 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
1281 commands. The default is 1024.
1283 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
1285 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
1287 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
1289 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
1290 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
1291 from a file into memory (restore).
1293 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
1295 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
1296 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
1297 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
1299 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
1307 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
1308 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
1309 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
1311 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
1312 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
1313 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
1315 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
1316 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
1317 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
1319 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
1320 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
1321 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
1323 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
1325 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
1327 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
1328 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
1329 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
1330 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
1331 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
1332 (notably embedded) targets.
1334 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
1336 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
1337 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
1338 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
1339 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
1341 * New command line option
1343 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
1345 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
1347 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
1348 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
1349 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
1350 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
1351 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
1352 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
1353 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
1354 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
1355 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
1356 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
1358 * Changes in ARM configurations.
1360 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
1361 configuration is fully multi-arch.
1363 * New native configurations
1365 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
1366 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
1367 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
1368 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
1372 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
1374 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1376 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1377 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1378 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1379 permanently REMOVED.
1381 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1382 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1383 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1384 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1385 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1387 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
1389 * REMOVED configurations and files
1391 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1393 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1394 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1395 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
1396 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1397 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1398 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
1399 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
1400 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1401 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1402 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
1403 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
1405 * Changes to command line processing
1407 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
1408 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
1410 * Changes to key bindings
1412 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
1414 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
1416 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
1418 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
1421 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
1423 Numerous documentation fixes.
1425 Numerous testsuite fixes.
1427 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
1429 * New native configurations
1431 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
1432 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
1433 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
1434 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1435 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
1436 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
1440 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
1442 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
1444 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1446 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
1447 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1448 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1449 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
1450 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1452 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1453 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1454 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1455 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
1456 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
1457 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1458 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
1459 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
1461 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
1462 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
1464 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1465 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1466 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1467 permanently REMOVED.
1469 * REMOVED configurations and files
1471 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1472 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
1474 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
1478 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
1480 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
1481 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
1486 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
1488 * The MI enabled by default.
1490 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
1491 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
1492 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
1493 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
1494 which is now deprecated.
1496 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
1498 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
1499 main features are supported:
1501 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
1503 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
1506 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
1508 - a Pascal expression parser.
1510 However, some important features are not yet supported.
1512 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
1514 - there are some problems with boolean types;
1516 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
1517 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
1519 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
1521 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
1523 * Changes in completion.
1525 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
1526 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
1527 users expect at the shell prompt.
1529 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
1530 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
1531 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
1532 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
1533 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
1534 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
1535 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
1537 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
1539 * New platform-independent commands:
1541 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
1542 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
1543 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
1545 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
1547 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
1548 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
1549 many threads as your system allows you to have.
1551 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
1553 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
1554 multi-threaded programs though.
1556 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
1558 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
1560 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
1561 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
1564 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
1566 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
1567 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
1568 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
1569 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
1570 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
1573 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
1574 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
1575 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
1577 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
1579 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
1580 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
1582 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
1583 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
1586 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
1587 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
1588 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
1589 a given linear address.
1591 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
1592 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
1593 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
1595 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
1597 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
1599 * Changes in documentation.
1601 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
1602 Documentation License.
1604 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1607 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
1609 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1612 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
1613 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
1614 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
1616 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
1618 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
1619 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
1620 contents of this file.
1624 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
1626 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
1628 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
1630 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
1631 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
1632 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
1633 greater level of detail.
1635 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
1637 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
1638 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
1639 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
1642 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
1644 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
1645 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
1646 machines ``out of the box''.
1648 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
1649 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
1650 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
1651 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
1652 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
1654 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
1655 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
1656 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
1657 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
1658 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
1660 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
1661 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
1664 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
1667 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
1668 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
1669 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
1670 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
1672 * New native configurations
1674 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
1675 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1679 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
1680 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
1681 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
1682 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1684 * OBSOLETE configurations
1686 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1687 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
1689 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
1692 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1693 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1694 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1695 be permanently REMOVED.
1697 * Gould support removed
1699 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
1701 * New features for SVR4
1703 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
1704 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
1705 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
1707 * Many C++ enhancements
1709 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
1710 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
1712 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
1714 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
1715 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
1716 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
1717 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
1719 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
1720 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
1722 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
1724 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
1725 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
1726 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
1728 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
1729 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1731 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
1733 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
1734 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
1735 include ``set remote P-packet''.
1737 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
1739 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
1740 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
1741 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
1743 * ``apropos'' command added.
1745 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
1746 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
1747 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
1751 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
1752 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
1753 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
1754 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
1755 enabled by configuring with:
1757 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
1759 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
1761 * New native configurations
1763 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
1764 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
1765 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
1769 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1770 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
1771 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1773 * OBSOLETE configurations
1775 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
1777 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1778 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1779 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1780 be permanently REMOVED.
1784 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
1785 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
1786 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
1787 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
1788 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
1789 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
1790 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
1795 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
1797 * set extension-language
1799 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
1800 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
1801 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
1802 set extension-language .c c++
1803 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
1804 and their associated languages.
1806 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
1808 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
1809 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
1810 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
1814 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
1815 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
1817 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
1818 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
1820 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
1821 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
1822 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
1823 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
1824 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
1825 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
1826 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
1827 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
1829 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
1830 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
1831 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
1832 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
1836 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
1837 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
1838 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
1839 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
1840 for xdb and dbx commands.
1844 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
1845 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
1846 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
1848 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
1849 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
1850 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
1852 * Debugging across forks
1854 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
1859 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
1860 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
1861 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
1863 * GDB remote protocol additions
1865 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
1866 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
1867 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
1868 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
1870 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
1871 full 64-bit address. The command
1873 set remoteaddresssize 32
1875 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
1876 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
1879 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
1880 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
1882 maint packet heythere
1884 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
1885 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
1888 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
1889 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
1890 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
1892 * Tracing can collect general expressions
1894 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
1895 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
1896 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
1898 * mask-address variable for Mips
1900 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
1901 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
1902 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
1904 * Higher serial baud rates
1906 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
1907 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
1908 to achieve all of these rates.)
1912 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
1913 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
1916 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
1918 * New native configurations
1920 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
1921 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
1922 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1923 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1924 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1925 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
1926 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
1930 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1931 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
1932 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1933 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
1934 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
1935 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
1936 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
1937 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
1938 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
1939 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1940 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
1942 * New debugging protocols
1944 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
1945 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
1946 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
1947 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1948 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1949 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1953 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
1954 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
1959 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
1960 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
1962 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
1964 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
1965 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
1966 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
1968 * Live range splitting
1970 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
1971 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
1972 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
1976 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
1977 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
1981 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
1982 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
1983 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
1988 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
1993 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
1994 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
1995 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
1996 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
1997 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
1998 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
2002 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
2003 the symbol at the specified address.
2007 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
2008 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
2009 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
2010 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
2011 file tracepoint.c for more details.
2015 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
2016 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
2017 of most MIPS variants.
2021 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
2022 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
2023 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
2027 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
2028 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
2029 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
2030 the possible architectures.
2032 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
2034 * New native configurations
2036 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
2037 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
2038 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
2039 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
2040 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2041 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
2045 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
2046 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
2047 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
2048 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
2049 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
2051 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2055 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
2056 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
2057 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
2058 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
2059 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
2063 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
2065 * Windows 95/NT native
2067 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
2068 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
2069 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
2070 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
2071 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
2073 * dont-repeat command
2075 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
2076 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
2077 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
2078 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
2080 * Send break instead of ^C
2082 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
2083 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
2084 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
2086 * Remote protocol timeout
2088 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
2089 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
2090 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
2092 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
2094 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
2095 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
2096 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
2097 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
2098 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
2100 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
2101 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
2102 automatically on hpux10.
2104 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
2106 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
2108 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
2110 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
2111 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
2112 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
2113 every character. The default value is 1050.
2115 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
2117 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
2118 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
2119 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
2120 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
2121 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
2122 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
2124 * Speedups for remote debugging
2126 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
2127 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
2128 and more efficient S-record downloading.
2130 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
2132 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
2133 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
2135 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
2137 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
2139 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
2140 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
2142 * Remote targets use caching
2144 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
2145 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
2146 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
2147 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
2148 off' turns the the data cache off.
2150 * Remote targets may have threads
2152 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
2153 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
2154 gdb/remote.c for details.
2158 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
2159 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
2160 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
2161 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
2162 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
2163 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
2164 sequence is something like
2166 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
2168 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
2172 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
2173 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
2174 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
2175 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
2176 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
2177 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
2178 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
2179 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
2183 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
2184 but does simplify configuration and building.
2188 GDB now supports hpux10.
2190 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
2192 * New native configurations
2194 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
2195 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
2196 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
2197 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
2201 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2202 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
2203 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
2204 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
2207 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
2209 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
2210 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
2211 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
2212 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
2213 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
2215 * Arguments to user-defined commands
2217 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
2218 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
2221 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
2223 To execute the command use:
2226 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
2227 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
2228 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
2230 * New `if' and `while' commands
2232 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
2233 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
2234 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
2235 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
2236 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
2237 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
2238 if the expression is zero.
2240 * Fortran source language mode
2242 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
2243 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
2244 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
2245 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
2248 * Better HPUX support
2250 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
2251 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
2252 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
2253 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
2254 that behavior do the following before running the program:
2260 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
2261 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
2267 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
2268 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
2271 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
2272 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
2274 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
2276 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
2277 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
2278 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
2279 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
2280 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
2281 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
2283 * New DOS host serial code
2285 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
2286 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
2289 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
2291 * New "complete" command
2293 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
2294 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
2296 * Trailing space optional in prompt
2298 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
2299 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
2301 * Breakpoint hit counts
2303 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
2304 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
2305 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
2306 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
2307 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
2310 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
2312 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
2313 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
2314 arrays actually contain only short strings.
2316 * Shared library breakpoints
2318 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
2319 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
2321 * Hardware watchpoints
2323 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
2324 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
2326 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
2330 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
2331 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
2333 * Improved Irix 5 support
2335 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
2337 * Improved HPPA support
2339 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
2341 * New native configurations
2343 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
2344 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2345 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
2346 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
2350 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2351 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
2354 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
2356 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
2357 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
2361 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
2362 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
2364 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
2366 * Irix 5 is now supported
2370 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
2371 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
2372 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
2373 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
2374 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
2377 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
2379 * User visible changes:
2383 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
2384 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
2385 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
2386 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
2387 debugging info for the mips target).
2389 * DEC Alpha native support
2391 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
2392 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
2393 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
2394 Alpha-specific notes.
2396 * Preliminary thread implementation
2398 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
2400 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
2402 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
2403 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
2406 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
2408 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
2409 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
2410 call methods, ...etc.
2412 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
2414 * User visible changes:
2416 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
2417 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
2418 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
2419 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
2421 Filename completion now works.
2423 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
2424 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
2425 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
2427 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
2428 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
2429 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
2430 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
2431 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
2435 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
2436 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
2439 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
2443 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
2444 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
2445 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
2449 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
2450 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
2451 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
2452 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
2453 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
2457 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
2458 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
2459 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
2461 * New targets supported
2463 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2464 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2465 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
2466 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2467 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
2469 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
2470 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
2471 GO32 memory extender.
2473 * New remote protocols
2475 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
2477 * New source languages supported
2479 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
2480 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
2481 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
2484 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
2486 * HP Precision Architecture supported
2488 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
2489 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
2490 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
2491 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
2492 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
2493 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
2495 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
2497 * Faster and better demangling
2499 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
2500 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
2501 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
2502 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
2503 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
2504 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
2507 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
2508 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
2509 compiler does not actually implement.
2511 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
2513 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
2514 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
2515 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
2516 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
2517 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
2518 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
2521 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
2522 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
2524 * Improved configure script
2526 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
2527 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
2528 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
2529 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
2531 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
2532 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
2533 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
2534 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
2535 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
2536 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
2538 * Documentation improvements
2540 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
2541 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
2542 before submitting changes.
2544 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
2545 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
2546 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
2547 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
2548 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
2550 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
2551 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
2552 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
2553 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
2554 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
2555 around this problem.
2559 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
2560 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
2561 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
2564 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
2565 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
2567 * New native hosts supported
2569 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
2570 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
2572 * New targets supported
2574 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
2576 * New file formats supported
2578 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
2579 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
2583 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
2585 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
2586 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
2588 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
2589 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
2590 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
2592 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
2593 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
2595 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
2596 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
2597 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
2600 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
2601 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
2602 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
2603 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
2604 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
2606 * Internal improvements
2608 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
2609 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
2611 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
2612 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
2613 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
2614 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
2615 shared code that handles any of them.
2617 * New command line options
2619 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
2623 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
2624 General Public License.
2626 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
2628 * Host/native/target split
2630 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
2631 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
2632 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
2633 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
2634 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
2636 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
2637 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
2638 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
2639 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
2640 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
2641 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
2642 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
2644 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
2645 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
2646 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
2648 * New hosts supported
2650 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
2651 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2652 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
2654 * New targets supported
2656 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
2657 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
2659 * New native hosts supported
2661 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2662 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
2663 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
2665 * New file formats supported
2667 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
2668 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
2669 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
2673 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
2674 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
2675 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
2677 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
2679 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
2680 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
2681 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
2682 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
2686 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
2687 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
2688 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
2690 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
2694 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
2695 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
2698 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
2699 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
2701 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
2702 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
2703 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
2704 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
2705 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
2706 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
2708 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
2709 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
2710 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
2711 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
2715 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
2716 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
2717 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
2718 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
2719 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
2721 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
2722 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
2723 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
2724 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
2728 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
2729 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
2730 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
2731 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
2732 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
2733 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
2734 each instruction being stepped through.
2736 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
2737 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
2739 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
2740 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
2741 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
2742 processor with a serial port.
2746 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
2747 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
2748 supported, and what files each one uses.
2752 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
2753 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
2754 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
2755 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
2757 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
2758 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
2759 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
2760 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
2764 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
2765 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
2766 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
2767 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
2768 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
2769 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
2771 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
2774 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
2776 * Better support for C++ function names
2778 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
2779 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
2780 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
2781 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
2782 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
2784 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
2785 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
2786 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
2787 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
2788 for the list of formats.
2790 * G++ symbol mangling problem
2792 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
2793 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
2794 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
2795 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
2796 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
2797 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
2800 * New 'maintenance' command
2802 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
2803 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
2804 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
2806 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
2807 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
2808 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
2809 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
2810 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
2811 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
2813 The following commands are new:
2815 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
2816 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
2817 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
2819 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
2821 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
2822 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
2823 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
2824 read after argv processing.
2826 * New hosts supported
2828 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
2830 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
2832 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
2833 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
2834 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
2835 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
2836 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
2839 * New targets supported
2841 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2843 * More smarts about finding #include files
2845 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
2846 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
2847 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
2848 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
2849 the one that contains your sources.
2851 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
2852 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
2853 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
2855 * Interesting infernals change
2857 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
2858 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
2859 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
2860 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
2862 * Bug fixes (of course!)
2864 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
2865 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
2866 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
2868 See the ChangeLog for details.
2870 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
2872 * New machines supported (host and target)
2874 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
2876 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2878 * New malloc package
2880 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
2881 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
2882 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
2883 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
2884 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
2885 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
2889 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
2890 'help info proc' for details.
2892 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
2894 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
2895 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
2898 * File name changes for MS-DOS
2900 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
2901 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
2902 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
2903 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
2904 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
2905 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
2907 * Cross byte order fixes
2909 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
2910 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
2912 * New -mapped and -readnow options
2914 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
2915 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
2916 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
2917 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
2918 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
2919 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
2920 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
2921 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
2922 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
2923 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
2925 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
2926 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
2927 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
2928 slower, but makes future operations faster.
2930 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
2931 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
2932 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
2935 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
2937 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
2938 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
2939 shared across multiple host platforms.
2941 * longjmp() handling
2943 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
2944 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
2945 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
2946 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
2950 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
2951 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
2956 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
2957 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
2958 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
2960 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
2962 * New machines supported (host and target)
2964 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2966 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
2967 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
2969 * New machines supported (target)
2971 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2975 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
2976 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
2977 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
2979 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
2980 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
2981 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
2982 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
2983 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
2986 * New features for SVR4
2988 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
2989 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
2990 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
2992 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
2993 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
2994 it prints the address mappings of the process.
2996 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
2997 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
2999 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
3001 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
3002 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
3003 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
3004 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
3005 same code linked statically.
3009 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
3010 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
3011 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
3012 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
3013 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
3014 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
3018 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
3019 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
3020 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
3023 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
3025 * New machines supported (host and target)
3027 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
3028 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
3029 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3031 * Almost SCO Unix support
3033 We had hoped to support:
3034 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
3035 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
3036 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
3037 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
3039 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
3041 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
3042 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
3043 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
3044 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
3049 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
3050 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
3051 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
3055 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
3056 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
3057 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
3059 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
3061 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
3062 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
3063 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
3065 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
3066 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
3067 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
3068 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
3071 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
3072 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
3073 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
3074 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
3077 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
3078 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
3081 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
3082 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
3083 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
3086 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
3088 * Improved configuration
3090 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
3091 Porting BFD is simpler.
3095 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
3096 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
3097 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
3098 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
3102 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
3104 * New host supported (not target)
3106 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
3109 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
3111 * Multiple source language support
3113 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
3114 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
3115 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
3116 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
3117 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
3118 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
3122 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
3123 currently under development at the State University of New York at
3124 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
3125 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
3127 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
3128 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
3129 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
3131 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
3132 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
3136 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
3137 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
3138 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
3139 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
3142 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
3144 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
3145 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
3146 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
3147 examining core files.
3151 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
3154 * New machines supported (host and target)
3156 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
3157 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
3158 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
3160 * New hosts supported (not targets)
3162 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
3164 * New targets supported (not hosts)
3166 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3167 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3168 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
3170 * New remote interfaces
3176 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
3180 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
3182 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
3183 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
3184 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
3185 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
3186 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
3187 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
3188 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
3189 stub on the target system.
3191 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
3193 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
3194 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
3195 object file types such as a.out and coff.
3197 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
3198 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
3201 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
3203 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
3204 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
3206 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
3207 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
3208 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
3210 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
3211 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
3212 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
3213 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
3215 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
3216 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
3217 it is already running. Default is ON.
3219 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
3220 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
3221 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
3222 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
3225 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
3226 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
3227 or the value of the environment variable
3230 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
3231 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
3234 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
3235 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
3236 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
3238 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
3239 history expansion will be performed on
3240 command line input. The default is OFF.
3242 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
3243 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
3244 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
3246 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
3247 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
3248 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3251 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
3252 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
3253 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3256 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
3257 ``set width'' instead.
3259 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
3260 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
3261 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
3262 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
3264 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
3267 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
3270 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
3273 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
3276 * Support for Epoch Environment.
3278 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
3279 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
3280 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
3284 * Support for Shared Libraries
3286 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
3287 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
3288 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
3289 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
3290 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
3291 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
3292 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
3293 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
3295 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
3296 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
3297 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
3299 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
3304 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
3305 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
3306 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
3307 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
3308 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
3309 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
3311 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
3313 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
3315 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3316 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3317 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3320 * C++ multiple inheritance
3322 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
3325 * C++ exception handling
3327 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
3328 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
3329 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
3332 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
3333 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
3334 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
3336 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
3337 current stack frame.
3340 * Minor command changes
3342 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
3343 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
3344 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
3346 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
3347 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
3348 frames without printing.
3350 * New directory command
3352 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
3353 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
3354 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
3355 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
3356 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
3358 * Configuring GDB for compilation
3360 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
3363 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
3364 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
3365 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
3366 where the program that you are debugging will run.
projects / deliverable / binutils-gdb.git / blob