1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 6.3
6 * New native configurations
8 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
9 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
13 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
15 * Deprecated commands removed
17 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
21 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
22 othernames set arm disassembler
23 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
24 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
25 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
28 * New BSD user-level threads support
30 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
31 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
34 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
35 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
36 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
38 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
39 are not yet supported.
41 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
42 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
44 * REMOVED configurations and files
46 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
47 Renesas H8/300S h8300*-*-*
48 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
49 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
50 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
53 * New "set print array-indexes" command
55 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
56 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
59 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
61 * New command line option
63 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
66 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
68 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
69 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
70 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
71 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
72 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
74 * Internationalization
76 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
77 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
78 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
82 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
83 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
84 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
86 * New native configurations
88 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
92 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
93 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
95 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
97 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
98 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
99 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
102 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
103 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
104 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
116 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
117 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
119 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
121 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
122 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
123 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
133 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
135 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
137 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
138 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
141 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
143 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
144 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
145 IRIX long double values).
149 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
150 command. This problem has been fixed.
152 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
154 * Fix for ``many threads''
156 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
157 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
160 ptrace: No such process.
161 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
163 This problem has been fixed.
165 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
167 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
170 * New ``start'' command.
172 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
174 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
176 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
177 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
178 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
180 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
181 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
182 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
183 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
184 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
185 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
186 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
187 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
188 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
190 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
192 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
193 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
194 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
195 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
196 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
198 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
199 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
200 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
202 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
204 * New native configurations
206 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
207 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
208 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
209 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
210 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
211 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
212 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
214 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
216 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
217 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
218 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
219 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
220 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
221 work, was also included.
223 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
224 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
234 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
235 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
237 * REMOVED configurations and files
239 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
240 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
241 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
242 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
243 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
244 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
245 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
246 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
247 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
249 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
251 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
253 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
255 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
256 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
257 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
258 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
261 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
263 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
264 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
265 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
266 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
267 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
268 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
271 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
273 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
275 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
276 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
277 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
279 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
281 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
282 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
284 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
286 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
287 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
288 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
290 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
292 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
293 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
295 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
297 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
298 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
299 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
301 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
303 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
304 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
305 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
307 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
309 * Removed --with-mmalloc
311 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
312 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
314 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
316 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
317 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
318 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
319 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
321 * Revised SPARC target
323 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
324 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
325 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
326 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
327 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
331 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
332 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
333 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
336 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
338 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
339 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
342 * C++ nested types and namespaces
344 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
345 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
346 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
347 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
348 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
349 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
350 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
351 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
352 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
354 * New native configurations
356 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
357 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
358 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
359 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
360 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
362 * New debugging protocols
364 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
366 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
368 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
369 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
370 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
372 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
374 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
375 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
376 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
379 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
380 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
381 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
382 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
383 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
384 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
385 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
386 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
387 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
389 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
391 * REMOVED configurations and files
393 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
394 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
395 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
396 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
397 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
398 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
399 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
400 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
401 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
402 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
403 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
404 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
405 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
406 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
407 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
408 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
409 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
411 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
415 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
418 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
420 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
421 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
422 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
425 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
426 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
431 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
432 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
433 remote protocol documentation for details.
435 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
437 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
438 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
439 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
442 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
444 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
445 per-thread variables.
447 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
449 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
450 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
452 * Separate debug info.
454 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
455 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
456 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
457 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
458 and optional debug files.
460 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
462 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
463 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
466 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
467 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
471 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
472 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
473 considered "useable".
475 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
477 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
478 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
481 * GDB supports logging output to a file
483 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
484 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
486 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
488 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
489 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
492 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
494 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
495 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
499 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
500 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
501 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
502 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
503 data, for more informative profiling results.
505 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
507 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
508 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
509 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
511 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
514 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
515 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
516 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
517 in a subsequent -var-update.
519 * New native configurations.
521 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
523 * Multi-arched targets.
525 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
526 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
528 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
530 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
531 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
532 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
535 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
536 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
537 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
538 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
539 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
540 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
541 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
542 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
543 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
544 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
545 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
546 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
548 * REMOVED configurations and files
551 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
552 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
553 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
554 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
555 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
556 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
558 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
559 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
560 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
561 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
562 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
563 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
565 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
567 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
568 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
569 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
570 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
571 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
573 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
575 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
577 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
578 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
579 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
580 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
581 shared libs like mad''.
583 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
585 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
586 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
587 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
588 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
590 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
592 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
593 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
596 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
597 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
599 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
600 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
602 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
603 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
604 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
605 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
607 * Multi-arched targets.
609 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
610 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
612 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
613 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
614 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
618 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
621 * New native configurations
623 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
624 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
625 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
626 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
628 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
630 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
631 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
632 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
635 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
636 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
637 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
638 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
639 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
640 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
641 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
642 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
643 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
644 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
646 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
647 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
651 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
653 * REMOVED configurations and files
655 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
656 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
657 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
658 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
659 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
661 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
663 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
665 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
666 commands. The default is 1024.
668 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
670 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
672 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
674 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
675 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
676 from a file into memory (restore).
678 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
680 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
681 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
682 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
684 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
692 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
693 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
694 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
696 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
697 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
698 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
700 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
701 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
702 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
704 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
705 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
706 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
708 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
710 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
712 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
713 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
714 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
715 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
716 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
717 (notably embedded) targets.
719 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
721 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
722 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
723 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
724 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
726 * New command line option
728 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
730 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
732 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
733 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
734 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
735 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
736 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
737 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
738 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
739 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
740 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
741 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
743 * Changes in ARM configurations.
745 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
746 configuration is fully multi-arch.
748 * New native configurations
750 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
751 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
752 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
753 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
757 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
759 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
761 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
762 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
763 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
766 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
767 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
768 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
769 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
770 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
772 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
774 * REMOVED configurations and files
776 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
778 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
779 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
780 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
781 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
782 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
783 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
784 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
785 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
786 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
787 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
788 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
790 * Changes to command line processing
792 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
793 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
795 * Changes to key bindings
797 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
799 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
801 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
803 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
806 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
808 Numerous documentation fixes.
810 Numerous testsuite fixes.
812 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
814 * New native configurations
816 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
817 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
818 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
819 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
821 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
825 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
827 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
829 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
831 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
832 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
833 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
834 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
835 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
837 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
838 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
839 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
840 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
841 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
842 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
843 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
844 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
846 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
847 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
849 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
850 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
851 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
854 * REMOVED configurations and files
856 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
857 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
859 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
863 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
865 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
866 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
871 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
873 * The MI enabled by default.
875 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
876 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
877 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
878 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
879 which is now deprecated.
881 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
883 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
884 main features are supported:
886 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
888 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
891 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
893 - a Pascal expression parser.
895 However, some important features are not yet supported.
897 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
899 - there are some problems with boolean types;
901 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
902 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
904 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
906 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
908 * Changes in completion.
910 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
911 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
912 users expect at the shell prompt.
914 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
915 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
916 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
917 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
918 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
919 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
920 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
922 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
924 * New platform-independent commands:
926 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
927 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
928 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
930 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
932 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
933 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
934 many threads as your system allows you to have.
936 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
938 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
939 multi-threaded programs though.
941 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
943 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
945 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
946 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
949 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
951 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
952 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
953 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
954 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
955 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
958 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
959 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
960 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
962 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
964 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
965 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
967 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
968 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
971 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
972 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
973 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
974 a given linear address.
976 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
977 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
978 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
980 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
982 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
984 * Changes in documentation.
986 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
987 Documentation License.
989 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
992 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
994 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
997 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
998 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
999 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
1001 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
1003 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
1004 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
1005 contents of this file.
1009 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
1011 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
1013 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
1015 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
1016 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
1017 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
1018 greater level of detail.
1020 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
1022 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
1023 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
1024 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
1027 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
1029 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
1030 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
1031 machines ``out of the box''.
1033 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
1034 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
1035 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
1036 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
1037 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
1039 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
1040 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
1041 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
1042 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
1043 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
1045 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
1046 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
1049 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
1052 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
1053 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
1054 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
1055 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
1057 * New native configurations
1059 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
1060 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1064 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
1065 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
1066 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
1067 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1069 * OBSOLETE configurations
1071 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1072 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
1074 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
1077 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1078 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1079 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1080 be permanently REMOVED.
1082 * Gould support removed
1084 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
1086 * New features for SVR4
1088 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
1089 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
1090 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
1092 * Many C++ enhancements
1094 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
1095 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
1097 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
1099 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
1100 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
1101 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
1102 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
1104 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
1105 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
1107 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
1109 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
1110 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
1111 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
1113 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
1114 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1116 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
1118 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
1119 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
1120 include ``set remote P-packet''.
1122 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
1124 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
1125 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
1126 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
1128 * ``apropos'' command added.
1130 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
1131 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
1132 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
1136 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
1137 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
1138 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
1139 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
1140 enabled by configuring with:
1142 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
1144 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
1146 * New native configurations
1148 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
1149 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
1150 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
1154 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1155 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
1156 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1158 * OBSOLETE configurations
1160 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
1162 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1163 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1164 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1165 be permanently REMOVED.
1169 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
1170 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
1171 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
1172 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
1173 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
1174 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
1175 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
1180 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
1182 * set extension-language
1184 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
1185 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
1186 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
1187 set extension-language .c c++
1188 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
1189 and their associated languages.
1191 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
1193 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
1194 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
1195 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
1199 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
1200 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
1202 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
1203 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
1205 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
1206 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
1207 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
1208 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
1209 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
1210 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
1211 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
1212 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
1214 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
1215 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
1216 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
1217 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
1221 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
1222 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
1223 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
1224 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
1225 for xdb and dbx commands.
1229 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
1230 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
1231 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
1233 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
1234 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
1235 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
1237 * Debugging across forks
1239 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
1244 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
1245 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
1246 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
1248 * GDB remote protocol additions
1250 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
1251 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
1252 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
1253 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
1255 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
1256 full 64-bit address. The command
1258 set remoteaddresssize 32
1260 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
1261 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
1264 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
1265 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
1267 maint packet heythere
1269 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
1270 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
1273 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
1274 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
1275 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
1277 * Tracing can collect general expressions
1279 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
1280 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
1281 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
1283 * mask-address variable for Mips
1285 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
1286 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
1287 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
1289 * Higher serial baud rates
1291 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
1292 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
1293 to achieve all of these rates.)
1297 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
1298 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
1301 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
1303 * New native configurations
1305 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
1306 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
1307 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1308 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1309 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1310 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
1311 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
1315 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1316 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
1317 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1318 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
1319 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
1320 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
1321 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
1322 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
1323 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
1324 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1325 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
1327 * New debugging protocols
1329 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
1330 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
1331 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
1332 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1333 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1334 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1338 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
1339 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
1344 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
1345 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
1347 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
1349 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
1350 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
1351 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
1353 * Live range splitting
1355 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
1356 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
1357 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
1361 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
1362 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
1366 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
1367 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
1368 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
1373 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
1378 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
1379 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
1380 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
1381 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
1382 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
1383 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
1387 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
1388 the symbol at the specified address.
1392 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
1393 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
1394 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
1395 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
1396 file tracepoint.c for more details.
1400 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
1401 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
1402 of most MIPS variants.
1406 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
1407 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
1408 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
1412 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
1413 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
1414 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
1415 the possible architectures.
1417 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
1419 * New native configurations
1421 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
1422 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
1423 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
1424 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
1425 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1426 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
1430 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
1431 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1432 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
1433 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
1434 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
1436 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1440 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
1441 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
1442 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
1443 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
1444 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
1448 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
1450 * Windows 95/NT native
1452 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
1453 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
1454 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
1455 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
1456 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
1458 * dont-repeat command
1460 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
1461 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
1462 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
1463 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
1465 * Send break instead of ^C
1467 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
1468 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
1469 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
1471 * Remote protocol timeout
1473 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
1474 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
1475 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
1477 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
1479 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
1480 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
1481 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
1482 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
1483 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
1485 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
1486 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
1487 automatically on hpux10.
1489 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
1491 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
1493 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
1495 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
1496 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
1497 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
1498 every character. The default value is 1050.
1500 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
1502 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
1503 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
1504 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
1505 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
1506 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
1507 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
1509 * Speedups for remote debugging
1511 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
1512 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
1513 and more efficient S-record downloading.
1515 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
1517 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
1518 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
1520 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
1522 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
1524 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
1525 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
1527 * Remote targets use caching
1529 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
1530 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
1531 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
1532 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
1533 off' turns the the data cache off.
1535 * Remote targets may have threads
1537 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
1538 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
1539 gdb/remote.c for details.
1543 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
1544 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
1545 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
1546 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
1547 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
1548 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
1549 sequence is something like
1551 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
1553 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
1557 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
1558 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
1559 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
1560 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
1561 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
1562 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
1563 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
1564 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
1568 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
1569 but does simplify configuration and building.
1573 GDB now supports hpux10.
1575 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
1577 * New native configurations
1579 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
1580 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
1581 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
1582 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
1586 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1587 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
1588 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
1589 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
1592 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
1594 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
1595 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
1596 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
1597 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
1598 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
1600 * Arguments to user-defined commands
1602 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
1603 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
1606 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
1608 To execute the command use:
1611 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
1612 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
1613 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
1615 * New `if' and `while' commands
1617 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
1618 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
1619 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
1620 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
1621 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
1622 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
1623 if the expression is zero.
1625 * Fortran source language mode
1627 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
1628 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
1629 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
1630 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
1633 * Better HPUX support
1635 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
1636 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
1637 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
1638 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
1639 that behavior do the following before running the program:
1645 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
1646 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
1652 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
1653 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
1656 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
1657 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
1659 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
1661 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
1662 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
1663 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
1664 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
1665 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
1666 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
1668 * New DOS host serial code
1670 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
1671 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
1674 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
1676 * New "complete" command
1678 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
1679 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
1681 * Trailing space optional in prompt
1683 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
1684 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
1686 * Breakpoint hit counts
1688 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
1689 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
1690 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
1691 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
1692 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
1695 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
1697 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
1698 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
1699 arrays actually contain only short strings.
1701 * Shared library breakpoints
1703 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
1704 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
1706 * Hardware watchpoints
1708 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
1709 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
1711 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
1715 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
1716 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
1718 * Improved Irix 5 support
1720 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
1722 * Improved HPPA support
1724 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
1726 * New native configurations
1728 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
1729 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1730 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
1731 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
1735 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1736 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
1739 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
1741 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
1742 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
1746 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
1747 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
1749 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
1751 * Irix 5 is now supported
1755 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
1756 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
1757 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
1758 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
1759 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
1762 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
1764 * User visible changes:
1768 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
1769 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
1770 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
1771 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
1772 debugging info for the mips target).
1774 * DEC Alpha native support
1776 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
1777 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
1778 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
1779 Alpha-specific notes.
1781 * Preliminary thread implementation
1783 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
1785 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
1787 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
1788 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
1791 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
1793 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
1794 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
1795 call methods, ...etc.
1797 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
1799 * User visible changes:
1801 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
1802 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
1803 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
1804 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
1806 Filename completion now works.
1808 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
1809 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
1810 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
1812 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
1813 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
1814 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
1815 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
1816 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
1820 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
1821 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
1824 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
1828 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
1829 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
1830 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
1834 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
1835 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
1836 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
1837 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
1838 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
1842 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
1843 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
1844 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
1846 * New targets supported
1848 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1849 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1850 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
1851 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1852 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
1854 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
1855 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
1856 GO32 memory extender.
1858 * New remote protocols
1860 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
1862 * New source languages supported
1864 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
1865 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
1866 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
1869 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
1871 * HP Precision Architecture supported
1873 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
1874 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
1875 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
1876 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
1877 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
1878 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
1880 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
1882 * Faster and better demangling
1884 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
1885 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
1886 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
1887 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
1888 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
1889 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
1892 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
1893 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
1894 compiler does not actually implement.
1896 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
1898 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
1899 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
1900 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
1901 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
1902 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
1903 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
1906 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
1907 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
1909 * Improved configure script
1911 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
1912 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
1913 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
1914 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
1916 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
1917 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
1918 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
1919 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
1920 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
1921 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
1923 * Documentation improvements
1925 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
1926 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
1927 before submitting changes.
1929 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
1930 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
1931 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
1932 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
1933 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
1935 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
1936 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
1937 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
1938 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
1939 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
1940 around this problem.
1944 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
1945 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
1946 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
1949 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
1950 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
1952 * New native hosts supported
1954 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
1955 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
1957 * New targets supported
1959 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
1961 * New file formats supported
1963 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
1964 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
1968 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
1970 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
1971 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
1973 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
1974 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
1975 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
1977 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
1978 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
1980 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
1981 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
1982 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
1985 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
1986 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
1987 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
1988 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
1989 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
1991 * Internal improvements
1993 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
1994 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
1996 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
1997 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
1998 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
1999 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
2000 shared code that handles any of them.
2002 * New command line options
2004 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
2008 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
2009 General Public License.
2011 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
2013 * Host/native/target split
2015 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
2016 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
2017 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
2018 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
2019 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
2021 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
2022 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
2023 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
2024 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
2025 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
2026 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
2027 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
2029 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
2030 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
2031 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
2033 * New hosts supported
2035 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
2036 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2037 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
2039 * New targets supported
2041 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
2042 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
2044 * New native hosts supported
2046 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2047 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
2048 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
2050 * New file formats supported
2052 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
2053 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
2054 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
2058 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
2059 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
2060 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
2062 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
2064 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
2065 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
2066 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
2067 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
2071 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
2072 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
2073 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
2075 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
2079 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
2080 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
2083 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
2084 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
2086 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
2087 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
2088 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
2089 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
2090 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
2091 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
2093 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
2094 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
2095 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
2096 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
2100 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
2101 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
2102 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
2103 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
2104 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
2106 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
2107 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
2108 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
2109 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
2113 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
2114 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
2115 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
2116 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
2117 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
2118 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
2119 each instruction being stepped through.
2121 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
2122 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
2124 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
2125 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
2126 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
2127 processor with a serial port.
2131 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
2132 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
2133 supported, and what files each one uses.
2137 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
2138 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
2139 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
2140 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
2142 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
2143 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
2144 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
2145 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
2149 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
2150 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
2151 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
2152 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
2153 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
2154 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
2156 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
2159 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
2161 * Better support for C++ function names
2163 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
2164 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
2165 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
2166 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
2167 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
2169 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
2170 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
2171 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
2172 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
2173 for the list of formats.
2175 * G++ symbol mangling problem
2177 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
2178 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
2179 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
2180 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
2181 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
2182 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
2185 * New 'maintenance' command
2187 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
2188 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
2189 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
2191 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
2192 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
2193 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
2194 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
2195 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
2196 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
2198 The following commands are new:
2200 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
2201 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
2202 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
2204 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
2206 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
2207 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
2208 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
2209 read after argv processing.
2211 * New hosts supported
2213 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
2215 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
2217 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
2218 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
2219 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
2220 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
2221 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
2224 * New targets supported
2226 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2228 * More smarts about finding #include files
2230 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
2231 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
2232 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
2233 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
2234 the one that contains your sources.
2236 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
2237 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
2238 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
2240 * Interesting infernals change
2242 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
2243 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
2244 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
2245 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
2247 * Bug fixes (of course!)
2249 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
2250 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
2251 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
2253 See the ChangeLog for details.
2255 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
2257 * New machines supported (host and target)
2259 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
2261 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2263 * New malloc package
2265 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
2266 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
2267 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
2268 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
2269 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
2270 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
2274 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
2275 'help info proc' for details.
2277 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
2279 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
2280 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
2283 * File name changes for MS-DOS
2285 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
2286 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
2287 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
2288 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
2289 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
2290 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
2292 * Cross byte order fixes
2294 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
2295 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
2297 * New -mapped and -readnow options
2299 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
2300 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
2301 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
2302 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
2303 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
2304 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
2305 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
2306 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
2307 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
2308 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
2310 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
2311 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
2312 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
2313 slower, but makes future operations faster.
2315 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
2316 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
2317 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
2320 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
2322 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
2323 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
2324 shared across multiple host platforms.
2326 * longjmp() handling
2328 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
2329 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
2330 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
2331 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
2335 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
2336 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
2341 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
2342 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
2343 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
2345 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
2347 * New machines supported (host and target)
2349 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2351 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
2352 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
2354 * New machines supported (target)
2356 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2360 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
2361 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
2362 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
2364 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
2365 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
2366 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
2367 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
2368 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
2371 * New features for SVR4
2373 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
2374 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
2375 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
2377 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
2378 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
2379 it prints the address mappings of the process.
2381 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
2382 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
2384 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
2386 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
2387 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
2388 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
2389 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
2390 same code linked statically.
2394 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
2395 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
2396 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
2397 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
2398 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
2399 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
2403 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2404 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2405 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2408 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
2410 * New machines supported (host and target)
2412 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
2413 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
2414 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2416 * Almost SCO Unix support
2418 We had hoped to support:
2419 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2420 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
2421 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
2422 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
2424 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
2426 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
2427 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
2428 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
2429 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
2434 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
2435 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
2436 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
2440 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2441 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2442 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2444 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
2446 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
2447 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
2448 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
2450 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
2451 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
2452 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
2453 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
2456 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
2457 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
2458 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
2459 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
2462 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
2463 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
2466 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
2467 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
2468 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
2471 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
2473 * Improved configuration
2475 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
2476 Porting BFD is simpler.
2480 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
2481 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
2482 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
2483 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
2487 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
2489 * New host supported (not target)
2491 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
2494 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
2496 * Multiple source language support
2498 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
2499 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
2500 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
2501 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
2502 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
2503 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
2507 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
2508 currently under development at the State University of New York at
2509 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
2510 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
2512 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
2513 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
2514 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
2516 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
2517 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
2521 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
2522 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
2523 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
2524 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
2527 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
2529 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
2530 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
2531 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
2532 examining core files.
2536 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
2539 * New machines supported (host and target)
2541 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2542 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
2543 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
2545 * New hosts supported (not targets)
2547 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
2549 * New targets supported (not hosts)
2551 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2552 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2553 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
2555 * New remote interfaces
2561 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
2565 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
2567 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
2568 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
2569 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
2570 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
2571 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
2572 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
2573 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
2574 stub on the target system.
2576 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
2578 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
2579 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
2580 object file types such as a.out and coff.
2582 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
2583 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
2586 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
2588 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
2589 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
2591 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
2592 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
2593 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
2595 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
2596 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
2597 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
2598 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
2600 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
2601 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
2602 it is already running. Default is ON.
2604 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
2605 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
2606 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
2607 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
2610 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
2611 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
2612 or the value of the environment variable
2615 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
2616 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
2619 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
2620 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
2621 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
2623 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
2624 history expansion will be performed on
2625 command line input. The default is OFF.
2627 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
2628 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
2629 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
2631 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
2632 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
2633 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2636 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
2637 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
2638 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2641 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
2642 ``set width'' instead.
2644 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
2645 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
2646 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
2647 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
2649 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
2652 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
2655 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
2658 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
2661 * Support for Epoch Environment.
2663 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
2664 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
2665 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
2669 * Support for Shared Libraries
2671 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
2672 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
2673 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
2674 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
2675 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
2676 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
2677 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
2678 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
2680 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
2681 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
2682 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
2684 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
2689 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
2690 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
2691 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
2692 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
2693 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
2694 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
2696 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
2698 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
2700 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2701 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2702 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2705 * C++ multiple inheritance
2707 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
2710 * C++ exception handling
2712 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
2713 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
2714 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
2717 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
2718 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
2719 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
2721 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
2722 current stack frame.
2725 * Minor command changes
2727 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
2728 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
2729 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
2731 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
2732 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
2733 frames without printing.
2735 * New directory command
2737 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
2738 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
2739 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
2740 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
2741 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
2743 * Configuring GDB for compilation
2745 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
2748 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
2749 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
2750 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
2751 where the program that you are debugging will run.
projects / deliverable / binutils-gdb.git / blob