1 What has changed since GDB-3.5?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
6 * Irix 5 is now supported
10 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
11 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
12 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
13 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
14 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
17 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
19 * User visible changes:
23 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
24 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
25 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
26 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
27 debugging info for the mips target).
29 * DEC Alpha native support
31 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
32 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
33 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
36 * Preliminary thread implementation
38 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
40 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
42 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
43 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
46 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
48 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
49 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
52 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
54 * User visible changes:
56 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
57 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
58 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
59 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
61 Filename completion now works.
63 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
64 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
65 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
67 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
68 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
69 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
70 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
71 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
75 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
76 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
79 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
83 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
84 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
85 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
89 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
90 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
91 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
92 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
93 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
97 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
98 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
99 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
101 * New targets supported
103 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
104 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
105 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
106 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
107 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
109 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
110 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
111 GO32 memory extender.
113 * New remote protocols
115 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
117 * New source languages supported
119 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
120 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
121 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
124 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
126 * HP Precision Architecture supported
128 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
129 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
130 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
131 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
132 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
133 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
135 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
137 * Faster and better demangling
139 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
140 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
141 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
142 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
143 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
144 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
147 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
148 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
149 compiler does not actually implement.
151 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
153 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
154 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
155 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
156 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
157 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
158 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
161 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
162 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
164 * Improved configure script
166 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
167 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
168 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
169 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
171 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
172 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
173 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
174 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
175 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
176 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
178 * Documentation improvements
180 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
181 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
182 before submitting changes.
184 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
185 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
186 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
187 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
188 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
190 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
191 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
192 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
193 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
194 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
199 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
200 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
201 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
204 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
205 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
207 * New native hosts supported
209 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
210 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
212 * New targets supported
214 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
216 * New file formats supported
218 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
219 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
223 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
225 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
226 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
228 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
229 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
230 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
232 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
233 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
235 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
236 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
237 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
240 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
241 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
242 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
243 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
244 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
246 * Internal improvements
248 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
249 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
251 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
252 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
253 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
254 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
255 shared code that handles any of them.
257 * New command line options
259 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
263 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
264 General Public License.
266 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
268 * Host/native/target split
270 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
271 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
272 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
273 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
274 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
276 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
277 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
278 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
279 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
280 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
281 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
282 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
284 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
285 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
286 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
288 * New hosts supported
290 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
291 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
292 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
294 * New targets supported
296 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
297 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
299 * New native hosts supported
301 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
302 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
303 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
305 * New file formats supported
307 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
308 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
309 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
313 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
314 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
315 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
317 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
319 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
320 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
321 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
322 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
326 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
327 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
328 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
330 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
334 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
335 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
338 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
339 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
341 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
342 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
343 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
344 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
345 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
346 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
348 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
349 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
350 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
351 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
355 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
356 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
357 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
358 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
359 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
361 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
362 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
363 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
364 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
368 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
369 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
370 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
371 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
372 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
373 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
374 each instruction being stepped through.
376 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
377 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
379 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
380 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
381 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
382 processor with a serial port.
386 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
387 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
388 supported, and what files each one uses.
392 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
393 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
394 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
395 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
397 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
398 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
399 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
400 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
404 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
405 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
406 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
407 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
408 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
409 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
411 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
414 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
416 * Better support for C++ function names
418 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
419 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
420 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
421 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
422 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
424 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
425 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
426 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
427 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
428 for the list of formats.
430 * G++ symbol mangling problem
432 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
433 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
434 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
435 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
436 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
437 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
440 * New 'maintenance' command
442 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
443 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
444 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
446 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
447 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
448 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
449 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
450 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
451 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
453 The following commands are new:
455 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
456 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
457 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
459 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
461 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
462 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
463 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
464 read after argv processing.
466 * New hosts supported
468 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
470 Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
472 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
473 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
474 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
475 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
476 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
479 * New targets supported
481 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
483 * More smarts about finding #include files
485 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
486 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
487 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
488 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
489 the one that contains your sources.
491 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
492 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
493 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
495 * Interesting infernals change
497 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
498 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
499 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
500 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
502 * Bug fixes (of course!)
504 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
505 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
506 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
508 See the ChangeLog for details.
510 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
512 * New machines supported (host and target)
514 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
516 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
520 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
521 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
522 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
523 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
524 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
525 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
529 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
530 'help info proc' for details.
532 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
534 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
535 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
538 * File name changes for MS-DOS
540 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
541 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
542 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
543 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
544 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
545 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
547 * Cross byte order fixes
549 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
550 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
552 * New -mapped and -readnow options
554 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
555 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
556 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
557 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
558 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
559 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
560 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
561 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
562 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
563 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
565 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
566 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
567 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
568 slower, but makes future operations faster.
570 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
571 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
572 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
575 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
577 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
578 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
579 shared across multiple host platforms.
583 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
584 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
585 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
586 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
590 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
591 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
596 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
597 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
598 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
600 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
602 * New machines supported (host and target)
604 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
606 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
607 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
609 * New machines supported (target)
611 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
615 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
616 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
617 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
619 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
620 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
621 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
622 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
623 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
626 * New features for SVR4
628 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
629 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
630 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
632 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
633 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
634 it prints the address mappings of the process.
636 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
637 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
639 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
641 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
642 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
643 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
644 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
645 same code linked statically.
649 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
650 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
651 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
652 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
653 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
654 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
658 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
659 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
660 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
663 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
665 * New machines supported (host and target)
667 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
668 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
669 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
671 * Almost SCO Unix support
673 We had hoped to support:
674 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
675 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
676 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
677 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
679 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
681 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
682 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
683 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
684 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
689 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
690 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
691 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
695 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
696 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
697 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
699 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
701 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
702 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
703 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
705 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
706 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
707 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
708 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
711 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
712 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
713 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
714 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
717 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
718 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
721 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
722 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
723 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
726 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
728 * Improved configuration
730 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
731 Porting BFD is simpler.
735 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
736 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
737 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
738 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
742 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
744 * New host supported (not target)
746 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
749 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
751 * Multiple source language support
753 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
754 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
755 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
756 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
757 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
758 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
762 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
763 currently under development at the State University of New York at
764 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
765 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
767 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
768 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
769 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
771 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
772 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
776 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
777 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
778 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
779 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
782 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
784 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
785 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
786 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
787 examining core files.
791 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
794 * New machines supported (host and target)
796 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
797 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
798 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
800 * New hosts supported (not targets)
802 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
804 * New targets supported (not hosts)
806 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
807 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
808 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
810 * New remote interfaces
816 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
820 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
822 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
823 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
824 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
825 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
826 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
827 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
828 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
829 stub on the target system.
831 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
833 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
834 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
835 object file types such as a.out and coff.
837 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
838 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
841 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
843 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
844 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
846 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
847 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
848 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
850 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
851 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
852 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
853 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
855 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
856 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
857 it is already running. Default is ON.
859 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
860 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
861 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
862 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
865 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
866 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
867 or the value of the environment variable
870 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
871 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
874 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
875 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
876 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
878 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
879 history expansion will be performed on
880 command line input. The default is OFF.
882 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
883 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
884 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
886 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
887 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
888 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
891 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
892 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
893 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
896 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
897 ``set width'' instead.
899 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
900 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
901 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
902 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
904 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
907 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
910 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
913 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
916 * Support for Epoch Environment.
918 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
919 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
920 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
924 * Support for Shared Libraries
926 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
927 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
928 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
929 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
930 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
931 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
932 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
933 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
935 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
936 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
937 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
939 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
944 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
945 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
946 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
947 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
948 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
949 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
951 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
953 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
955 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
956 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
957 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
960 * C++ multiple inheritance
962 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
965 * C++ exception handling
967 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
968 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
969 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
972 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
973 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
974 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
976 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
980 * Minor command changes
982 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
983 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
984 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
986 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
987 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
988 frames without printing.
990 * New directory command
992 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
993 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
994 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
995 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
996 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
998 * Configuring GDB for compilation
1000 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
1003 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
1004 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
1005 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
1006 where the program that you are debugging will run.
projects / deliverable / binutils-gdb.git / blob