1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 6.5
8 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
10 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
14 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
16 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
20 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
21 only if it doesn't already have a value.
23 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
25 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
27 restart <n> Return the program state to a
28 previously saved state.
30 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
32 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
34 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
35 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
37 info forks List forks of the user program that
38 are available to be debugged.
40 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
41 forks of the user program that are
42 available to be debugged.
44 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
45 that are available to be debugged (and
46 kill the forked process).
48 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
49 that are available to be debugged (and
50 allow the process to continue).
54 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
56 * Improved Windows host support
58 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
59 native console support, and remote communications using either
60 network sockets or serial ports.
62 * Improved Modula-2 language support
64 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
65 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
66 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
67 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
68 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
69 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
73 The ARM rdi-share module.
75 The Netware NLM debug server.
77 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
79 * New native configurations
81 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
82 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
86 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
88 * New command line options
90 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
91 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
92 the child (debugged) program exited with.
93 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
94 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
95 specified multiple times and in conjunction
96 with the --command (-x) option.
98 * Deprecated commands removed
100 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
104 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
105 othernames set arm disassembler
106 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
107 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
108 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
111 * New BSD user-level threads support
113 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
114 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
117 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
118 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
119 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
121 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
122 are not yet supported.
124 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
125 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
127 * REMOVED configurations and files
129 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
130 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
131 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
133 * New "set print array-indexes" command
135 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
136 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
139 * VAX floating point support
141 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
143 * User-defined command support
145 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
146 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
147 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
149 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
151 * New command line option
153 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
156 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
158 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
159 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
160 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
161 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
162 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
164 * Internationalization
166 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
167 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
168 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
172 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
173 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
174 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
176 * New native configurations
178 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
182 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
183 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
185 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
187 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
188 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
189 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
192 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
193 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
194 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
206 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
207 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
209 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
211 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
212 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
213 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
223 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
225 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
227 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
228 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
231 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
233 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
234 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
235 IRIX long double values).
239 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
240 command. This problem has been fixed.
242 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
244 * Fix for ``many threads''
246 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
247 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
250 ptrace: No such process.
251 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
253 This problem has been fixed.
255 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
257 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
260 * New ``start'' command.
262 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
264 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
266 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
267 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
268 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
270 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
271 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
272 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
273 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
274 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
275 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
276 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
277 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
278 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
280 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
282 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
283 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
284 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
285 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
286 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
288 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
289 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
290 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
292 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
294 * New native configurations
296 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
297 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
298 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
299 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
300 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
301 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
302 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
304 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
306 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
307 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
308 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
309 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
310 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
311 work, was also included.
313 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
314 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
324 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
325 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
327 * REMOVED configurations and files
329 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
330 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
331 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
332 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
333 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
334 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
335 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
336 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
337 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
339 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
341 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
343 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
345 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
346 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
347 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
348 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
351 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
353 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
354 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
355 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
356 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
357 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
358 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
361 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
363 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
365 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
366 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
367 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
369 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
371 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
372 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
374 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
376 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
377 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
378 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
380 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
382 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
383 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
385 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
387 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
388 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
389 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
391 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
393 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
394 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
395 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
397 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
399 * Removed --with-mmalloc
401 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
402 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
404 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
406 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
407 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
408 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
409 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
411 * Revised SPARC target
413 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
414 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
415 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
416 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
417 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
421 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
422 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
423 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
426 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
428 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
429 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
432 * C++ nested types and namespaces
434 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
435 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
436 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
437 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
438 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
439 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
440 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
441 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
442 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
444 * New native configurations
446 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
447 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
448 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
449 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
450 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
452 * New debugging protocols
454 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
456 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
458 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
459 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
460 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
462 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
464 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
465 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
466 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
469 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
470 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
471 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
472 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
473 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
474 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
475 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
476 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
477 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
479 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
481 * REMOVED configurations and files
483 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
484 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
485 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
486 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
487 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
488 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
489 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
490 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
491 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
492 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
493 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
494 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
495 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
496 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
497 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
498 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
499 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
501 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
505 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
508 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
510 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
511 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
512 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
515 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
516 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
521 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
522 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
523 remote protocol documentation for details.
525 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
527 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
528 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
529 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
532 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
534 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
535 per-thread variables.
537 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
539 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
540 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
542 * Separate debug info.
544 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
545 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
546 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
547 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
548 and optional debug files.
550 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
552 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
553 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
556 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
557 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
561 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
562 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
563 considered "useable".
565 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
567 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
568 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
571 * GDB supports logging output to a file
573 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
574 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
576 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
578 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
579 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
582 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
584 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
585 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
589 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
590 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
591 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
592 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
593 data, for more informative profiling results.
595 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
597 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
598 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
599 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
601 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
604 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
605 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
606 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
607 in a subsequent -var-update.
609 * New native configurations.
611 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
613 * Multi-arched targets.
615 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
616 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
618 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
620 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
621 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
622 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
625 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
626 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
627 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
628 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
629 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
630 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
631 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
632 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
633 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
634 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
635 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
636 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
638 * REMOVED configurations and files
641 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
642 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
643 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
644 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
645 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
646 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
648 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
649 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
650 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
651 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
652 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
653 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
655 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
657 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
658 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
659 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
660 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
661 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
663 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
665 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
667 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
668 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
669 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
670 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
671 shared libs like mad''.
673 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
675 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
676 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
677 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
678 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
680 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
682 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
683 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
686 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
687 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
689 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
690 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
692 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
693 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
694 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
695 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
697 * Multi-arched targets.
699 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
700 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
702 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
703 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
704 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
708 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
711 * New native configurations
713 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
714 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
715 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
716 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
718 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
720 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
721 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
722 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
725 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
726 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
727 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
728 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
729 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
730 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
731 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
732 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
733 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
734 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
736 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
737 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
741 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
743 * REMOVED configurations and files
745 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
746 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
747 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
748 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
749 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
751 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
753 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
755 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
756 commands. The default is 1024.
758 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
760 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
762 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
764 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
765 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
766 from a file into memory (restore).
768 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
770 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
771 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
772 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
774 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
782 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
783 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
784 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
786 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
787 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
788 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
790 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
791 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
792 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
794 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
795 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
796 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
798 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
800 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
802 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
803 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
804 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
805 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
806 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
807 (notably embedded) targets.
809 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
811 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
812 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
813 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
814 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
816 * New command line option
818 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
820 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
822 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
823 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
824 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
825 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
826 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
827 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
828 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
829 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
830 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
831 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
833 * Changes in ARM configurations.
835 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
836 configuration is fully multi-arch.
838 * New native configurations
840 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
841 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
842 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
843 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
847 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
849 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
851 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
852 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
853 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
856 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
857 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
858 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
859 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
860 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
862 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
864 * REMOVED configurations and files
866 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
868 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
869 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
870 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
871 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
872 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
873 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
874 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
875 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
876 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
877 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
878 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
880 * Changes to command line processing
882 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
883 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
885 * Changes to key bindings
887 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
889 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
891 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
893 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
896 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
898 Numerous documentation fixes.
900 Numerous testsuite fixes.
902 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
904 * New native configurations
906 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
907 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
908 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
909 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
911 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
915 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
917 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
919 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
921 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
922 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
923 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
924 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
925 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
927 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
928 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
929 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
930 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
931 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
932 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
933 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
934 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
936 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
937 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
939 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
940 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
941 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
944 * REMOVED configurations and files
946 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
947 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
949 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
953 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
955 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
956 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
961 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
963 * The MI enabled by default.
965 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
966 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
967 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
968 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
969 which is now deprecated.
971 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
973 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
974 main features are supported:
976 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
978 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
981 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
983 - a Pascal expression parser.
985 However, some important features are not yet supported.
987 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
989 - there are some problems with boolean types;
991 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
992 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
994 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
996 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
998 * Changes in completion.
1000 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
1001 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
1002 users expect at the shell prompt.
1004 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
1005 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
1006 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
1007 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
1008 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
1009 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
1010 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
1012 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
1014 * New platform-independent commands:
1016 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
1017 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
1018 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
1020 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
1022 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
1023 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
1024 many threads as your system allows you to have.
1026 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
1028 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
1029 multi-threaded programs though.
1031 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
1033 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
1035 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
1036 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
1039 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
1041 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
1042 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
1043 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
1044 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
1045 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
1048 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
1049 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
1050 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
1052 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
1054 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
1055 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
1057 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
1058 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
1061 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
1062 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
1063 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
1064 a given linear address.
1066 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
1067 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
1068 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
1070 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
1072 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
1074 * Changes in documentation.
1076 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
1077 Documentation License.
1079 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1082 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
1084 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1087 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
1088 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
1089 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
1091 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
1093 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
1094 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
1095 contents of this file.
1099 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
1101 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
1103 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
1105 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
1106 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
1107 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
1108 greater level of detail.
1110 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
1112 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
1113 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
1114 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
1117 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
1119 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
1120 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
1121 machines ``out of the box''.
1123 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
1124 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
1125 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
1126 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
1127 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
1129 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
1130 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
1131 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
1132 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
1133 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
1135 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
1136 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
1139 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
1142 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
1143 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
1144 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
1145 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
1147 * New native configurations
1149 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
1150 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1154 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
1155 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
1156 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
1157 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1159 * OBSOLETE configurations
1161 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1162 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
1164 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
1167 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1168 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1169 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1170 be permanently REMOVED.
1172 * Gould support removed
1174 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
1176 * New features for SVR4
1178 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
1179 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
1180 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
1182 * Many C++ enhancements
1184 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
1185 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
1187 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
1189 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
1190 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
1191 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
1192 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
1194 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
1195 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
1197 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
1199 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
1200 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
1201 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
1203 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
1204 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1206 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
1208 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
1209 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
1210 include ``set remote P-packet''.
1212 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
1214 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
1215 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
1216 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
1218 * ``apropos'' command added.
1220 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
1221 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
1222 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
1226 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
1227 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
1228 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
1229 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
1230 enabled by configuring with:
1232 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
1234 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
1236 * New native configurations
1238 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
1239 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
1240 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
1244 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1245 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
1246 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1248 * OBSOLETE configurations
1250 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
1252 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1253 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1254 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1255 be permanently REMOVED.
1259 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
1260 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
1261 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
1262 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
1263 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
1264 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
1265 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
1270 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
1272 * set extension-language
1274 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
1275 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
1276 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
1277 set extension-language .c c++
1278 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
1279 and their associated languages.
1281 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
1283 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
1284 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
1285 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
1289 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
1290 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
1292 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
1293 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
1295 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
1296 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
1297 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
1298 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
1299 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
1300 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
1301 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
1302 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
1304 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
1305 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
1306 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
1307 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
1311 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
1312 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
1313 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
1314 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
1315 for xdb and dbx commands.
1319 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
1320 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
1321 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
1323 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
1324 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
1325 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
1327 * Debugging across forks
1329 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
1334 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
1335 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
1336 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
1338 * GDB remote protocol additions
1340 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
1341 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
1342 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
1343 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
1345 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
1346 full 64-bit address. The command
1348 set remoteaddresssize 32
1350 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
1351 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
1354 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
1355 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
1357 maint packet heythere
1359 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
1360 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
1363 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
1364 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
1365 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
1367 * Tracing can collect general expressions
1369 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
1370 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
1371 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
1373 * mask-address variable for Mips
1375 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
1376 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
1377 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
1379 * Higher serial baud rates
1381 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
1382 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
1383 to achieve all of these rates.)
1387 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
1388 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
1391 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
1393 * New native configurations
1395 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
1396 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
1397 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1398 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1399 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1400 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
1401 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
1405 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1406 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
1407 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1408 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
1409 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
1410 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
1411 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
1412 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
1413 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
1414 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1415 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
1417 * New debugging protocols
1419 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
1420 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
1421 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
1422 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1423 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1424 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1428 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
1429 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
1434 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
1435 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
1437 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
1439 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
1440 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
1441 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
1443 * Live range splitting
1445 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
1446 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
1447 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
1451 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
1452 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
1456 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
1457 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
1458 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
1463 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
1468 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
1469 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
1470 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
1471 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
1472 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
1473 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
1477 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
1478 the symbol at the specified address.
1482 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
1483 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
1484 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
1485 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
1486 file tracepoint.c for more details.
1490 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
1491 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
1492 of most MIPS variants.
1496 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
1497 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
1498 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
1502 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
1503 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
1504 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
1505 the possible architectures.
1507 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
1509 * New native configurations
1511 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
1512 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
1513 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
1514 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
1515 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1516 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
1520 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
1521 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1522 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
1523 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
1524 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
1526 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1530 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
1531 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
1532 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
1533 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
1534 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
1538 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
1540 * Windows 95/NT native
1542 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
1543 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
1544 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
1545 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
1546 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
1548 * dont-repeat command
1550 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
1551 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
1552 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
1553 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
1555 * Send break instead of ^C
1557 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
1558 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
1559 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
1561 * Remote protocol timeout
1563 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
1564 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
1565 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
1567 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
1569 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
1570 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
1571 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
1572 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
1573 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
1575 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
1576 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
1577 automatically on hpux10.
1579 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
1581 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
1583 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
1585 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
1586 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
1587 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
1588 every character. The default value is 1050.
1590 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
1592 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
1593 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
1594 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
1595 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
1596 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
1597 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
1599 * Speedups for remote debugging
1601 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
1602 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
1603 and more efficient S-record downloading.
1605 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
1607 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
1608 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
1610 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
1612 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
1614 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
1615 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
1617 * Remote targets use caching
1619 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
1620 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
1621 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
1622 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
1623 off' turns the the data cache off.
1625 * Remote targets may have threads
1627 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
1628 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
1629 gdb/remote.c for details.
1633 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
1634 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
1635 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
1636 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
1637 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
1638 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
1639 sequence is something like
1641 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
1643 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
1647 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
1648 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
1649 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
1650 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
1651 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
1652 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
1653 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
1654 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
1658 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
1659 but does simplify configuration and building.
1663 GDB now supports hpux10.
1665 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
1667 * New native configurations
1669 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
1670 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
1671 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
1672 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
1676 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1677 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
1678 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
1679 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
1682 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
1684 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
1685 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
1686 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
1687 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
1688 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
1690 * Arguments to user-defined commands
1692 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
1693 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
1696 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
1698 To execute the command use:
1701 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
1702 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
1703 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
1705 * New `if' and `while' commands
1707 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
1708 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
1709 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
1710 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
1711 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
1712 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
1713 if the expression is zero.
1715 * Fortran source language mode
1717 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
1718 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
1719 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
1720 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
1723 * Better HPUX support
1725 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
1726 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
1727 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
1728 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
1729 that behavior do the following before running the program:
1735 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
1736 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
1742 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
1743 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
1746 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
1747 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
1749 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
1751 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
1752 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
1753 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
1754 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
1755 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
1756 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
1758 * New DOS host serial code
1760 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
1761 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
1764 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
1766 * New "complete" command
1768 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
1769 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
1771 * Trailing space optional in prompt
1773 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
1774 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
1776 * Breakpoint hit counts
1778 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
1779 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
1780 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
1781 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
1782 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
1785 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
1787 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
1788 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
1789 arrays actually contain only short strings.
1791 * Shared library breakpoints
1793 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
1794 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
1796 * Hardware watchpoints
1798 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
1799 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
1801 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
1805 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
1806 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
1808 * Improved Irix 5 support
1810 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
1812 * Improved HPPA support
1814 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
1816 * New native configurations
1818 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
1819 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1820 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
1821 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
1825 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1826 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
1829 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
1831 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
1832 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
1836 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
1837 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
1839 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
1841 * Irix 5 is now supported
1845 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
1846 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
1847 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
1848 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
1849 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
1852 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
1854 * User visible changes:
1858 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
1859 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
1860 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
1861 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
1862 debugging info for the mips target).
1864 * DEC Alpha native support
1866 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
1867 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
1868 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
1869 Alpha-specific notes.
1871 * Preliminary thread implementation
1873 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
1875 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
1877 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
1878 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
1881 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
1883 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
1884 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
1885 call methods, ...etc.
1887 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
1889 * User visible changes:
1891 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
1892 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
1893 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
1894 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
1896 Filename completion now works.
1898 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
1899 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
1900 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
1902 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
1903 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
1904 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
1905 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
1906 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
1910 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
1911 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
1914 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
1918 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
1919 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
1920 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
1924 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
1925 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
1926 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
1927 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
1928 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
1932 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
1933 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
1934 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
1936 * New targets supported
1938 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1939 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1940 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
1941 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1942 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
1944 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
1945 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
1946 GO32 memory extender.
1948 * New remote protocols
1950 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
1952 * New source languages supported
1954 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
1955 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
1956 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
1959 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
1961 * HP Precision Architecture supported
1963 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
1964 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
1965 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
1966 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
1967 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
1968 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
1970 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
1972 * Faster and better demangling
1974 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
1975 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
1976 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
1977 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
1978 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
1979 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
1982 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
1983 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
1984 compiler does not actually implement.
1986 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
1988 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
1989 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
1990 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
1991 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
1992 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
1993 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
1996 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
1997 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
1999 * Improved configure script
2001 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
2002 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
2003 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
2004 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
2006 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
2007 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
2008 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
2009 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
2010 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
2011 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
2013 * Documentation improvements
2015 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
2016 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
2017 before submitting changes.
2019 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
2020 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
2021 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
2022 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
2023 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
2025 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
2026 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
2027 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
2028 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
2029 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
2030 around this problem.
2034 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
2035 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
2036 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
2039 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
2040 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
2042 * New native hosts supported
2044 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
2045 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
2047 * New targets supported
2049 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
2051 * New file formats supported
2053 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
2054 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
2058 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
2060 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
2061 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
2063 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
2064 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
2065 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
2067 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
2068 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
2070 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
2071 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
2072 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
2075 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
2076 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
2077 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
2078 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
2079 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
2081 * Internal improvements
2083 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
2084 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
2086 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
2087 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
2088 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
2089 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
2090 shared code that handles any of them.
2092 * New command line options
2094 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
2098 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
2099 General Public License.
2101 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
2103 * Host/native/target split
2105 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
2106 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
2107 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
2108 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
2109 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
2111 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
2112 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
2113 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
2114 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
2115 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
2116 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
2117 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
2119 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
2120 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
2121 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
2123 * New hosts supported
2125 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
2126 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2127 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
2129 * New targets supported
2131 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
2132 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
2134 * New native hosts supported
2136 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2137 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
2138 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
2140 * New file formats supported
2142 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
2143 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
2144 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
2148 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
2149 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
2150 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
2152 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
2154 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
2155 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
2156 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
2157 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
2161 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
2162 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
2163 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
2165 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
2169 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
2170 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
2173 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
2174 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
2176 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
2177 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
2178 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
2179 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
2180 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
2181 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
2183 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
2184 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
2185 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
2186 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
2190 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
2191 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
2192 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
2193 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
2194 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
2196 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
2197 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
2198 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
2199 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
2203 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
2204 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
2205 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
2206 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
2207 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
2208 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
2209 each instruction being stepped through.
2211 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
2212 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
2214 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
2215 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
2216 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
2217 processor with a serial port.
2221 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
2222 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
2223 supported, and what files each one uses.
2227 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
2228 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
2229 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
2230 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
2232 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
2233 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
2234 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
2235 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
2239 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
2240 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
2241 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
2242 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
2243 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
2244 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
2246 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
2249 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
2251 * Better support for C++ function names
2253 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
2254 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
2255 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
2256 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
2257 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
2259 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
2260 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
2261 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
2262 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
2263 for the list of formats.
2265 * G++ symbol mangling problem
2267 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
2268 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
2269 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
2270 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
2271 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
2272 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
2275 * New 'maintenance' command
2277 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
2278 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
2279 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
2281 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
2282 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
2283 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
2284 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
2285 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
2286 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
2288 The following commands are new:
2290 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
2291 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
2292 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
2294 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
2296 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
2297 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
2298 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
2299 read after argv processing.
2301 * New hosts supported
2303 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
2305 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
2307 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
2308 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
2309 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
2310 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
2311 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
2314 * New targets supported
2316 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2318 * More smarts about finding #include files
2320 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
2321 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
2322 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
2323 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
2324 the one that contains your sources.
2326 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
2327 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
2328 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
2330 * Interesting infernals change
2332 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
2333 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
2334 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
2335 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
2337 * Bug fixes (of course!)
2339 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
2340 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
2341 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
2343 See the ChangeLog for details.
2345 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
2347 * New machines supported (host and target)
2349 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
2351 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2353 * New malloc package
2355 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
2356 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
2357 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
2358 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
2359 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
2360 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
2364 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
2365 'help info proc' for details.
2367 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
2369 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
2370 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
2373 * File name changes for MS-DOS
2375 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
2376 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
2377 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
2378 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
2379 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
2380 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
2382 * Cross byte order fixes
2384 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
2385 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
2387 * New -mapped and -readnow options
2389 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
2390 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
2391 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
2392 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
2393 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
2394 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
2395 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
2396 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
2397 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
2398 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
2400 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
2401 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
2402 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
2403 slower, but makes future operations faster.
2405 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
2406 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
2407 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
2410 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
2412 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
2413 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
2414 shared across multiple host platforms.
2416 * longjmp() handling
2418 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
2419 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
2420 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
2421 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
2425 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
2426 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
2431 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
2432 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
2433 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
2435 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
2437 * New machines supported (host and target)
2439 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2441 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
2442 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
2444 * New machines supported (target)
2446 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2450 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
2451 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
2452 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
2454 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
2455 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
2456 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
2457 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
2458 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
2461 * New features for SVR4
2463 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
2464 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
2465 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
2467 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
2468 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
2469 it prints the address mappings of the process.
2471 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
2472 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
2474 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
2476 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
2477 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
2478 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
2479 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
2480 same code linked statically.
2484 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
2485 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
2486 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
2487 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
2488 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
2489 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
2493 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2494 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2495 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2498 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
2500 * New machines supported (host and target)
2502 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
2503 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
2504 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2506 * Almost SCO Unix support
2508 We had hoped to support:
2509 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2510 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
2511 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
2512 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
2514 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
2516 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
2517 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
2518 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
2519 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
2524 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
2525 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
2526 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
2530 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2531 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2532 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2534 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
2536 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
2537 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
2538 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
2540 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
2541 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
2542 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
2543 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
2546 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
2547 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
2548 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
2549 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
2552 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
2553 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
2556 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
2557 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
2558 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
2561 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
2563 * Improved configuration
2565 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
2566 Porting BFD is simpler.
2570 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
2571 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
2572 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
2573 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
2577 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
2579 * New host supported (not target)
2581 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
2584 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
2586 * Multiple source language support
2588 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
2589 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
2590 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
2591 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
2592 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
2593 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
2597 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
2598 currently under development at the State University of New York at
2599 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
2600 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
2602 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
2603 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
2604 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
2606 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
2607 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
2611 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
2612 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
2613 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
2614 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
2617 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
2619 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
2620 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
2621 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
2622 examining core files.
2626 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
2629 * New machines supported (host and target)
2631 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2632 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
2633 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
2635 * New hosts supported (not targets)
2637 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
2639 * New targets supported (not hosts)
2641 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2642 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2643 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
2645 * New remote interfaces
2651 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
2655 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
2657 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
2658 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
2659 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
2660 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
2661 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
2662 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
2663 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
2664 stub on the target system.
2666 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
2668 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
2669 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
2670 object file types such as a.out and coff.
2672 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
2673 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
2676 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
2678 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
2679 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
2681 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
2682 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
2683 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
2685 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
2686 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
2687 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
2688 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
2690 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
2691 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
2692 it is already running. Default is ON.
2694 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
2695 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
2696 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
2697 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
2700 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
2701 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
2702 or the value of the environment variable
2705 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
2706 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
2709 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
2710 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
2711 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
2713 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
2714 history expansion will be performed on
2715 command line input. The default is OFF.
2717 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
2718 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
2719 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
2721 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
2722 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
2723 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2726 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
2727 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
2728 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2731 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
2732 ``set width'' instead.
2734 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
2735 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
2736 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
2737 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
2739 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
2742 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
2745 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
2748 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
2751 * Support for Epoch Environment.
2753 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
2754 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
2755 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
2759 * Support for Shared Libraries
2761 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
2762 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
2763 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
2764 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
2765 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
2766 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
2767 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
2768 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
2770 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
2771 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
2772 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
2774 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
2779 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
2780 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
2781 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
2782 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
2783 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
2784 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
2786 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
2788 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
2790 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2791 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2792 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2795 * C++ multiple inheritance
2797 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
2800 * C++ exception handling
2802 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
2803 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
2804 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
2807 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
2808 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
2809 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
2811 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
2812 current stack frame.
2815 * Minor command changes
2817 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
2818 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
2819 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
2821 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
2822 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
2823 frames without printing.
2825 * New directory command
2827 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
2828 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
2829 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
2830 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
2831 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
2833 * Configuring GDB for compilation
2835 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
2838 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
2839 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
2840 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
2841 where the program that you are debugging will run.
projects / deliverable / binutils-gdb.git / blob