1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 5.2:
6 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multithreaded applications on some targets
8 Support for multithreaded applications using LinuxThreads has been added
9 for arm*-*-linux*, i[3456]86-*-linux*, mips*-*-linux*, powerpc*-*-linux*,
12 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
14 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
15 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
18 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
19 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
20 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
21 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
23 Here are the new commands for working with macros:
25 ** macro expand EXPRESSION
27 Expand any macro invocations in expression, and show the result.
29 ** show macro MACRO-NAME
31 Show the definition of the macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was
34 * Multi-arched targets.
36 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
37 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
39 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
40 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
41 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
46 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
49 * New native configurations
51 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
52 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
53 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
54 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
56 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
58 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
59 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
60 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
63 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
64 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
65 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
67 * REMOVED configurations and files
69 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
70 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
71 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
72 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
73 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
75 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
77 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
79 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
80 commands. The default is 1024.
82 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
84 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
86 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
88 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
89 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
90 from a file into memory (restore).
92 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
94 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
96 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
97 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
98 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
99 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
100 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
101 (notably embedded) targets.
103 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
105 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
106 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
107 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
108 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
110 * New command line option
112 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
114 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
116 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
117 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
118 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
119 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
120 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
121 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
122 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
123 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
124 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
125 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
127 * Changes in ARM configurations.
129 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
130 configuration is fully multi-arch.
132 * New native configurations
134 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
135 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
136 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
137 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
141 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
143 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
145 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
146 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
147 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
150 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
151 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
152 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
153 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
154 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
156 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
158 * REMOVED configurations and files
160 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
162 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
163 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
164 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
165 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
166 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
167 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
168 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
169 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
170 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
171 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
172 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
174 * Changes to command line processing
176 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
177 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
179 * Changes to key bindings
181 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
183 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
185 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
187 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
190 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
192 Numerous documentation fixes.
194 Numerous testsuite fixes.
196 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
198 * New native configurations
200 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
201 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
202 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
203 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
205 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
209 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
211 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
213 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
215 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
216 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
217 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
218 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
219 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
221 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
222 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
223 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
224 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
225 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
226 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
227 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
228 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
230 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
231 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
233 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
234 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
235 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
238 * REMOVED configurations and files
240 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
241 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
243 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
247 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
249 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
250 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
255 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
257 * The MI enabled by default.
259 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
260 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
261 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
262 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
263 which is now deprecated.
265 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
267 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
268 main features are supported:
270 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
272 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
275 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
277 - a Pascal expression parser.
279 However, some important features are not yet supported.
281 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
283 - there are some problems with boolean types;
285 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
286 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
288 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
290 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
292 * Changes in completion.
294 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
295 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
296 users expect at the shell prompt.
298 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
299 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
300 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
301 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
302 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
303 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
304 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
306 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
308 * New platform-independent commands:
310 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
311 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
312 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
314 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
316 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
317 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
318 many threads as your system allows you to have.
320 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
322 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
323 multi-threaded programs though.
325 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
327 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
329 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
330 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
333 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
335 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
336 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
337 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
338 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
339 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
342 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
343 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
344 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
346 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
348 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
349 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
351 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
352 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
355 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
356 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
357 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
358 a given linear address.
360 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
361 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
362 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
364 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
366 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
368 * Changes in documentation.
370 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
371 Documentation License.
373 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
376 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
378 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
381 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
382 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
383 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
385 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
387 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
388 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
389 contents of this file.
393 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
395 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
397 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
399 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
400 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
401 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
402 greater level of detail.
404 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
406 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
407 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
408 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
411 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
413 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
414 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
415 machines ``out of the box''.
417 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
418 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
419 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
420 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
421 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
423 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
424 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
425 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
426 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
427 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
429 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
430 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
433 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
436 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
437 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
438 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
439 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
441 * New native configurations
443 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
444 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
448 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
449 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
450 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
451 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
453 * OBSOLETE configurations
455 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
456 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
458 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
461 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
462 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
463 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
464 be permanently REMOVED.
466 * Gould support removed
468 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
470 * New features for SVR4
472 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
473 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
474 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
476 * Many C++ enhancements
478 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
479 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
481 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
483 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
484 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
485 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
486 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
488 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
489 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
491 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
493 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
494 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
495 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
497 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
498 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
500 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
502 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
503 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
504 include ``set remote P-packet''.
506 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
508 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
509 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
510 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
512 * ``apropos'' command added.
514 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
515 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
516 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
520 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
521 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
522 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
523 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
524 enabled by configuring with:
526 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
528 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
530 * New native configurations
532 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
533 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
534 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
538 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
539 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
540 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
542 * OBSOLETE configurations
544 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
546 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
547 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
548 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
549 be permanently REMOVED.
553 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
554 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
555 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
556 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
557 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
558 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
559 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
564 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
566 * set extension-language
568 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
569 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
570 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
571 set extension-language .c c++
572 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
573 and their associated languages.
575 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
577 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
578 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
579 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
583 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
584 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
586 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
587 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
589 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
590 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
591 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
592 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
593 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
594 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
595 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
596 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
598 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
599 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
600 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
601 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
605 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
606 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
607 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
608 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
609 for xdb and dbx commands.
613 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
614 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
615 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
617 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
618 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
619 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
621 * Debugging across forks
623 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
628 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
629 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
630 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
632 * GDB remote protocol additions
634 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
635 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
636 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
637 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
639 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
640 full 64-bit address. The command
642 set remoteaddresssize 32
644 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
645 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
648 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
649 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
651 maint packet heythere
653 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
654 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
657 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
658 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
659 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
661 * Tracing can collect general expressions
663 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
664 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
665 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
667 * mask-address variable for Mips
669 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
670 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
671 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
673 * Higher serial baud rates
675 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
676 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
677 to achieve all of these rates.)
681 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
682 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
685 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
687 * New native configurations
689 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
690 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
691 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
692 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
693 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
694 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
695 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
699 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
700 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
701 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
702 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
703 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
704 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
705 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
706 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
707 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
708 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
709 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
711 * New debugging protocols
713 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
714 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
715 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
716 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
717 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
718 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
722 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
723 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
728 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
729 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
731 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
733 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
734 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
735 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
737 * Live range splitting
739 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
740 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
741 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
745 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
746 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
750 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
751 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
752 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
757 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
762 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
763 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
764 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
765 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
766 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
767 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
771 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
772 the symbol at the specified address.
776 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
777 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
778 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
779 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
780 file tracepoint.c for more details.
784 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
785 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
786 of most MIPS variants.
790 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
791 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
792 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
796 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
797 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
798 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
799 the possible architectures.
801 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
803 * New native configurations
805 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
806 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
807 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
808 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
809 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
810 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
814 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
815 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
816 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
817 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
818 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
820 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
824 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
825 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
826 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
827 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
828 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
832 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
834 * Windows 95/NT native
836 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
837 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
838 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
839 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
840 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
842 * dont-repeat command
844 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
845 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
846 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
847 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
849 * Send break instead of ^C
851 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
852 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
853 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
855 * Remote protocol timeout
857 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
858 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
859 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
861 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
863 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
864 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
865 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
866 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
867 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
869 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
870 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
871 automatically on hpux10.
873 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
875 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
877 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
879 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
880 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
881 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
882 every character. The default value is 1050.
884 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
886 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
887 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
888 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
889 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
890 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
891 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
893 * Speedups for remote debugging
895 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
896 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
897 and more efficient S-record downloading.
899 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
901 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
902 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
904 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
908 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
909 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
911 * Remote targets use caching
913 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
914 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
915 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
916 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
917 off' turns the the data cache off.
919 * Remote targets may have threads
921 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
922 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
923 gdb/remote.c for details.
927 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
928 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
929 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
930 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
931 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
932 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
933 sequence is something like
935 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
937 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
941 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
942 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
943 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
944 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
945 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
946 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
947 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
948 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
952 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
953 but does simplify configuration and building.
957 GDB now supports hpux10.
959 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
961 * New native configurations
963 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
964 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
965 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
966 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
970 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
971 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
972 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
973 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
976 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
978 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
979 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
980 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
981 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
982 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
984 * Arguments to user-defined commands
986 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
987 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
990 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
992 To execute the command use:
995 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
996 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
997 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
999 * New `if' and `while' commands
1001 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
1002 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
1003 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
1004 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
1005 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
1006 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
1007 if the expression is zero.
1009 * Fortran source language mode
1011 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
1012 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
1013 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
1014 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
1017 * Better HPUX support
1019 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
1020 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
1021 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
1022 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
1023 that behavior do the following before running the program:
1029 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
1030 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
1036 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
1037 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
1040 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
1041 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
1043 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
1045 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
1046 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
1047 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
1048 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
1049 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
1050 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
1052 * New DOS host serial code
1054 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
1055 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
1058 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
1060 * New "complete" command
1062 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
1063 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
1065 * Trailing space optional in prompt
1067 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
1068 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
1070 * Breakpoint hit counts
1072 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
1073 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
1074 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
1075 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
1076 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
1079 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
1081 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
1082 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
1083 arrays actually contain only short strings.
1085 * Shared library breakpoints
1087 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
1088 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
1090 * Hardware watchpoints
1092 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
1093 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
1095 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
1099 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
1100 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
1102 * Improved Irix 5 support
1104 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
1106 * Improved HPPA support
1108 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
1110 * New native configurations
1112 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
1113 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1114 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
1115 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
1119 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1120 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
1123 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
1125 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
1126 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
1130 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
1131 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
1133 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
1135 * Irix 5 is now supported
1139 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
1140 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
1141 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
1142 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
1143 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
1146 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
1148 * User visible changes:
1152 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
1153 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
1154 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
1155 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
1156 debugging info for the mips target).
1158 * DEC Alpha native support
1160 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
1161 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
1162 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
1163 Alpha-specific notes.
1165 * Preliminary thread implementation
1167 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
1169 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
1171 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
1172 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
1175 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
1177 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
1178 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
1179 call methods, ...etc.
1181 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
1183 * User visible changes:
1185 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
1186 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
1187 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
1188 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
1190 Filename completion now works.
1192 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
1193 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
1194 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
1196 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
1197 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
1198 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
1199 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
1200 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
1204 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
1205 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
1208 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
1212 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
1213 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
1214 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
1218 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
1219 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
1220 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
1221 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
1222 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
1226 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
1227 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
1228 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
1230 * New targets supported
1232 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1233 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1234 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
1235 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1236 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
1238 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
1239 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
1240 GO32 memory extender.
1242 * New remote protocols
1244 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
1246 * New source languages supported
1248 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
1249 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
1250 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
1253 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
1255 * HP Precision Architecture supported
1257 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
1258 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
1259 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
1260 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
1261 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
1262 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
1264 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
1266 * Faster and better demangling
1268 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
1269 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
1270 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
1271 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
1272 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
1273 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
1276 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
1277 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
1278 compiler does not actually implement.
1280 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
1282 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
1283 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
1284 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
1285 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
1286 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
1287 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
1290 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
1291 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
1293 * Improved configure script
1295 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
1296 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
1297 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
1298 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
1300 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
1301 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
1302 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
1303 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
1304 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
1305 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
1307 * Documentation improvements
1309 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
1310 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
1311 before submitting changes.
1313 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
1314 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
1315 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
1316 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
1317 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
1319 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
1320 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
1321 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
1322 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
1323 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
1324 around this problem.
1328 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
1329 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
1330 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
1333 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
1334 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
1336 * New native hosts supported
1338 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
1339 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
1341 * New targets supported
1343 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
1345 * New file formats supported
1347 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
1348 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
1352 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
1354 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
1355 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
1357 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
1358 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
1359 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
1361 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
1362 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
1364 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
1365 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
1366 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
1369 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
1370 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
1371 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
1372 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
1373 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
1375 * Internal improvements
1377 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
1378 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
1380 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
1381 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
1382 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
1383 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
1384 shared code that handles any of them.
1386 * New command line options
1388 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
1392 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
1393 General Public License.
1395 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
1397 * Host/native/target split
1399 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
1400 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
1401 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
1402 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
1403 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
1405 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
1406 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
1407 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
1408 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
1409 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
1410 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
1411 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
1413 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
1414 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
1415 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
1417 * New hosts supported
1419 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
1420 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1421 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
1423 * New targets supported
1425 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
1426 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
1428 * New native hosts supported
1430 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1431 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
1432 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
1434 * New file formats supported
1436 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
1437 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
1438 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
1442 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
1443 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
1444 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
1446 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
1448 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
1449 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
1450 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
1451 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
1455 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
1456 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
1457 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
1459 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
1463 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
1464 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
1467 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
1468 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
1470 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
1471 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
1472 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
1473 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
1474 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
1475 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
1477 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
1478 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
1479 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
1480 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
1484 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
1485 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
1486 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
1487 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
1488 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
1490 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
1491 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
1492 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
1493 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
1497 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
1498 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
1499 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
1500 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
1501 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
1502 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
1503 each instruction being stepped through.
1505 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
1506 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
1508 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
1509 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
1510 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
1511 processor with a serial port.
1515 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
1516 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
1517 supported, and what files each one uses.
1521 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
1522 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
1523 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
1524 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
1526 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
1527 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
1528 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
1529 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
1533 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
1534 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
1535 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
1536 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
1537 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
1538 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
1540 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
1543 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
1545 * Better support for C++ function names
1547 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
1548 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
1549 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
1550 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
1551 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
1553 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
1554 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
1555 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
1556 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
1557 for the list of formats.
1559 * G++ symbol mangling problem
1561 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
1562 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
1563 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
1564 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
1565 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
1566 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
1569 * New 'maintenance' command
1571 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
1572 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
1573 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
1575 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
1576 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
1577 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
1578 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
1579 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
1580 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
1582 The following commands are new:
1584 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
1585 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
1586 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
1588 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
1590 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
1591 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
1592 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
1593 read after argv processing.
1595 * New hosts supported
1597 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
1599 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
1601 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
1602 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
1603 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
1604 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
1605 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
1608 * New targets supported
1610 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1612 * More smarts about finding #include files
1614 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
1615 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
1616 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
1617 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
1618 the one that contains your sources.
1620 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
1621 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
1622 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
1624 * Interesting infernals change
1626 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
1627 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
1628 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
1629 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
1631 * Bug fixes (of course!)
1633 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
1634 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
1635 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
1637 See the ChangeLog for details.
1639 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
1641 * New machines supported (host and target)
1643 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
1645 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1647 * New malloc package
1649 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
1650 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
1651 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
1652 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
1653 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
1654 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
1658 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
1659 'help info proc' for details.
1661 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
1663 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
1664 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
1667 * File name changes for MS-DOS
1669 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
1670 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
1671 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
1672 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
1673 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
1674 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
1676 * Cross byte order fixes
1678 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
1679 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
1681 * New -mapped and -readnow options
1683 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
1684 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
1685 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
1686 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
1687 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
1688 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
1689 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
1690 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
1691 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
1692 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
1694 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
1695 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
1696 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
1697 slower, but makes future operations faster.
1699 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
1700 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
1701 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
1704 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
1706 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
1707 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
1708 shared across multiple host platforms.
1710 * longjmp() handling
1712 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
1713 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
1714 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
1715 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
1719 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
1720 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
1725 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
1726 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
1727 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
1729 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
1731 * New machines supported (host and target)
1733 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
1735 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
1736 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
1738 * New machines supported (target)
1740 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1744 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
1745 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
1746 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
1748 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
1749 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
1750 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
1751 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
1752 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
1755 * New features for SVR4
1757 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
1758 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
1759 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
1761 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
1762 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
1763 it prints the address mappings of the process.
1765 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
1766 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
1768 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
1770 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
1771 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
1772 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
1773 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
1774 same code linked statically.
1778 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
1779 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
1780 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
1781 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
1782 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
1783 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
1787 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
1788 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
1789 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
1792 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
1794 * New machines supported (host and target)
1796 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
1797 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
1798 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1800 * Almost SCO Unix support
1802 We had hoped to support:
1803 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
1804 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
1805 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
1806 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
1808 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
1810 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
1811 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
1812 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
1813 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
1818 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
1819 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
1820 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
1824 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
1825 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
1826 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
1828 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
1830 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
1831 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
1832 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
1834 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
1835 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
1836 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
1837 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
1840 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
1841 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
1842 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
1843 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
1846 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
1847 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
1850 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
1851 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
1852 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
1855 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
1857 * Improved configuration
1859 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
1860 Porting BFD is simpler.
1864 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
1865 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
1866 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
1867 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
1871 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
1873 * New host supported (not target)
1875 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
1878 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
1880 * Multiple source language support
1882 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
1883 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
1884 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
1885 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
1886 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
1887 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
1891 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
1892 currently under development at the State University of New York at
1893 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
1894 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
1896 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
1897 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
1898 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
1900 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
1901 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
1905 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
1906 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
1907 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
1908 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
1911 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
1913 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
1914 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
1915 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
1916 examining core files.
1920 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
1923 * New machines supported (host and target)
1925 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
1926 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
1927 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
1929 * New hosts supported (not targets)
1931 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
1933 * New targets supported (not hosts)
1935 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1936 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1937 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
1939 * New remote interfaces
1945 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
1949 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
1951 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
1952 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
1953 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
1954 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
1955 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
1956 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
1957 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
1958 stub on the target system.
1960 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
1962 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
1963 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
1964 object file types such as a.out and coff.
1966 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
1967 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
1970 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
1972 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
1973 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
1975 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
1976 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
1977 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
1979 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
1980 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
1981 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
1982 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
1984 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
1985 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
1986 it is already running. Default is ON.
1988 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
1989 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
1990 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
1991 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
1994 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
1995 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
1996 or the value of the environment variable
1999 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
2000 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
2003 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
2004 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
2005 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
2007 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
2008 history expansion will be performed on
2009 command line input. The default is OFF.
2011 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
2012 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
2013 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
2015 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
2016 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
2017 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2020 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
2021 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
2022 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2025 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
2026 ``set width'' instead.
2028 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
2029 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
2030 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
2031 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
2033 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
2036 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
2039 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
2042 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
2045 * Support for Epoch Environment.
2047 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
2048 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
2049 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
2053 * Support for Shared Libraries
2055 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
2056 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
2057 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
2058 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
2059 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
2060 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
2061 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
2062 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
2064 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
2065 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
2066 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
2068 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
2073 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
2074 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
2075 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
2076 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
2077 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
2078 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
2080 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
2082 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
2084 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2085 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2086 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2089 * C++ multiple inheritance
2091 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
2094 * C++ exception handling
2096 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
2097 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
2098 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
2101 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
2102 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
2103 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
2105 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
2106 current stack frame.
2109 * Minor command changes
2111 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
2112 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
2113 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
2115 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
2116 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
2117 frames without printing.
2119 * New directory command
2121 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
2122 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
2123 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
2124 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
2125 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
2127 * Configuring GDB for compilation
2129 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
2132 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
2133 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
2134 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
2135 where the program that you are debugging will run.
projects / deliverable / binutils-gdb.git / blob