1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 7.1
6 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
8 * X86 general purpose registers
10 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
11 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
12 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
13 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
14 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
18 ** The GDB Python API now has access to symbols, symbol tables, and
21 ** New methods gdb.target_charset and gdb.target_wide_charset.
23 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
24 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
25 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
30 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
32 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
38 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
39 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
40 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
41 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
42 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
46 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
47 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
52 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
53 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
57 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
62 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
65 * Multi-program debugging.
67 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
68 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
69 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
70 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
71 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
72 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
73 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
74 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
76 * New tracing features
78 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
80 ** Trace state variables
82 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
83 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
84 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
85 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
86 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
87 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
88 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
89 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
90 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
91 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
95 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
96 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
97 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
98 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
99 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
100 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
101 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
102 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
103 the regular trace command.
105 ** Disconnected tracing
107 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
108 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
109 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
110 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
111 connection is lost unexpectedly.
115 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
116 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
117 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
118 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
119 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
120 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
123 ** Circular trace buffer
125 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
126 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
127 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
128 not be available for all target agents.
133 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
134 the arguments to be comma-separated.
137 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
138 which only declare a variable are not shown.
141 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
142 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
145 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
146 "set script-extension" (see below).
148 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
150 record save [<FILENAME>]
151 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
152 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
154 record restore <FILENAME>
155 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
156 earlier time, for replay debugging.
158 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
161 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
162 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
168 maint info program-spaces
169 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
171 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
172 show remote interrupt-sequence
173 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
174 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
175 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
176 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
177 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
179 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
180 show remote interrupt-on-connect
181 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
182 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
185 set remotebreak [on | off]
187 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
189 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
190 Create or modify a trace state variable.
193 List trace state variables and their values.
195 delete tvariable $NAME ...
196 Delete one or more trace state variables.
199 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
200 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
202 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
203 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
205 * New expression syntax
207 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
208 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
212 set follow-exec-mode new|same
213 show follow-exec-mode
214 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
215 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
216 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
218 set default-collect EXPR, ...
220 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
221 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
222 such as registers or a critical global variable.
224 set disconnected-tracing
225 show disconnected-tracing
226 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
227 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
230 set circular-trace-buffer
231 show circular-trace-buffer
232 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
233 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
234 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
235 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
237 set script-extension off|soft|strict
238 show script-extension
239 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
240 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
241 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
242 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
244 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
246 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
247 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
248 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
249 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
250 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
251 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
252 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
255 * Python API Improvements
257 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
258 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
259 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
261 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
262 `is_base_class' attribute.
264 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
266 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
267 evaluate an expression.
272 Define a trace state variable.
275 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
278 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
281 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
284 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
288 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
290 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
291 much more reliable. In particular:
292 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
293 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
294 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
295 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
296 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
297 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
298 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
299 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
300 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
301 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
302 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
303 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
304 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
305 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
306 non-threaded programs.
308 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
309 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
310 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
313 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
315 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
316 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
317 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
318 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
319 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
321 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
322 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
323 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
324 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
325 for tracepoint actions.
327 * "disassemble" command with a /r modifier, print the raw instructions
328 in hex as well as in symbolic form.
330 * Process record and replay
332 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
333 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
334 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
337 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
338 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
339 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
342 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
343 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
346 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
347 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
348 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
349 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
350 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
351 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
352 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
353 the installation instructions for more information.
355 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
356 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
357 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
358 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
360 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
361 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
363 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
364 now complete on file names.
366 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
367 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
368 For instance, consider:
370 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
371 # struct example variable;
374 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
375 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
377 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
378 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
380 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
381 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
384 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
385 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
386 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
388 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
389 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
390 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
391 and simulator targets may also provide them.
396 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
399 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
400 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
401 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
404 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
405 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
408 Obtains additional operating system information
412 Read or write additional signal information.
414 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
416 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
417 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
418 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
420 * The "disassemble" command now supports an optional /m modifier to print mixed
423 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
424 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
426 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
427 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
428 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
430 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
431 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
433 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
435 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
437 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
438 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
440 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
441 list of section offsets.
443 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
444 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
445 have also been fixed.
447 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
448 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
449 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
451 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
454 template<typename T> class C { };
457 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
459 ptype C<char const *>
461 ptype C<const char *>
464 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
466 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
467 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
469 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
470 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
471 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
473 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
474 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
476 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
479 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
480 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
482 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
483 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
488 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
489 available is determined at configure time.
491 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
493 * Ada tasking support
495 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
499 Print the list of Ada tasks.
501 Print detailed information about task number N.
503 Print the task number of the current task.
505 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
507 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
508 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
510 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
512 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
513 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
514 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
515 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
516 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
517 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
520 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
521 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
524 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
525 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
526 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
527 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
530 * Multi-architecture debugging.
532 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
533 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
534 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
535 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
536 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
538 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
539 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
540 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
541 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
542 --enable-targets configure option.
544 * Non-stop mode debugging.
546 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
547 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
548 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
549 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
550 section in the user manual for more information.
552 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
553 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
554 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
555 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
556 extensions on linux targets.
558 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
560 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
561 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
562 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
563 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
564 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
565 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
566 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
567 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
568 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
570 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
572 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
574 maint set python print-stack
575 maint show python print-stack
576 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
579 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
584 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
588 Show operating system information about processes.
591 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
594 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
597 Detach from inferior number NUM.
600 Kill inferior number NUM.
605 show spu stop-on-load
606 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
608 set spu auto-flush-cache
609 show spu auto-flush-cache
610 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
611 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
613 set sh calling-convention
614 show sh calling-convention
615 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
619 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
621 set disassemble-next-line
622 show disassemble-next-line
623 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
626 set remote noack-packet
627 show remote noack-packet
628 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
629 under "New remote packets."
631 set remote query-attached-packet
632 show remote query-attached-packet
633 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
635 set remote read-siginfo-object
636 show remote read-siginfo-object
637 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
640 set remote write-siginfo-object
641 show remote write-siginfo-object
642 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
645 set remote reverse-continue
646 show remote reverse-continue
647 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
649 set remote reverse-step
650 show remote reverse-step
651 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
653 set displaced-stepping
654 show displaced-stepping
655 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
656 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
657 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
661 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
663 maint set internal-error
664 maint show internal-error
665 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
667 maint set internal-warning
668 maint show internal-warning
669 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
674 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
676 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
677 show multiple-symbols
678 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
679 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
680 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
682 set breakpoint always-inserted
683 show breakpoint always-inserted
684 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
685 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
686 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
688 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
689 show arm fallback-mode
690 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
692 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
693 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
694 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
695 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
697 set disable-randomization
698 show disable-randomization
699 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
700 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
701 multiple debugging sessions.
705 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
710 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
711 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
712 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
713 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
715 set target-wide-charset
716 show target-wide-charset
717 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
718 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
720 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
722 set tcp connect-timeout
723 show tcp connect-timeout
724 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
725 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
726 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
728 set libthread-db-search-path
729 show libthread-db-search-path
730 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
733 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
734 show schedule-multiple
735 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
740 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
741 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
742 affecting correctness.
744 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
745 show interactive-mode
746 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
747 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
748 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
749 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
750 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
755 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
756 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
757 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
761 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
762 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
763 alias for the `fork' command.
766 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
767 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
768 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
771 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
772 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
773 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
777 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
778 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
779 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
782 * New native configurations
784 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
786 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
790 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
791 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
792 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
795 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
796 (mingw32ce) debugging.
802 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
804 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
806 * New native configurations
808 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
809 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
813 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
814 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
816 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
818 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
819 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
820 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
821 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
823 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
824 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
826 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
829 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
830 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
831 and in inlined functions.
833 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
834 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
835 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
837 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
839 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
840 registers on PowerPC targets.
842 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
843 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
845 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
846 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
848 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
849 extended-remote mode.
851 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
852 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
853 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
854 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
856 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
857 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
858 target architectures.
860 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
861 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
862 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
863 stored in two consecutive float registers.
865 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
868 * Improved support for debugging Ada
869 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
871 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
872 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
873 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
874 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
876 - Improved command completion in Ada
879 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
884 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
885 show print frame-arguments
886 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
887 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
892 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
899 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
908 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
911 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
915 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
917 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
919 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
920 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
921 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
923 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
924 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
925 -Bsymbolic linker option.
927 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
928 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
931 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
932 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
934 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
935 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
937 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
939 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
940 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
941 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
943 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
944 automatically displayed as character or string data.
946 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
947 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
950 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
951 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
952 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
954 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
957 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
958 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
959 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
961 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
963 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
965 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
966 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
967 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
969 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
970 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
972 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
973 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
974 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
975 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
976 Windows and SymbianOS).
978 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
979 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
981 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
982 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
988 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
989 when debugging using remote targets.
991 set mem inaccessible-by-default
992 show mem inaccessible-by-default
993 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
994 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
995 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
996 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
997 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
999 set breakpoint auto-hw
1000 show breakpoint auto-hw
1001 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1002 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1003 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
1004 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
1005 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
1006 including "next" and "finish".
1009 catch exception unhandled
1010 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
1013 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
1017 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
1018 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
1019 an alias to "set sysroot".
1022 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
1023 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
1026 * New native configurations
1028 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
1031 unset tdesc filename
1033 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
1034 not query the target for its built-in description.
1038 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
1039 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
1040 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
1042 * New remote packets
1045 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
1046 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
1048 qXfer:features:read:
1049 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
1054 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
1055 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
1057 qXfer:libraries:read:
1058 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
1059 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
1060 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
1061 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
1065 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
1073 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
1074 i[34567]86-*-netware*
1075 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
1076 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
1078 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
1081 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
1082 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
1091 * Other removed features
1098 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
1105 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
1110 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
1111 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
1116 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
1117 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
1119 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
1121 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
1122 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
1123 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
1124 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
1126 MIPS ".pdr" sections
1128 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
1129 in debugging information.
1133 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
1134 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
1136 set mips stack-arg-size
1137 set mips saved-gpreg-size
1139 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
1141 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
1146 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
1148 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
1149 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
1150 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
1152 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
1153 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
1156 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
1157 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
1159 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
1160 stub provides the required support.
1162 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
1163 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
1168 unset substitute-path
1169 show substitute-path
1170 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
1171 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
1172 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
1173 between compilation and debugging.
1177 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
1178 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
1179 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
1183 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
1185 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
1186 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
1188 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
1190 * New remote packets
1193 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
1194 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
1195 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
1196 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
1200 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
1201 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
1203 qXfer:memory-map:read:
1204 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
1205 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
1210 Erase and program a flash memory device.
1212 * Removed remote packets
1215 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
1216 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
1218 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
1222 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
1224 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
1228 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
1229 only if it doesn't already have a value.
1231 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
1233 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
1235 restart <n> Return the program state to a
1236 previously saved state.
1238 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
1240 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
1242 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
1243 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
1245 info forks List forks of the user program that
1246 are available to be debugged.
1248 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
1249 forks of the user program that are
1250 available to be debugged.
1252 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
1253 that are available to be debugged (and
1254 kill the forked process).
1256 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
1257 that are available to be debugged (and
1258 allow the process to continue).
1262 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
1264 * Improved Windows host support
1266 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
1267 native console support, and remote communications using either
1268 network sockets or serial ports.
1270 * Improved Modula-2 language support
1272 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
1273 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
1274 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
1275 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
1276 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
1277 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
1281 The ARM rdi-share module.
1283 The Netware NLM debug server.
1285 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
1287 * New native configurations
1289 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
1290 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
1294 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
1296 * New command line options
1298 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
1299 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
1300 the child (debugged) program exited with.
1301 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
1302 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
1303 specified multiple times and in conjunction
1304 with the --command (-x) option.
1306 * Deprecated commands removed
1308 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
1312 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
1313 othernames set arm disassembler
1314 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
1315 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
1316 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
1319 * New BSD user-level threads support
1321 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
1322 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
1325 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1326 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
1327 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
1329 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
1330 are not yet supported.
1332 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
1333 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
1335 * REMOVED configurations and files
1337 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
1338 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
1339 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
1341 * New "set print array-indexes" command
1343 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
1344 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
1347 * VAX floating point support
1349 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
1351 * User-defined command support
1353 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
1354 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
1355 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
1357 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
1359 * New command line option
1361 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
1364 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
1366 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
1367 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
1368 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
1369 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
1370 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
1372 * Internationalization
1374 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
1375 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
1376 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
1380 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
1381 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
1382 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
1384 * New native configurations
1386 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
1390 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
1391 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
1393 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
1395 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
1396 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
1397 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
1400 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
1401 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
1402 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
1412 powerpc bdm protocol
1414 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
1415 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
1417 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1419 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1420 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1421 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1422 permanently REMOVED.
1431 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
1433 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
1435 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
1436 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
1439 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
1441 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
1442 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
1443 IRIX long double values).
1447 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
1448 command. This problem has been fixed.
1450 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
1452 * Fix for ``many threads''
1454 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
1455 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
1458 ptrace: No such process.
1459 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
1461 This problem has been fixed.
1463 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
1465 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
1468 * New ``start'' command.
1470 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
1472 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
1474 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
1475 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
1476 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
1478 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1479 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
1480 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
1481 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
1482 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
1483 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
1484 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
1485 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
1486 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
1488 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
1490 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
1491 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
1492 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
1493 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
1494 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
1496 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
1497 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
1498 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
1500 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
1502 * New native configurations
1504 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
1505 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
1506 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
1507 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
1508 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
1509 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
1510 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
1512 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
1514 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
1515 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
1516 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
1517 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
1518 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
1519 work, was also included.
1521 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
1522 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
1532 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
1533 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
1535 * REMOVED configurations and files
1537 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
1538 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
1539 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
1540 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
1541 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
1542 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
1543 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
1544 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
1545 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
1546 sonymips mips-sony-*
1547 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
1549 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
1551 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
1553 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
1554 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
1555 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
1556 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
1559 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
1561 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
1562 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
1563 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
1564 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
1565 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
1566 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
1569 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
1571 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
1573 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
1574 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
1575 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
1577 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
1579 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
1580 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
1582 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
1584 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
1585 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
1586 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
1588 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
1590 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
1591 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
1593 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
1595 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
1596 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
1597 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
1599 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
1601 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
1602 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
1603 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
1605 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
1607 * Removed --with-mmalloc
1609 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
1610 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
1612 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
1614 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
1615 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
1616 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
1617 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
1619 * Revised SPARC target
1621 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
1622 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
1623 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
1624 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
1625 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
1629 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
1630 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
1631 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
1634 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
1636 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
1637 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
1640 * C++ nested types and namespaces
1642 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
1643 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
1644 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
1645 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
1646 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
1647 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
1648 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
1649 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
1650 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
1652 * New native configurations
1654 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
1655 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
1656 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
1657 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
1658 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
1660 * New debugging protocols
1662 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
1664 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
1666 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
1667 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
1668 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
1670 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1672 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1673 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1674 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1675 permanently REMOVED.
1677 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
1678 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
1679 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
1680 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
1681 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
1682 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
1683 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
1684 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
1685 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
1686 sonymips mips-sony-*
1687 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
1689 * REMOVED configurations and files
1691 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1692 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
1693 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1694 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1695 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1696 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
1697 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1698 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
1699 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
1700 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
1701 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
1702 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
1703 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
1704 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
1705 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
1706 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1707 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
1709 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
1713 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
1714 integrated into GDB.
1716 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
1718 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
1719 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
1720 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
1723 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
1724 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
1725 DWARF 2 CFI support.
1729 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
1730 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
1731 remote protocol documentation for details.
1733 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
1735 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
1736 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
1737 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
1740 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
1742 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
1743 per-thread variables.
1745 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
1747 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
1748 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
1750 * Separate debug info.
1752 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
1753 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
1754 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
1755 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
1756 and optional debug files.
1758 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
1760 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
1761 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
1764 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
1765 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
1769 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
1770 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
1771 considered "useable".
1773 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
1775 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
1776 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
1779 * GDB supports logging output to a file
1781 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
1782 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
1784 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
1786 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
1787 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
1790 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
1792 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
1793 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
1797 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
1798 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
1799 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
1800 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
1801 data, for more informative profiling results.
1803 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
1805 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
1806 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
1807 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
1809 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
1812 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
1813 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
1814 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
1815 in a subsequent -var-update.
1817 * New native configurations.
1819 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1821 * Multi-arched targets.
1823 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
1824 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
1826 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1828 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1829 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1830 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1831 permanently REMOVED.
1833 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1834 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1835 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1836 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
1837 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1838 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
1839 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
1840 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
1841 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
1842 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
1843 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1844 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
1846 * REMOVED configurations and files
1849 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1850 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
1851 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1852 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1853 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
1854 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1856 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
1857 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1858 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1859 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1860 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1861 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1863 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
1865 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
1866 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
1867 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
1868 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
1869 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
1871 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
1873 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
1875 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
1876 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
1877 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
1878 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
1879 shared libs like mad''.
1881 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
1883 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
1884 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
1885 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
1886 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
1888 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
1890 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
1891 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
1894 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
1895 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
1897 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
1898 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
1900 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
1901 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
1902 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
1903 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
1905 * Multi-arched targets.
1907 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
1908 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
1910 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
1911 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
1912 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
1916 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
1919 * New native configurations
1921 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
1922 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
1923 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
1924 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
1926 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1928 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1929 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1930 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1931 permanently REMOVED.
1933 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1934 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1935 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
1936 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1937 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1938 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1939 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1940 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1941 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
1942 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1944 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
1945 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1947 * OBSOLETE languages
1949 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
1951 * REMOVED configurations and files
1953 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1954 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1955 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1956 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1957 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1959 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
1961 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
1963 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
1964 commands. The default is 1024.
1966 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
1968 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
1970 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
1972 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
1973 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
1974 from a file into memory (restore).
1976 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
1978 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
1979 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
1980 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
1982 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
1990 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
1991 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
1992 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
1994 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
1995 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
1996 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
1998 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
1999 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
2000 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
2002 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
2003 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
2004 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
2006 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
2008 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
2010 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
2011 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
2012 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
2013 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
2014 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
2015 (notably embedded) targets.
2017 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
2019 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
2020 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
2021 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
2022 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
2024 * New command line option
2026 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
2028 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2030 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
2031 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
2032 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
2033 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
2034 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
2035 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
2036 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
2037 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
2038 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
2039 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
2041 * Changes in ARM configurations.
2043 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
2044 configuration is fully multi-arch.
2046 * New native configurations
2048 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
2049 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
2050 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
2051 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
2055 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
2057 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2059 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2060 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2061 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2062 permanently REMOVED.
2064 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2065 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2066 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2067 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2068 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2070 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
2072 * REMOVED configurations and files
2074 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2076 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2077 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2078 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
2079 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
2080 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2081 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
2082 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
2083 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
2084 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2085 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
2086 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
2088 * Changes to command line processing
2090 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
2091 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
2093 * Changes to key bindings
2095 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
2097 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
2099 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
2101 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
2104 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
2106 Numerous documentation fixes.
2108 Numerous testsuite fixes.
2110 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
2112 * New native configurations
2114 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
2115 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
2116 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
2117 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
2118 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
2119 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
2123 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
2125 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
2127 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2129 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
2130 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
2131 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2132 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
2133 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2135 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
2136 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2137 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2138 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
2139 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
2140 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2141 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
2142 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
2144 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
2145 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
2147 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2148 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2149 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2150 permanently REMOVED.
2152 * REMOVED configurations and files
2154 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
2155 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
2157 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
2161 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
2163 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
2164 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
2169 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
2171 * The MI enabled by default.
2173 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
2174 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
2175 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
2176 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
2177 which is now deprecated.
2179 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
2181 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
2182 main features are supported:
2184 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
2186 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
2189 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
2191 - a Pascal expression parser.
2193 However, some important features are not yet supported.
2195 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
2197 - there are some problems with boolean types;
2199 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
2200 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
2202 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
2204 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
2206 * Changes in completion.
2208 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
2209 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
2210 users expect at the shell prompt.
2212 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
2213 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
2214 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
2215 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
2216 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
2217 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
2218 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
2220 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
2222 * New platform-independent commands:
2224 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
2225 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
2226 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
2228 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
2230 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
2231 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
2232 many threads as your system allows you to have.
2234 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
2236 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
2237 multi-threaded programs though.
2239 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
2241 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
2243 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
2244 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
2247 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
2249 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
2250 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
2251 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
2252 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
2253 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
2256 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
2257 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
2258 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
2260 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
2262 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
2263 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
2265 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
2266 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
2269 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
2270 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
2271 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
2272 a given linear address.
2274 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
2275 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
2276 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
2278 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
2280 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
2282 * Changes in documentation.
2284 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
2285 Documentation License.
2287 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
2290 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
2292 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
2295 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
2296 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
2297 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
2299 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
2301 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
2302 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
2303 contents of this file.
2307 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
2309 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
2311 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
2313 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
2314 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
2315 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
2316 greater level of detail.
2318 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
2320 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
2321 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
2322 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
2325 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
2327 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
2328 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
2329 machines ``out of the box''.
2331 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
2332 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
2333 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
2334 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
2335 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
2337 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
2338 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
2339 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
2340 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
2341 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
2343 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
2344 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
2347 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
2350 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
2351 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
2352 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
2353 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
2355 * New native configurations
2357 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
2358 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
2362 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
2363 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
2364 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
2365 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2367 * OBSOLETE configurations
2369 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
2370 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
2372 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
2375 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
2376 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
2377 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
2378 be permanently REMOVED.
2380 * Gould support removed
2382 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
2384 * New features for SVR4
2386 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
2387 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
2388 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
2390 * Many C++ enhancements
2392 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
2393 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
2395 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
2397 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
2398 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
2399 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
2400 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
2402 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
2403 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
2405 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
2407 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
2408 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
2409 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
2411 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
2412 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
2414 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
2416 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
2417 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
2418 include ``set remote P-packet''.
2420 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
2422 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
2423 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
2424 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
2426 * ``apropos'' command added.
2428 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
2429 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
2430 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
2434 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
2435 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
2436 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
2437 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
2438 enabled by configuring with:
2440 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
2442 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
2444 * New native configurations
2446 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
2447 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
2448 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
2452 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
2453 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
2454 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
2456 * OBSOLETE configurations
2458 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
2460 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
2461 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
2462 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
2463 be permanently REMOVED.
2467 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
2468 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
2469 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
2470 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
2471 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
2472 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
2473 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
2478 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
2480 * set extension-language
2482 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
2483 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
2484 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
2485 set extension-language .c c++
2486 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
2487 and their associated languages.
2489 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
2491 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
2492 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
2493 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
2497 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
2498 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
2500 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
2501 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
2503 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
2504 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
2505 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
2506 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
2507 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
2508 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
2509 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
2510 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
2512 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
2513 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
2514 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
2515 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
2519 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
2520 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
2521 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
2522 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
2523 for xdb and dbx commands.
2527 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
2528 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
2529 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
2531 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
2532 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
2533 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
2535 * Debugging across forks
2537 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
2542 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
2543 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
2544 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
2546 * GDB remote protocol additions
2548 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
2549 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
2550 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
2551 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
2553 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
2554 full 64-bit address. The command
2556 set remoteaddresssize 32
2558 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
2559 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
2562 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
2563 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
2565 maint packet heythere
2567 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
2568 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
2571 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
2572 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
2573 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
2575 * Tracing can collect general expressions
2577 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
2578 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
2579 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
2581 * mask-address variable for Mips
2583 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
2584 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
2585 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
2587 * Higher serial baud rates
2589 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
2590 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
2591 to achieve all of these rates.)
2595 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
2596 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
2599 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
2601 * New native configurations
2603 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
2604 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
2605 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
2606 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
2607 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2608 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
2609 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
2613 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2614 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
2615 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2616 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
2617 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
2618 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
2619 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
2620 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
2621 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
2622 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2623 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
2625 * New debugging protocols
2627 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
2628 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
2629 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
2630 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2631 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2632 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2636 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
2637 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
2642 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
2643 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
2645 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
2647 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
2648 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
2649 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
2651 * Live range splitting
2653 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
2654 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
2655 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
2659 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
2660 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
2664 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
2665 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
2666 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
2671 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
2676 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
2677 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
2678 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
2679 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
2680 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
2681 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
2685 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
2686 the symbol at the specified address.
2690 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
2691 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
2692 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
2693 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
2694 file tracepoint.c for more details.
2698 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
2699 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
2700 of most MIPS variants.
2704 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
2705 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
2706 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
2710 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
2711 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
2712 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
2713 the possible architectures.
2715 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
2717 * New native configurations
2719 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
2720 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
2721 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
2722 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
2723 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2724 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
2728 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
2729 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
2730 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
2731 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
2732 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
2734 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2738 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
2739 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
2740 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
2741 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
2742 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
2746 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
2748 * Windows 95/NT native
2750 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
2751 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
2752 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
2753 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
2754 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
2756 * dont-repeat command
2758 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
2759 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
2760 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
2761 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
2763 * Send break instead of ^C
2765 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
2766 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
2767 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
2769 * Remote protocol timeout
2771 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
2772 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
2773 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
2775 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
2777 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
2778 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
2779 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
2780 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
2781 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
2783 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
2784 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
2785 automatically on hpux10.
2787 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
2789 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
2791 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
2793 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
2794 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
2795 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
2796 every character. The default value is 1050.
2798 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
2800 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
2801 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
2802 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
2803 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
2804 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
2805 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
2807 * Speedups for remote debugging
2809 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
2810 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
2811 and more efficient S-record downloading.
2813 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
2815 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
2816 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
2818 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
2820 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
2822 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
2823 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
2825 * Remote targets use caching
2827 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
2828 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
2829 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
2830 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
2831 off' turns the the data cache off.
2833 * Remote targets may have threads
2835 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
2836 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
2837 gdb/remote.c for details.
2841 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
2842 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
2843 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
2844 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
2845 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
2846 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
2847 sequence is something like
2849 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
2851 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
2855 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
2856 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
2857 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
2858 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
2859 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
2860 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
2861 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
2862 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
2866 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
2867 but does simplify configuration and building.
2871 GDB now supports hpux10.
2873 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
2875 * New native configurations
2877 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
2878 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
2879 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
2880 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
2884 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2885 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
2886 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
2887 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
2890 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
2892 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
2893 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
2894 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
2895 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
2896 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
2898 * Arguments to user-defined commands
2900 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
2901 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
2904 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
2906 To execute the command use:
2909 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
2910 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
2911 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
2913 * New `if' and `while' commands
2915 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
2916 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
2917 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
2918 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
2919 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
2920 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
2921 if the expression is zero.
2923 * Fortran source language mode
2925 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
2926 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
2927 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
2928 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
2931 * Better HPUX support
2933 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
2934 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
2935 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
2936 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
2937 that behavior do the following before running the program:
2943 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
2944 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
2950 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
2951 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
2954 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
2955 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
2957 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
2959 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
2960 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
2961 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
2962 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
2963 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
2964 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
2966 * New DOS host serial code
2968 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
2969 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
2972 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
2974 * New "complete" command
2976 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
2977 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
2979 * Trailing space optional in prompt
2981 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
2982 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
2984 * Breakpoint hit counts
2986 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
2987 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
2988 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
2989 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
2990 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
2993 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
2995 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
2996 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
2997 arrays actually contain only short strings.
2999 * Shared library breakpoints
3001 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
3002 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
3004 * Hardware watchpoints
3006 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
3007 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
3009 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
3013 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
3014 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
3016 * Improved Irix 5 support
3018 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
3020 * Improved HPPA support
3022 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
3024 * New native configurations
3026 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
3027 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3028 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
3029 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
3033 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3034 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
3037 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
3039 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
3040 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
3044 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
3045 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
3047 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
3049 * Irix 5 is now supported
3053 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
3054 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
3055 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
3056 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
3057 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
3060 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
3062 * User visible changes:
3066 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
3067 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
3068 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
3069 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
3070 debugging info for the mips target).
3072 * DEC Alpha native support
3074 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
3075 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
3076 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
3077 Alpha-specific notes.
3079 * Preliminary thread implementation
3081 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
3083 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
3085 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
3086 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
3089 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
3091 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
3092 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
3093 call methods, ...etc.
3095 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
3097 * User visible changes:
3099 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
3100 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
3101 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
3102 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
3104 Filename completion now works.
3106 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
3107 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
3108 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
3110 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
3111 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
3112 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
3113 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
3114 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
3118 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
3119 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
3122 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
3126 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
3127 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
3128 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
3132 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
3133 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
3134 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
3135 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
3136 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
3140 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
3141 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
3142 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
3144 * New targets supported
3146 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
3147 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3148 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
3149 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3150 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
3152 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
3153 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
3154 GO32 memory extender.
3156 * New remote protocols
3158 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
3160 * New source languages supported
3162 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
3163 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
3164 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
3167 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
3169 * HP Precision Architecture supported
3171 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
3172 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
3173 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
3174 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
3175 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
3176 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
3178 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
3180 * Faster and better demangling
3182 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
3183 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
3184 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
3185 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
3186 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
3187 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
3190 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
3191 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
3192 compiler does not actually implement.
3194 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
3196 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
3197 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
3198 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
3199 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
3200 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
3201 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
3204 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
3205 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
3207 * Improved configure script
3209 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
3210 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
3211 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
3212 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
3214 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
3215 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
3216 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
3217 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
3218 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
3219 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
3221 * Documentation improvements
3223 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
3224 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
3225 before submitting changes.
3227 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
3228 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
3229 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
3230 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
3231 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
3233 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
3234 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
3235 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
3236 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
3237 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
3238 around this problem.
3242 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
3243 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
3244 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
3247 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
3248 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
3250 * New native hosts supported
3252 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
3253 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
3255 * New targets supported
3257 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
3259 * New file formats supported
3261 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
3262 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
3266 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
3268 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
3269 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
3271 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
3272 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
3273 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
3275 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
3276 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
3278 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
3279 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
3280 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
3283 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
3284 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
3285 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
3286 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
3287 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
3289 * Internal improvements
3291 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
3292 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
3294 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
3295 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
3296 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
3297 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
3298 shared code that handles any of them.
3300 * New command line options
3302 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
3306 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
3307 General Public License.
3309 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
3311 * Host/native/target split
3313 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
3314 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
3315 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
3316 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
3317 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
3319 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
3320 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
3321 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
3322 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
3323 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
3324 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
3325 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
3327 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
3328 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
3329 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
3331 * New hosts supported
3333 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
3334 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
3335 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
3337 * New targets supported
3339 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
3340 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
3342 * New native hosts supported
3344 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
3345 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
3346 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
3348 * New file formats supported
3350 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
3351 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
3352 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
3356 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
3357 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
3358 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
3360 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
3362 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
3363 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
3364 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
3365 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
3369 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
3370 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
3371 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
3373 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
3377 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
3378 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
3381 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
3382 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
3384 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
3385 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
3386 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
3387 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
3388 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
3389 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
3391 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
3392 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
3393 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
3394 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
3398 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
3399 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
3400 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
3401 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
3402 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
3404 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
3405 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
3406 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
3407 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
3411 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
3412 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
3413 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
3414 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
3415 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
3416 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
3417 each instruction being stepped through.
3419 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
3420 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
3422 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
3423 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
3424 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
3425 processor with a serial port.
3429 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
3430 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
3431 supported, and what files each one uses.
3435 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
3436 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
3437 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
3438 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
3440 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
3441 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
3442 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
3443 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
3447 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
3448 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
3449 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
3450 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
3451 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
3452 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
3454 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
3457 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
3459 * Better support for C++ function names
3461 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
3462 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
3463 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
3464 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
3465 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
3467 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
3468 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
3469 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
3470 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
3471 for the list of formats.
3473 * G++ symbol mangling problem
3475 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
3476 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
3477 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
3478 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
3479 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
3480 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
3483 * New 'maintenance' command
3485 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
3486 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
3487 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
3489 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
3490 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
3491 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
3492 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
3493 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
3494 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
3496 The following commands are new:
3498 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
3499 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
3500 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
3502 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
3504 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
3505 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
3506 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
3507 read after argv processing.
3509 * New hosts supported
3511 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
3513 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
3515 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
3516 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
3517 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
3518 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
3519 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
3522 * New targets supported
3524 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
3526 * More smarts about finding #include files
3528 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
3529 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
3530 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
3531 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
3532 the one that contains your sources.
3534 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
3535 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
3536 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
3538 * Interesting infernals change
3540 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
3541 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
3542 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
3543 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
3545 * Bug fixes (of course!)
3547 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
3548 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
3549 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
3551 See the ChangeLog for details.
3553 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
3555 * New machines supported (host and target)
3557 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
3559 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
3561 * New malloc package
3563 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
3564 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
3565 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
3566 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
3567 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
3568 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
3572 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
3573 'help info proc' for details.
3575 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
3577 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
3578 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
3581 * File name changes for MS-DOS
3583 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
3584 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
3585 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
3586 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
3587 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
3588 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
3590 * Cross byte order fixes
3592 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
3593 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
3595 * New -mapped and -readnow options
3597 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
3598 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
3599 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
3600 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
3601 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
3602 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
3603 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
3604 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
3605 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
3606 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
3608 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
3609 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
3610 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
3611 slower, but makes future operations faster.
3613 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
3614 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
3615 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
3618 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
3620 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
3621 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
3622 shared across multiple host platforms.
3624 * longjmp() handling
3626 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
3627 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
3628 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
3629 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
3633 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
3634 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
3639 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
3640 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
3641 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
3643 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
3645 * New machines supported (host and target)
3647 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
3649 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
3650 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
3652 * New machines supported (target)
3654 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3658 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
3659 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
3660 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
3662 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
3663 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
3664 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
3665 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
3666 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
3669 * New features for SVR4
3671 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
3672 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
3673 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
3675 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
3676 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
3677 it prints the address mappings of the process.
3679 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
3680 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
3682 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
3684 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
3685 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
3686 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
3687 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
3688 same code linked statically.
3692 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
3693 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
3694 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
3695 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
3696 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
3697 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
3701 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
3702 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
3703 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
3706 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
3708 * New machines supported (host and target)
3710 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
3711 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
3712 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3714 * Almost SCO Unix support
3716 We had hoped to support:
3717 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
3718 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
3719 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
3720 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
3722 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
3724 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
3725 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
3726 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
3727 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
3732 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
3733 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
3734 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
3738 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
3739 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
3740 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
3742 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
3744 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
3745 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
3746 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
3748 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
3749 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
3750 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
3751 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
3754 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
3755 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
3756 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
3757 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
3760 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
3761 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
3764 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
3765 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
3766 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
3769 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
3771 * Improved configuration
3773 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
3774 Porting BFD is simpler.
3778 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
3779 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
3780 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
3781 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
3785 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
3787 * New host supported (not target)
3789 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
3792 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
3794 * Multiple source language support
3796 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
3797 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
3798 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
3799 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
3800 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
3801 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
3805 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
3806 currently under development at the State University of New York at
3807 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
3808 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
3810 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
3811 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
3812 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
3814 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
3815 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
3819 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
3820 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
3821 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
3822 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
3825 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
3827 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
3828 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
3829 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
3830 examining core files.
3834 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
3837 * New machines supported (host and target)
3839 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
3840 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
3841 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
3843 * New hosts supported (not targets)
3845 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
3847 * New targets supported (not hosts)
3849 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3850 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3851 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
3853 * New remote interfaces
3859 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
3863 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
3865 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
3866 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
3867 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
3868 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
3869 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
3870 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
3871 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
3872 stub on the target system.
3874 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
3876 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
3877 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
3878 object file types such as a.out and coff.
3880 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
3881 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
3884 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
3886 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
3887 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
3889 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
3890 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
3891 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
3893 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
3894 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
3895 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
3896 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
3898 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
3899 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
3900 it is already running. Default is ON.
3902 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
3903 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
3904 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
3905 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
3908 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
3909 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
3910 or the value of the environment variable
3913 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
3914 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
3917 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
3918 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
3919 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
3921 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
3922 history expansion will be performed on
3923 command line input. The default is OFF.
3925 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
3926 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
3927 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
3929 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
3930 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
3931 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3934 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
3935 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
3936 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3939 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
3940 ``set width'' instead.
3942 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
3943 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
3944 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
3945 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
3947 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
3950 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
3953 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
3956 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
3959 * Support for Epoch Environment.
3961 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
3962 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
3963 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
3967 * Support for Shared Libraries
3969 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
3970 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
3971 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
3972 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
3973 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
3974 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
3975 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
3976 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
3978 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
3979 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
3980 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
3982 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
3987 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
3988 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
3989 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
3990 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
3991 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
3992 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
3994 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
3996 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
3998 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3999 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4000 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4003 * C++ multiple inheritance
4005 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
4008 * C++ exception handling
4010 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
4011 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
4012 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
4015 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
4016 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
4017 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
4019 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
4020 current stack frame.
4023 * Minor command changes
4025 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
4026 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
4027 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
4029 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
4030 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
4031 frames without printing.
4033 * New directory command
4035 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
4036 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
4037 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
4038 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
4039 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
4041 * Configuring GDB for compilation
4043 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
4046 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
4047 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
4048 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
4049 where the program that you are debugging will run.