1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 6.4
8 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
9 only if it doesn't already have a value.
11 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
13 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
15 restart <n> Return the program state to a
16 previously saved state.
18 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
20 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
22 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
23 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
25 info forks List forks of the user program that
26 are available to be debugged.
28 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
29 forks of the user program that are
30 available to be debugged.
32 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
33 that are available to be debugged (and
34 kill the forked process).
36 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
37 that are available to be debugged (and
38 allow the process to continue).
42 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
44 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
46 * New native configurations
48 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
49 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
53 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
55 * New command line options
57 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
58 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
59 the child (debugged) program exited with.
60 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
61 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
62 specified multiple times and in conjunction
63 with the --command (-x) option.
65 * Deprecated commands removed
67 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
71 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
72 othernames set arm disassembler
73 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
74 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
75 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
78 * New BSD user-level threads support
80 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
81 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
84 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
85 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
86 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
88 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
89 are not yet supported.
91 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
92 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
94 * REMOVED configurations and files
96 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
97 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
98 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
100 * New "set print array-indexes" command
102 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
103 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
106 * VAX floating point support
108 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
110 * User-defined command support
112 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
113 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
114 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
116 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
118 * New command line option
120 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
123 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
125 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
126 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
127 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
128 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
129 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
131 * Internationalization
133 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
134 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
135 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
139 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
140 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
141 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
143 * New native configurations
145 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
149 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
150 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
152 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
154 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
155 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
156 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
159 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
160 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
161 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
173 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
174 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
176 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
178 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
179 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
180 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
190 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
192 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
194 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
195 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
198 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
200 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
201 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
202 IRIX long double values).
206 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
207 command. This problem has been fixed.
209 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
211 * Fix for ``many threads''
213 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
214 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
217 ptrace: No such process.
218 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
220 This problem has been fixed.
222 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
224 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
227 * New ``start'' command.
229 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
231 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
233 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
234 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
235 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
237 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
238 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
239 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
240 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
241 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
242 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
243 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
244 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
245 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
247 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
249 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
250 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
251 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
252 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
253 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
255 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
256 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
257 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
259 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
261 * New native configurations
263 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
264 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
265 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
266 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
267 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
268 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
269 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
271 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
273 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
274 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
275 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
276 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
277 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
278 work, was also included.
280 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
281 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
291 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
292 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
294 * REMOVED configurations and files
296 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
297 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
298 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
299 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
300 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
301 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
302 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
303 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
304 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
306 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
308 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
310 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
312 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
313 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
314 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
315 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
318 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
320 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
321 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
322 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
323 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
324 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
325 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
328 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
330 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
332 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
333 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
334 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
336 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
338 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
339 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
341 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
343 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
344 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
345 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
347 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
349 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
350 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
352 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
354 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
355 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
356 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
358 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
360 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
361 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
362 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
364 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
366 * Removed --with-mmalloc
368 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
369 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
371 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
373 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
374 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
375 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
376 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
378 * Revised SPARC target
380 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
381 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
382 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
383 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
384 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
388 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
389 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
390 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
393 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
395 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
396 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
399 * C++ nested types and namespaces
401 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
402 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
403 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
404 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
405 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
406 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
407 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
408 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
409 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
411 * New native configurations
413 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
414 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
415 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
416 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
417 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
419 * New debugging protocols
421 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
423 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
425 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
426 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
427 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
429 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
431 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
432 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
433 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
436 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
437 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
438 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
439 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
440 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
441 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
442 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
443 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
444 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
446 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
448 * REMOVED configurations and files
450 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
451 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
452 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
453 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
454 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
455 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
456 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
457 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
458 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
459 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
460 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
461 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
462 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
463 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
464 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
465 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
466 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
468 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
472 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
475 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
477 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
478 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
479 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
482 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
483 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
488 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
489 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
490 remote protocol documentation for details.
492 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
494 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
495 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
496 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
499 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
501 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
502 per-thread variables.
504 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
506 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
507 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
509 * Separate debug info.
511 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
512 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
513 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
514 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
515 and optional debug files.
517 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
519 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
520 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
523 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
524 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
528 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
529 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
530 considered "useable".
532 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
534 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
535 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
538 * GDB supports logging output to a file
540 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
541 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
543 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
545 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
546 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
549 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
551 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
552 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
556 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
557 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
558 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
559 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
560 data, for more informative profiling results.
562 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
564 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
565 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
566 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
568 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
571 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
572 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
573 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
574 in a subsequent -var-update.
576 * New native configurations.
578 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
580 * Multi-arched targets.
582 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
583 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
585 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
587 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
588 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
589 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
592 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
593 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
594 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
595 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
596 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
597 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
598 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
599 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
600 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
601 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
602 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
603 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
605 * REMOVED configurations and files
608 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
609 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
610 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
611 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
612 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
613 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
615 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
616 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
617 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
618 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
619 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
620 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
622 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
624 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
625 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
626 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
627 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
628 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
630 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
632 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
634 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
635 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
636 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
637 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
638 shared libs like mad''.
640 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
642 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
643 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
644 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
645 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
647 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
649 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
650 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
653 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
654 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
656 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
657 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
659 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
660 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
661 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
662 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
664 * Multi-arched targets.
666 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
667 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
669 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
670 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
671 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
675 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
678 * New native configurations
680 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
681 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
682 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
683 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
685 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
687 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
688 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
689 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
692 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
693 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
694 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
695 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
696 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
697 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
698 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
699 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
700 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
701 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
703 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
704 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
708 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
710 * REMOVED configurations and files
712 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
713 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
714 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
715 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
716 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
718 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
720 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
722 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
723 commands. The default is 1024.
725 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
727 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
729 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
731 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
732 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
733 from a file into memory (restore).
735 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
737 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
738 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
739 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
741 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
749 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
750 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
751 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
753 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
754 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
755 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
757 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
758 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
759 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
761 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
762 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
763 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
765 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
767 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
769 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
770 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
771 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
772 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
773 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
774 (notably embedded) targets.
776 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
778 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
779 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
780 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
781 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
783 * New command line option
785 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
787 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
789 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
790 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
791 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
792 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
793 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
794 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
795 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
796 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
797 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
798 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
800 * Changes in ARM configurations.
802 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
803 configuration is fully multi-arch.
805 * New native configurations
807 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
808 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
809 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
810 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
814 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
816 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
818 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
819 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
820 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
823 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
824 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
825 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
826 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
827 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
829 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
831 * REMOVED configurations and files
833 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
835 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
836 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
837 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
838 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
839 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
840 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
841 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
842 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
843 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
844 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
845 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
847 * Changes to command line processing
849 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
850 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
852 * Changes to key bindings
854 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
856 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
858 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
860 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
863 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
865 Numerous documentation fixes.
867 Numerous testsuite fixes.
869 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
871 * New native configurations
873 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
874 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
875 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
876 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
878 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
882 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
884 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
886 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
888 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
889 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
890 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
891 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
892 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
894 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
895 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
896 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
897 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
898 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
899 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
900 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
901 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
903 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
904 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
906 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
907 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
908 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
911 * REMOVED configurations and files
913 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
914 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
916 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
920 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
922 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
923 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
928 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
930 * The MI enabled by default.
932 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
933 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
934 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
935 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
936 which is now deprecated.
938 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
940 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
941 main features are supported:
943 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
945 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
948 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
950 - a Pascal expression parser.
952 However, some important features are not yet supported.
954 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
956 - there are some problems with boolean types;
958 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
959 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
961 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
963 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
965 * Changes in completion.
967 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
968 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
969 users expect at the shell prompt.
971 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
972 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
973 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
974 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
975 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
976 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
977 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
979 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
981 * New platform-independent commands:
983 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
984 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
985 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
987 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
989 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
990 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
991 many threads as your system allows you to have.
993 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
995 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
996 multi-threaded programs though.
998 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
1000 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
1002 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
1003 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
1006 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
1008 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
1009 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
1010 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
1011 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
1012 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
1015 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
1016 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
1017 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
1019 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
1021 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
1022 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
1024 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
1025 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
1028 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
1029 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
1030 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
1031 a given linear address.
1033 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
1034 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
1035 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
1037 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
1039 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
1041 * Changes in documentation.
1043 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
1044 Documentation License.
1046 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1049 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
1051 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1054 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
1055 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
1056 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
1058 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
1060 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
1061 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
1062 contents of this file.
1066 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
1068 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
1070 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
1072 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
1073 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
1074 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
1075 greater level of detail.
1077 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
1079 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
1080 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
1081 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
1084 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
1086 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
1087 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
1088 machines ``out of the box''.
1090 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
1091 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
1092 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
1093 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
1094 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
1096 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
1097 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
1098 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
1099 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
1100 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
1102 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
1103 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
1106 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
1109 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
1110 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
1111 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
1112 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
1114 * New native configurations
1116 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
1117 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1121 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
1122 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
1123 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
1124 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1126 * OBSOLETE configurations
1128 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1129 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
1131 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
1134 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1135 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1136 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1137 be permanently REMOVED.
1139 * Gould support removed
1141 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
1143 * New features for SVR4
1145 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
1146 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
1147 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
1149 * Many C++ enhancements
1151 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
1152 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
1154 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
1156 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
1157 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
1158 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
1159 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
1161 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
1162 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
1164 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
1166 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
1167 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
1168 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
1170 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
1171 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1173 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
1175 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
1176 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
1177 include ``set remote P-packet''.
1179 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
1181 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
1182 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
1183 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
1185 * ``apropos'' command added.
1187 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
1188 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
1189 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
1193 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
1194 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
1195 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
1196 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
1197 enabled by configuring with:
1199 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
1201 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
1203 * New native configurations
1205 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
1206 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
1207 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
1211 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1212 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
1213 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1215 * OBSOLETE configurations
1217 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
1219 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1220 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1221 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1222 be permanently REMOVED.
1226 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
1227 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
1228 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
1229 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
1230 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
1231 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
1232 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
1237 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
1239 * set extension-language
1241 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
1242 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
1243 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
1244 set extension-language .c c++
1245 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
1246 and their associated languages.
1248 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
1250 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
1251 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
1252 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
1256 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
1257 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
1259 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
1260 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
1262 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
1263 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
1264 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
1265 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
1266 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
1267 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
1268 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
1269 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
1271 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
1272 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
1273 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
1274 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
1278 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
1279 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
1280 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
1281 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
1282 for xdb and dbx commands.
1286 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
1287 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
1288 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
1290 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
1291 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
1292 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
1294 * Debugging across forks
1296 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
1301 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
1302 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
1303 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
1305 * GDB remote protocol additions
1307 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
1308 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
1309 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
1310 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
1312 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
1313 full 64-bit address. The command
1315 set remoteaddresssize 32
1317 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
1318 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
1321 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
1322 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
1324 maint packet heythere
1326 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
1327 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
1330 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
1331 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
1332 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
1334 * Tracing can collect general expressions
1336 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
1337 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
1338 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
1340 * mask-address variable for Mips
1342 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
1343 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
1344 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
1346 * Higher serial baud rates
1348 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
1349 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
1350 to achieve all of these rates.)
1354 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
1355 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
1358 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
1360 * New native configurations
1362 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
1363 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
1364 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1365 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1366 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1367 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
1368 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
1372 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1373 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
1374 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1375 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
1376 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
1377 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
1378 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
1379 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
1380 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
1381 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1382 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
1384 * New debugging protocols
1386 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
1387 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
1388 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
1389 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1390 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1391 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1395 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
1396 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
1401 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
1402 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
1404 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
1406 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
1407 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
1408 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
1410 * Live range splitting
1412 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
1413 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
1414 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
1418 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
1419 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
1423 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
1424 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
1425 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
1430 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
1435 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
1436 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
1437 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
1438 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
1439 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
1440 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
1444 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
1445 the symbol at the specified address.
1449 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
1450 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
1451 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
1452 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
1453 file tracepoint.c for more details.
1457 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
1458 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
1459 of most MIPS variants.
1463 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
1464 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
1465 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
1469 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
1470 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
1471 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
1472 the possible architectures.
1474 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
1476 * New native configurations
1478 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
1479 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
1480 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
1481 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
1482 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1483 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
1487 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
1488 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1489 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
1490 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
1491 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
1493 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1497 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
1498 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
1499 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
1500 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
1501 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
1505 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
1507 * Windows 95/NT native
1509 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
1510 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
1511 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
1512 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
1513 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
1515 * dont-repeat command
1517 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
1518 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
1519 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
1520 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
1522 * Send break instead of ^C
1524 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
1525 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
1526 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
1528 * Remote protocol timeout
1530 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
1531 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
1532 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
1534 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
1536 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
1537 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
1538 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
1539 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
1540 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
1542 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
1543 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
1544 automatically on hpux10.
1546 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
1548 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
1550 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
1552 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
1553 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
1554 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
1555 every character. The default value is 1050.
1557 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
1559 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
1560 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
1561 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
1562 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
1563 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
1564 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
1566 * Speedups for remote debugging
1568 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
1569 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
1570 and more efficient S-record downloading.
1572 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
1574 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
1575 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
1577 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
1579 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
1581 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
1582 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
1584 * Remote targets use caching
1586 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
1587 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
1588 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
1589 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
1590 off' turns the the data cache off.
1592 * Remote targets may have threads
1594 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
1595 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
1596 gdb/remote.c for details.
1600 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
1601 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
1602 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
1603 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
1604 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
1605 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
1606 sequence is something like
1608 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
1610 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
1614 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
1615 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
1616 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
1617 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
1618 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
1619 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
1620 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
1621 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
1625 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
1626 but does simplify configuration and building.
1630 GDB now supports hpux10.
1632 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
1634 * New native configurations
1636 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
1637 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
1638 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
1639 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
1643 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1644 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
1645 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
1646 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
1649 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
1651 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
1652 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
1653 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
1654 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
1655 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
1657 * Arguments to user-defined commands
1659 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
1660 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
1663 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
1665 To execute the command use:
1668 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
1669 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
1670 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
1672 * New `if' and `while' commands
1674 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
1675 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
1676 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
1677 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
1678 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
1679 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
1680 if the expression is zero.
1682 * Fortran source language mode
1684 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
1685 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
1686 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
1687 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
1690 * Better HPUX support
1692 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
1693 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
1694 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
1695 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
1696 that behavior do the following before running the program:
1702 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
1703 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
1709 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
1710 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
1713 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
1714 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
1716 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
1718 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
1719 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
1720 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
1721 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
1722 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
1723 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
1725 * New DOS host serial code
1727 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
1728 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
1731 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
1733 * New "complete" command
1735 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
1736 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
1738 * Trailing space optional in prompt
1740 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
1741 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
1743 * Breakpoint hit counts
1745 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
1746 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
1747 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
1748 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
1749 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
1752 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
1754 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
1755 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
1756 arrays actually contain only short strings.
1758 * Shared library breakpoints
1760 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
1761 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
1763 * Hardware watchpoints
1765 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
1766 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
1768 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
1772 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
1773 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
1775 * Improved Irix 5 support
1777 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
1779 * Improved HPPA support
1781 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
1783 * New native configurations
1785 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
1786 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1787 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
1788 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
1792 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1793 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
1796 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
1798 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
1799 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
1803 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
1804 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
1806 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
1808 * Irix 5 is now supported
1812 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
1813 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
1814 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
1815 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
1816 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
1819 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
1821 * User visible changes:
1825 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
1826 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
1827 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
1828 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
1829 debugging info for the mips target).
1831 * DEC Alpha native support
1833 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
1834 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
1835 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
1836 Alpha-specific notes.
1838 * Preliminary thread implementation
1840 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
1842 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
1844 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
1845 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
1848 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
1850 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
1851 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
1852 call methods, ...etc.
1854 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
1856 * User visible changes:
1858 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
1859 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
1860 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
1861 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
1863 Filename completion now works.
1865 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
1866 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
1867 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
1869 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
1870 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
1871 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
1872 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
1873 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
1877 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
1878 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
1881 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
1885 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
1886 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
1887 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
1891 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
1892 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
1893 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
1894 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
1895 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
1899 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
1900 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
1901 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
1903 * New targets supported
1905 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1906 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1907 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
1908 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1909 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
1911 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
1912 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
1913 GO32 memory extender.
1915 * New remote protocols
1917 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
1919 * New source languages supported
1921 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
1922 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
1923 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
1926 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
1928 * HP Precision Architecture supported
1930 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
1931 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
1932 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
1933 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
1934 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
1935 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
1937 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
1939 * Faster and better demangling
1941 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
1942 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
1943 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
1944 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
1945 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
1946 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
1949 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
1950 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
1951 compiler does not actually implement.
1953 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
1955 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
1956 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
1957 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
1958 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
1959 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
1960 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
1963 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
1964 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
1966 * Improved configure script
1968 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
1969 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
1970 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
1971 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
1973 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
1974 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
1975 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
1976 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
1977 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
1978 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
1980 * Documentation improvements
1982 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
1983 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
1984 before submitting changes.
1986 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
1987 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
1988 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
1989 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
1990 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
1992 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
1993 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
1994 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
1995 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
1996 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
1997 around this problem.
2001 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
2002 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
2003 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
2006 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
2007 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
2009 * New native hosts supported
2011 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
2012 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
2014 * New targets supported
2016 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
2018 * New file formats supported
2020 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
2021 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
2025 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
2027 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
2028 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
2030 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
2031 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
2032 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
2034 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
2035 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
2037 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
2038 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
2039 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
2042 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
2043 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
2044 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
2045 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
2046 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
2048 * Internal improvements
2050 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
2051 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
2053 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
2054 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
2055 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
2056 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
2057 shared code that handles any of them.
2059 * New command line options
2061 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
2065 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
2066 General Public License.
2068 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
2070 * Host/native/target split
2072 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
2073 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
2074 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
2075 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
2076 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
2078 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
2079 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
2080 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
2081 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
2082 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
2083 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
2084 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
2086 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
2087 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
2088 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
2090 * New hosts supported
2092 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
2093 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2094 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
2096 * New targets supported
2098 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
2099 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
2101 * New native hosts supported
2103 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2104 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
2105 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
2107 * New file formats supported
2109 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
2110 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
2111 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
2115 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
2116 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
2117 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
2119 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
2121 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
2122 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
2123 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
2124 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
2128 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
2129 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
2130 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
2132 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
2136 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
2137 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
2140 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
2141 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
2143 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
2144 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
2145 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
2146 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
2147 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
2148 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
2150 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
2151 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
2152 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
2153 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
2157 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
2158 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
2159 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
2160 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
2161 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
2163 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
2164 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
2165 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
2166 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
2170 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
2171 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
2172 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
2173 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
2174 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
2175 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
2176 each instruction being stepped through.
2178 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
2179 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
2181 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
2182 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
2183 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
2184 processor with a serial port.
2188 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
2189 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
2190 supported, and what files each one uses.
2194 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
2195 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
2196 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
2197 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
2199 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
2200 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
2201 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
2202 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
2206 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
2207 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
2208 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
2209 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
2210 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
2211 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
2213 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
2216 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
2218 * Better support for C++ function names
2220 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
2221 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
2222 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
2223 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
2224 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
2226 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
2227 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
2228 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
2229 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
2230 for the list of formats.
2232 * G++ symbol mangling problem
2234 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
2235 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
2236 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
2237 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
2238 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
2239 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
2242 * New 'maintenance' command
2244 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
2245 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
2246 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
2248 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
2249 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
2250 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
2251 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
2252 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
2253 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
2255 The following commands are new:
2257 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
2258 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
2259 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
2261 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
2263 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
2264 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
2265 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
2266 read after argv processing.
2268 * New hosts supported
2270 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
2272 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
2274 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
2275 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
2276 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
2277 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
2278 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
2281 * New targets supported
2283 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2285 * More smarts about finding #include files
2287 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
2288 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
2289 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
2290 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
2291 the one that contains your sources.
2293 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
2294 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
2295 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
2297 * Interesting infernals change
2299 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
2300 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
2301 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
2302 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
2304 * Bug fixes (of course!)
2306 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
2307 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
2308 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
2310 See the ChangeLog for details.
2312 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
2314 * New machines supported (host and target)
2316 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
2318 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2320 * New malloc package
2322 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
2323 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
2324 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
2325 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
2326 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
2327 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
2331 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
2332 'help info proc' for details.
2334 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
2336 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
2337 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
2340 * File name changes for MS-DOS
2342 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
2343 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
2344 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
2345 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
2346 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
2347 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
2349 * Cross byte order fixes
2351 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
2352 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
2354 * New -mapped and -readnow options
2356 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
2357 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
2358 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
2359 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
2360 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
2361 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
2362 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
2363 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
2364 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
2365 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
2367 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
2368 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
2369 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
2370 slower, but makes future operations faster.
2372 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
2373 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
2374 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
2377 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
2379 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
2380 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
2381 shared across multiple host platforms.
2383 * longjmp() handling
2385 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
2386 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
2387 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
2388 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
2392 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
2393 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
2398 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
2399 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
2400 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
2402 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
2404 * New machines supported (host and target)
2406 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2408 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
2409 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
2411 * New machines supported (target)
2413 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2417 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
2418 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
2419 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
2421 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
2422 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
2423 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
2424 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
2425 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
2428 * New features for SVR4
2430 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
2431 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
2432 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
2434 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
2435 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
2436 it prints the address mappings of the process.
2438 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
2439 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
2441 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
2443 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
2444 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
2445 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
2446 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
2447 same code linked statically.
2451 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
2452 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
2453 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
2454 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
2455 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
2456 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
2460 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2461 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2462 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2465 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
2467 * New machines supported (host and target)
2469 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
2470 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
2471 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2473 * Almost SCO Unix support
2475 We had hoped to support:
2476 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2477 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
2478 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
2479 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
2481 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
2483 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
2484 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
2485 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
2486 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
2491 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
2492 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
2493 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
2497 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2498 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2499 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2501 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
2503 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
2504 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
2505 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
2507 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
2508 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
2509 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
2510 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
2513 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
2514 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
2515 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
2516 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
2519 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
2520 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
2523 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
2524 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
2525 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
2528 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
2530 * Improved configuration
2532 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
2533 Porting BFD is simpler.
2537 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
2538 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
2539 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
2540 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
2544 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
2546 * New host supported (not target)
2548 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
2551 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
2553 * Multiple source language support
2555 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
2556 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
2557 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
2558 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
2559 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
2560 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
2564 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
2565 currently under development at the State University of New York at
2566 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
2567 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
2569 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
2570 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
2571 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
2573 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
2574 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
2578 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
2579 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
2580 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
2581 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
2584 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
2586 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
2587 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
2588 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
2589 examining core files.
2593 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
2596 * New machines supported (host and target)
2598 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2599 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
2600 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
2602 * New hosts supported (not targets)
2604 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
2606 * New targets supported (not hosts)
2608 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2609 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2610 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
2612 * New remote interfaces
2618 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
2622 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
2624 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
2625 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
2626 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
2627 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
2628 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
2629 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
2630 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
2631 stub on the target system.
2633 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
2635 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
2636 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
2637 object file types such as a.out and coff.
2639 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
2640 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
2643 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
2645 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
2646 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
2648 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
2649 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
2650 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
2652 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
2653 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
2654 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
2655 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
2657 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
2658 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
2659 it is already running. Default is ON.
2661 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
2662 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
2663 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
2664 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
2667 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
2668 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
2669 or the value of the environment variable
2672 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
2673 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
2676 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
2677 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
2678 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
2680 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
2681 history expansion will be performed on
2682 command line input. The default is OFF.
2684 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
2685 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
2686 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
2688 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
2689 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
2690 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2693 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
2694 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
2695 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2698 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
2699 ``set width'' instead.
2701 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
2702 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
2703 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
2704 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
2706 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
2709 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
2712 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
2715 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
2718 * Support for Epoch Environment.
2720 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
2721 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
2722 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
2726 * Support for Shared Libraries
2728 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
2729 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
2730 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
2731 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
2732 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
2733 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
2734 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
2735 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
2737 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
2738 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
2739 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
2741 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
2746 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
2747 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
2748 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
2749 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
2750 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
2751 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
2753 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
2755 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
2757 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2758 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2759 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2762 * C++ multiple inheritance
2764 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
2767 * C++ exception handling
2769 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
2770 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
2771 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
2774 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
2775 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
2776 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
2778 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
2779 current stack frame.
2782 * Minor command changes
2784 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
2785 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
2786 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
2788 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
2789 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
2790 frames without printing.
2792 * New directory command
2794 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
2795 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
2796 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
2797 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
2798 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
2800 * Configuring GDB for compilation
2802 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
2805 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
2806 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
2807 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
2808 where the program that you are debugging will run.
projects / deliverable / binutils-gdb.git / blob