1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 6.8
6 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
7 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
8 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
9 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
11 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
12 now complete on file names.
14 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
15 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
16 For instance, consider:
18 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
19 # struct example variable;
22 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
23 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
25 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
26 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
32 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
35 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
36 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
37 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
40 Obtains additional operating system information
42 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
44 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
45 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
46 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
48 * The "disassemble" command now supports an optional /m modifier to print mixed
51 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
52 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
54 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
55 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
56 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
58 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
59 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
61 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
63 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
65 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
66 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
68 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
69 list of section offsets.
71 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
72 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
75 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
76 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
77 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
79 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
81 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
82 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
84 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
85 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
86 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
88 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
89 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
91 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
96 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
97 available is determined at configure time.
101 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
105 Print the list of Ada tasks.
107 Print detailed information about task number N.
109 Print the task number of the current task.
111 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
115 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
117 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
119 maint set python print-stack
120 maint show python print-stack
121 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
124 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
126 set print symbol-loading
127 show print symbol-loading
128 Control printing of symbol loading messages.
132 Display timestamps with GDB debugging output.
137 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
139 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
140 show multiple-symbols
141 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
142 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
143 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
145 set breakpoint always-inserted
146 show breakpoint always-inserted
147 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
148 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
149 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
151 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
152 show arm fallback-mode
153 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
155 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
156 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
157 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
158 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
160 set disable-randomization
161 show disable-randomization
162 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
163 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
164 multiple debugging sessions.
167 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
168 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
169 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
170 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
175 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
178 * New native configurations
180 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
183 Show operating system information about processes.
187 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
193 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
195 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
197 * New native configurations
199 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
200 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
204 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
205 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
207 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
209 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
210 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
211 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
212 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
214 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
215 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
217 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
220 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
221 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
222 and in inlined functions.
224 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
225 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
226 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
228 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
230 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
231 registers on PowerPC targets.
233 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
234 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
236 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
237 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
239 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
240 extended-remote mode.
242 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
243 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
244 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
245 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
247 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
248 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
249 target architectures.
251 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
252 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
253 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
254 stored in two consecutive float registers.
256 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
259 * Improved support for debugging Ada
260 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
262 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
263 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
264 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
265 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
267 - Improved command completion in Ada
270 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
275 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
276 show print frame-arguments
277 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
278 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
283 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
290 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
299 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
302 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
306 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
308 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
310 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
311 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
312 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
314 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
315 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
316 -Bsymbolic linker option.
318 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
319 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
322 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
323 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
325 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
326 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
328 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
330 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
331 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
332 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
334 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
335 automatically displayed as character or string data.
337 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
338 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
341 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
342 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
343 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
345 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
348 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
349 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
350 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
352 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
354 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
356 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
357 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
358 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
360 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
361 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
363 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
364 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
365 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
366 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
367 Windows and SymbianOS).
369 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
370 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
372 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
373 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
379 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
380 when debugging using remote targets.
382 set mem inaccessible-by-default
383 show mem inaccessible-by-default
384 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
385 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
386 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
387 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
388 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
390 set breakpoint auto-hw
391 show breakpoint auto-hw
392 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
393 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
394 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
395 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
396 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
397 including "next" and "finish".
400 catch exception unhandled
401 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
404 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
408 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
409 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
410 an alias to "set sysroot".
413 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
414 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
417 * New native configurations
419 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
424 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
425 not query the target for its built-in description.
429 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
430 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
431 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
436 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
437 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
440 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
445 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
446 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
448 qXfer:libraries:read:
449 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
450 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
451 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
452 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
456 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
465 i[34567]86-*-netware*
466 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
467 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
469 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
472 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
473 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
482 * Other removed features
489 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
496 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
501 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
502 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
507 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
508 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
510 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
512 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
513 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
514 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
515 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
519 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
520 in debugging information.
524 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
525 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
527 set mips stack-arg-size
528 set mips saved-gpreg-size
530 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
532 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
537 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
539 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
540 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
541 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
543 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
544 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
547 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
548 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
550 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
551 stub provides the required support.
553 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
554 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
559 unset substitute-path
561 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
562 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
563 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
564 between compilation and debugging.
568 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
569 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
570 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
574 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
576 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
577 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
579 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
584 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
585 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
586 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
587 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
591 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
592 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
594 qXfer:memory-map:read:
595 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
596 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
601 Erase and program a flash memory device.
603 * Removed remote packets
606 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
607 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
609 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
613 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
615 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
619 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
620 only if it doesn't already have a value.
622 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
624 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
626 restart <n> Return the program state to a
627 previously saved state.
629 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
631 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
633 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
634 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
636 info forks List forks of the user program that
637 are available to be debugged.
639 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
640 forks of the user program that are
641 available to be debugged.
643 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
644 that are available to be debugged (and
645 kill the forked process).
647 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
648 that are available to be debugged (and
649 allow the process to continue).
653 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
655 * Improved Windows host support
657 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
658 native console support, and remote communications using either
659 network sockets or serial ports.
661 * Improved Modula-2 language support
663 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
664 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
665 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
666 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
667 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
668 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
672 The ARM rdi-share module.
674 The Netware NLM debug server.
676 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
678 * New native configurations
680 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
681 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
685 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
687 * New command line options
689 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
690 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
691 the child (debugged) program exited with.
692 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
693 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
694 specified multiple times and in conjunction
695 with the --command (-x) option.
697 * Deprecated commands removed
699 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
703 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
704 othernames set arm disassembler
705 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
706 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
707 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
710 * New BSD user-level threads support
712 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
713 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
716 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
717 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
718 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
720 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
721 are not yet supported.
723 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
724 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
726 * REMOVED configurations and files
728 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
729 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
730 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
732 * New "set print array-indexes" command
734 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
735 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
738 * VAX floating point support
740 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
742 * User-defined command support
744 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
745 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
746 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
748 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
750 * New command line option
752 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
755 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
757 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
758 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
759 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
760 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
761 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
763 * Internationalization
765 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
766 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
767 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
771 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
772 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
773 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
775 * New native configurations
777 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
781 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
782 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
784 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
786 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
787 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
788 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
791 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
792 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
793 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
805 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
806 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
808 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
810 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
811 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
812 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
822 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
824 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
826 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
827 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
830 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
832 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
833 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
834 IRIX long double values).
838 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
839 command. This problem has been fixed.
841 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
843 * Fix for ``many threads''
845 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
846 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
849 ptrace: No such process.
850 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
852 This problem has been fixed.
854 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
856 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
859 * New ``start'' command.
861 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
863 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
865 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
866 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
867 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
869 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
870 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
871 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
872 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
873 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
874 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
875 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
876 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
877 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
879 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
881 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
882 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
883 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
884 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
885 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
887 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
888 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
889 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
891 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
893 * New native configurations
895 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
896 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
897 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
898 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
899 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
900 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
901 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
903 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
905 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
906 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
907 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
908 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
909 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
910 work, was also included.
912 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
913 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
923 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
924 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
926 * REMOVED configurations and files
928 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
929 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
930 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
931 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
932 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
933 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
934 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
935 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
936 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
938 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
940 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
942 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
944 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
945 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
946 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
947 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
950 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
952 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
953 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
954 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
955 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
956 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
957 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
960 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
962 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
964 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
965 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
966 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
968 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
970 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
971 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
973 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
975 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
976 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
977 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
979 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
981 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
982 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
984 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
986 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
987 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
988 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
990 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
992 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
993 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
994 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
996 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
998 * Removed --with-mmalloc
1000 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
1001 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
1003 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
1005 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
1006 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
1007 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
1008 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
1010 * Revised SPARC target
1012 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
1013 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
1014 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
1015 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
1016 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
1020 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
1021 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
1022 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
1025 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
1027 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
1028 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
1031 * C++ nested types and namespaces
1033 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
1034 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
1035 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
1036 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
1037 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
1038 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
1039 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
1040 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
1041 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
1043 * New native configurations
1045 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
1046 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
1047 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
1048 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
1049 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
1051 * New debugging protocols
1053 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
1055 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
1057 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
1058 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
1059 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
1061 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1063 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1064 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1065 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1066 permanently REMOVED.
1068 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
1069 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
1070 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
1071 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
1072 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
1073 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
1074 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
1075 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
1076 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
1077 sonymips mips-sony-*
1078 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
1080 * REMOVED configurations and files
1082 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1083 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
1084 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1085 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1086 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1087 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
1088 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1089 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
1090 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
1091 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
1092 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
1093 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
1094 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
1095 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
1096 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
1097 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1098 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
1100 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
1104 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
1105 integrated into GDB.
1107 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
1109 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
1110 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
1111 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
1114 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
1115 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
1116 DWARF 2 CFI support.
1120 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
1121 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
1122 remote protocol documentation for details.
1124 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
1126 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
1127 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
1128 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
1131 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
1133 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
1134 per-thread variables.
1136 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
1138 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
1139 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
1141 * Separate debug info.
1143 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
1144 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
1145 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
1146 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
1147 and optional debug files.
1149 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
1151 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
1152 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
1155 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
1156 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
1160 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
1161 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
1162 considered "useable".
1164 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
1166 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
1167 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
1170 * GDB supports logging output to a file
1172 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
1173 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
1175 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
1177 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
1178 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
1181 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
1183 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
1184 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
1188 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
1189 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
1190 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
1191 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
1192 data, for more informative profiling results.
1194 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
1196 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
1197 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
1198 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
1200 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
1203 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
1204 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
1205 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
1206 in a subsequent -var-update.
1208 * New native configurations.
1210 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1212 * Multi-arched targets.
1214 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
1215 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
1217 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1219 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1220 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1221 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1222 permanently REMOVED.
1224 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1225 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1226 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1227 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
1228 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1229 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
1230 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
1231 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
1232 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
1233 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
1234 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1235 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
1237 * REMOVED configurations and files
1240 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1241 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
1242 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1243 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1244 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
1245 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1247 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
1248 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1249 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1250 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1251 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1252 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1254 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
1256 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
1257 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
1258 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
1259 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
1260 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
1262 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
1264 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
1266 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
1267 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
1268 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
1269 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
1270 shared libs like mad''.
1272 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
1274 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
1275 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
1276 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
1277 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
1279 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
1281 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
1282 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
1285 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
1286 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
1288 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
1289 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
1291 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
1292 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
1293 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
1294 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
1296 * Multi-arched targets.
1298 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
1299 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
1301 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
1302 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
1303 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
1307 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
1310 * New native configurations
1312 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
1313 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
1314 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
1315 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
1317 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1319 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1320 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1321 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1322 permanently REMOVED.
1324 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1325 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1326 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
1327 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1328 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1329 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1330 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1331 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1332 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
1333 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1335 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
1336 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1338 * OBSOLETE languages
1340 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
1342 * REMOVED configurations and files
1344 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1345 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1346 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1347 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1348 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1350 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
1352 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
1354 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
1355 commands. The default is 1024.
1357 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
1359 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
1361 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
1363 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
1364 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
1365 from a file into memory (restore).
1367 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
1369 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
1370 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
1371 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
1373 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
1381 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
1382 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
1383 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
1385 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
1386 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
1387 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
1389 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
1390 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
1391 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
1393 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
1394 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
1395 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
1397 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
1399 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
1401 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
1402 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
1403 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
1404 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
1405 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
1406 (notably embedded) targets.
1408 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
1410 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
1411 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
1412 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
1413 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
1415 * New command line option
1417 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
1419 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
1421 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
1422 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
1423 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
1424 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
1425 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
1426 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
1427 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
1428 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
1429 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
1430 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
1432 * Changes in ARM configurations.
1434 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
1435 configuration is fully multi-arch.
1437 * New native configurations
1439 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
1440 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
1441 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
1442 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
1446 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
1448 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1450 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1451 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1452 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1453 permanently REMOVED.
1455 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1456 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1457 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1458 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1459 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1461 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
1463 * REMOVED configurations and files
1465 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1467 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1468 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1469 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
1470 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1471 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1472 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
1473 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
1474 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1475 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1476 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
1477 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
1479 * Changes to command line processing
1481 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
1482 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
1484 * Changes to key bindings
1486 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
1488 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
1490 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
1492 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
1495 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
1497 Numerous documentation fixes.
1499 Numerous testsuite fixes.
1501 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
1503 * New native configurations
1505 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
1506 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
1507 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
1508 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1509 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
1510 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
1514 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
1516 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
1518 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1520 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
1521 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1522 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1523 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
1524 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1526 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1527 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1528 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1529 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
1530 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
1531 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1532 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
1533 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
1535 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
1536 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
1538 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1539 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1540 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1541 permanently REMOVED.
1543 * REMOVED configurations and files
1545 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1546 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
1548 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
1552 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
1554 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
1555 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
1560 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
1562 * The MI enabled by default.
1564 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
1565 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
1566 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
1567 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
1568 which is now deprecated.
1570 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
1572 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
1573 main features are supported:
1575 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
1577 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
1580 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
1582 - a Pascal expression parser.
1584 However, some important features are not yet supported.
1586 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
1588 - there are some problems with boolean types;
1590 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
1591 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
1593 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
1595 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
1597 * Changes in completion.
1599 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
1600 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
1601 users expect at the shell prompt.
1603 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
1604 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
1605 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
1606 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
1607 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
1608 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
1609 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
1611 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
1613 * New platform-independent commands:
1615 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
1616 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
1617 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
1619 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
1621 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
1622 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
1623 many threads as your system allows you to have.
1625 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
1627 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
1628 multi-threaded programs though.
1630 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
1632 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
1634 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
1635 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
1638 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
1640 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
1641 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
1642 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
1643 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
1644 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
1647 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
1648 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
1649 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
1651 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
1653 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
1654 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
1656 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
1657 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
1660 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
1661 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
1662 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
1663 a given linear address.
1665 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
1666 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
1667 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
1669 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
1671 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
1673 * Changes in documentation.
1675 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
1676 Documentation License.
1678 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1681 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
1683 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1686 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
1687 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
1688 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
1690 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
1692 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
1693 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
1694 contents of this file.
1698 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
1700 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
1702 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
1704 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
1705 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
1706 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
1707 greater level of detail.
1709 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
1711 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
1712 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
1713 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
1716 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
1718 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
1719 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
1720 machines ``out of the box''.
1722 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
1723 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
1724 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
1725 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
1726 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
1728 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
1729 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
1730 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
1731 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
1732 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
1734 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
1735 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
1738 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
1741 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
1742 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
1743 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
1744 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
1746 * New native configurations
1748 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
1749 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1753 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
1754 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
1755 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
1756 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1758 * OBSOLETE configurations
1760 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1761 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
1763 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
1766 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1767 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1768 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1769 be permanently REMOVED.
1771 * Gould support removed
1773 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
1775 * New features for SVR4
1777 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
1778 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
1779 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
1781 * Many C++ enhancements
1783 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
1784 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
1786 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
1788 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
1789 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
1790 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
1791 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
1793 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
1794 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
1796 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
1798 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
1799 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
1800 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
1802 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
1803 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1805 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
1807 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
1808 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
1809 include ``set remote P-packet''.
1811 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
1813 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
1814 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
1815 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
1817 * ``apropos'' command added.
1819 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
1820 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
1821 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
1825 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
1826 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
1827 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
1828 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
1829 enabled by configuring with:
1831 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
1833 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
1835 * New native configurations
1837 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
1838 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
1839 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
1843 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1844 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
1845 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1847 * OBSOLETE configurations
1849 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
1851 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1852 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1853 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1854 be permanently REMOVED.
1858 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
1859 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
1860 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
1861 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
1862 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
1863 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
1864 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
1869 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
1871 * set extension-language
1873 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
1874 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
1875 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
1876 set extension-language .c c++
1877 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
1878 and their associated languages.
1880 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
1882 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
1883 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
1884 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
1888 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
1889 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
1891 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
1892 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
1894 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
1895 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
1896 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
1897 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
1898 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
1899 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
1900 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
1901 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
1903 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
1904 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
1905 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
1906 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
1910 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
1911 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
1912 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
1913 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
1914 for xdb and dbx commands.
1918 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
1919 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
1920 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
1922 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
1923 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
1924 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
1926 * Debugging across forks
1928 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
1933 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
1934 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
1935 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
1937 * GDB remote protocol additions
1939 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
1940 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
1941 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
1942 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
1944 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
1945 full 64-bit address. The command
1947 set remoteaddresssize 32
1949 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
1950 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
1953 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
1954 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
1956 maint packet heythere
1958 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
1959 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
1962 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
1963 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
1964 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
1966 * Tracing can collect general expressions
1968 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
1969 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
1970 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
1972 * mask-address variable for Mips
1974 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
1975 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
1976 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
1978 * Higher serial baud rates
1980 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
1981 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
1982 to achieve all of these rates.)
1986 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
1987 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
1990 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
1992 * New native configurations
1994 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
1995 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
1996 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1997 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1998 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1999 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
2000 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
2004 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2005 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
2006 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2007 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
2008 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
2009 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
2010 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
2011 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
2012 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
2013 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2014 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
2016 * New debugging protocols
2018 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
2019 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
2020 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
2021 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2022 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2023 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2027 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
2028 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
2033 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
2034 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
2036 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
2038 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
2039 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
2040 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
2042 * Live range splitting
2044 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
2045 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
2046 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
2050 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
2051 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
2055 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
2056 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
2057 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
2062 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
2067 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
2068 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
2069 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
2070 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
2071 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
2072 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
2076 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
2077 the symbol at the specified address.
2081 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
2082 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
2083 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
2084 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
2085 file tracepoint.c for more details.
2089 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
2090 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
2091 of most MIPS variants.
2095 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
2096 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
2097 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
2101 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
2102 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
2103 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
2104 the possible architectures.
2106 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
2108 * New native configurations
2110 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
2111 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
2112 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
2113 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
2114 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2115 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
2119 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
2120 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
2121 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
2122 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
2123 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
2125 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2129 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
2130 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
2131 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
2132 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
2133 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
2137 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
2139 * Windows 95/NT native
2141 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
2142 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
2143 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
2144 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
2145 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
2147 * dont-repeat command
2149 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
2150 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
2151 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
2152 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
2154 * Send break instead of ^C
2156 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
2157 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
2158 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
2160 * Remote protocol timeout
2162 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
2163 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
2164 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
2166 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
2168 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
2169 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
2170 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
2171 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
2172 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
2174 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
2175 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
2176 automatically on hpux10.
2178 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
2180 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
2182 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
2184 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
2185 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
2186 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
2187 every character. The default value is 1050.
2189 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
2191 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
2192 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
2193 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
2194 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
2195 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
2196 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
2198 * Speedups for remote debugging
2200 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
2201 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
2202 and more efficient S-record downloading.
2204 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
2206 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
2207 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
2209 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
2211 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
2213 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
2214 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
2216 * Remote targets use caching
2218 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
2219 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
2220 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
2221 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
2222 off' turns the the data cache off.
2224 * Remote targets may have threads
2226 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
2227 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
2228 gdb/remote.c for details.
2232 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
2233 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
2234 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
2235 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
2236 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
2237 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
2238 sequence is something like
2240 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
2242 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
2246 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
2247 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
2248 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
2249 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
2250 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
2251 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
2252 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
2253 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
2257 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
2258 but does simplify configuration and building.
2262 GDB now supports hpux10.
2264 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
2266 * New native configurations
2268 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
2269 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
2270 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
2271 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
2275 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2276 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
2277 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
2278 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
2281 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
2283 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
2284 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
2285 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
2286 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
2287 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
2289 * Arguments to user-defined commands
2291 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
2292 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
2295 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
2297 To execute the command use:
2300 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
2301 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
2302 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
2304 * New `if' and `while' commands
2306 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
2307 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
2308 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
2309 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
2310 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
2311 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
2312 if the expression is zero.
2314 * Fortran source language mode
2316 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
2317 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
2318 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
2319 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
2322 * Better HPUX support
2324 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
2325 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
2326 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
2327 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
2328 that behavior do the following before running the program:
2334 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
2335 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
2341 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
2342 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
2345 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
2346 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
2348 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
2350 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
2351 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
2352 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
2353 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
2354 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
2355 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
2357 * New DOS host serial code
2359 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
2360 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
2363 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
2365 * New "complete" command
2367 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
2368 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
2370 * Trailing space optional in prompt
2372 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
2373 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
2375 * Breakpoint hit counts
2377 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
2378 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
2379 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
2380 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
2381 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
2384 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
2386 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
2387 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
2388 arrays actually contain only short strings.
2390 * Shared library breakpoints
2392 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
2393 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
2395 * Hardware watchpoints
2397 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
2398 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
2400 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
2404 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
2405 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
2407 * Improved Irix 5 support
2409 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
2411 * Improved HPPA support
2413 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
2415 * New native configurations
2417 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
2418 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2419 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
2420 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
2424 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2425 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
2428 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
2430 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
2431 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
2435 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
2436 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
2438 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
2440 * Irix 5 is now supported
2444 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
2445 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
2446 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
2447 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
2448 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
2451 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
2453 * User visible changes:
2457 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
2458 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
2459 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
2460 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
2461 debugging info for the mips target).
2463 * DEC Alpha native support
2465 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
2466 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
2467 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
2468 Alpha-specific notes.
2470 * Preliminary thread implementation
2472 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
2474 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
2476 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
2477 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
2480 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
2482 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
2483 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
2484 call methods, ...etc.
2486 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
2488 * User visible changes:
2490 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
2491 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
2492 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
2493 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
2495 Filename completion now works.
2497 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
2498 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
2499 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
2501 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
2502 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
2503 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
2504 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
2505 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
2509 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
2510 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
2513 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
2517 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
2518 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
2519 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
2523 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
2524 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
2525 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
2526 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
2527 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
2531 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
2532 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
2533 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
2535 * New targets supported
2537 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2538 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2539 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
2540 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2541 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
2543 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
2544 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
2545 GO32 memory extender.
2547 * New remote protocols
2549 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
2551 * New source languages supported
2553 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
2554 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
2555 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
2558 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
2560 * HP Precision Architecture supported
2562 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
2563 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
2564 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
2565 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
2566 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
2567 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
2569 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
2571 * Faster and better demangling
2573 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
2574 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
2575 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
2576 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
2577 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
2578 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
2581 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
2582 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
2583 compiler does not actually implement.
2585 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
2587 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
2588 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
2589 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
2590 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
2591 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
2592 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
2595 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
2596 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
2598 * Improved configure script
2600 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
2601 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
2602 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
2603 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
2605 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
2606 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
2607 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
2608 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
2609 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
2610 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
2612 * Documentation improvements
2614 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
2615 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
2616 before submitting changes.
2618 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
2619 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
2620 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
2621 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
2622 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
2624 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
2625 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
2626 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
2627 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
2628 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
2629 around this problem.
2633 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
2634 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
2635 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
2638 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
2639 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
2641 * New native hosts supported
2643 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
2644 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
2646 * New targets supported
2648 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
2650 * New file formats supported
2652 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
2653 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
2657 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
2659 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
2660 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
2662 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
2663 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
2664 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
2666 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
2667 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
2669 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
2670 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
2671 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
2674 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
2675 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
2676 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
2677 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
2678 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
2680 * Internal improvements
2682 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
2683 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
2685 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
2686 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
2687 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
2688 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
2689 shared code that handles any of them.
2691 * New command line options
2693 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
2697 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
2698 General Public License.
2700 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
2702 * Host/native/target split
2704 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
2705 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
2706 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
2707 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
2708 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
2710 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
2711 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
2712 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
2713 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
2714 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
2715 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
2716 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
2718 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
2719 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
2720 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
2722 * New hosts supported
2724 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
2725 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2726 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
2728 * New targets supported
2730 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
2731 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
2733 * New native hosts supported
2735 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2736 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
2737 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
2739 * New file formats supported
2741 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
2742 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
2743 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
2747 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
2748 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
2749 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
2751 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
2753 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
2754 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
2755 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
2756 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
2760 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
2761 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
2762 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
2764 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
2768 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
2769 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
2772 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
2773 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
2775 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
2776 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
2777 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
2778 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
2779 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
2780 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
2782 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
2783 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
2784 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
2785 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
2789 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
2790 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
2791 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
2792 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
2793 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
2795 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
2796 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
2797 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
2798 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
2802 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
2803 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
2804 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
2805 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
2806 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
2807 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
2808 each instruction being stepped through.
2810 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
2811 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
2813 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
2814 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
2815 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
2816 processor with a serial port.
2820 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
2821 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
2822 supported, and what files each one uses.
2826 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
2827 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
2828 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
2829 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
2831 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
2832 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
2833 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
2834 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
2838 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
2839 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
2840 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
2841 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
2842 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
2843 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
2845 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
2848 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
2850 * Better support for C++ function names
2852 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
2853 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
2854 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
2855 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
2856 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
2858 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
2859 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
2860 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
2861 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
2862 for the list of formats.
2864 * G++ symbol mangling problem
2866 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
2867 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
2868 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
2869 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
2870 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
2871 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
2874 * New 'maintenance' command
2876 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
2877 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
2878 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
2880 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
2881 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
2882 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
2883 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
2884 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
2885 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
2887 The following commands are new:
2889 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
2890 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
2891 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
2893 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
2895 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
2896 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
2897 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
2898 read after argv processing.
2900 * New hosts supported
2902 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
2904 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
2906 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
2907 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
2908 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
2909 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
2910 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
2913 * New targets supported
2915 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2917 * More smarts about finding #include files
2919 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
2920 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
2921 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
2922 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
2923 the one that contains your sources.
2925 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
2926 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
2927 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
2929 * Interesting infernals change
2931 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
2932 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
2933 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
2934 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
2936 * Bug fixes (of course!)
2938 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
2939 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
2940 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
2942 See the ChangeLog for details.
2944 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
2946 * New machines supported (host and target)
2948 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
2950 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2952 * New malloc package
2954 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
2955 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
2956 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
2957 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
2958 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
2959 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
2963 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
2964 'help info proc' for details.
2966 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
2968 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
2969 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
2972 * File name changes for MS-DOS
2974 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
2975 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
2976 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
2977 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
2978 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
2979 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
2981 * Cross byte order fixes
2983 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
2984 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
2986 * New -mapped and -readnow options
2988 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
2989 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
2990 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
2991 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
2992 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
2993 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
2994 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
2995 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
2996 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
2997 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
2999 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
3000 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
3001 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
3002 slower, but makes future operations faster.
3004 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
3005 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
3006 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
3009 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
3011 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
3012 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
3013 shared across multiple host platforms.
3015 * longjmp() handling
3017 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
3018 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
3019 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
3020 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
3024 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
3025 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
3030 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
3031 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
3032 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
3034 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
3036 * New machines supported (host and target)
3038 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
3040 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
3041 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
3043 * New machines supported (target)
3045 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3049 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
3050 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
3051 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
3053 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
3054 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
3055 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
3056 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
3057 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
3060 * New features for SVR4
3062 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
3063 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
3064 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
3066 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
3067 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
3068 it prints the address mappings of the process.
3070 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
3071 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
3073 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
3075 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
3076 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
3077 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
3078 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
3079 same code linked statically.
3083 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
3084 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
3085 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
3086 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
3087 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
3088 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
3092 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
3093 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
3094 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
3097 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
3099 * New machines supported (host and target)
3101 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
3102 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
3103 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3105 * Almost SCO Unix support
3107 We had hoped to support:
3108 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
3109 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
3110 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
3111 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
3113 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
3115 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
3116 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
3117 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
3118 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
3123 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
3124 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
3125 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
3129 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
3130 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
3131 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
3133 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
3135 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
3136 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
3137 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
3139 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
3140 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
3141 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
3142 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
3145 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
3146 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
3147 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
3148 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
3151 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
3152 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
3155 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
3156 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
3157 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
3160 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
3162 * Improved configuration
3164 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
3165 Porting BFD is simpler.
3169 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
3170 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
3171 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
3172 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
3176 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
3178 * New host supported (not target)
3180 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
3183 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
3185 * Multiple source language support
3187 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
3188 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
3189 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
3190 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
3191 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
3192 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
3196 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
3197 currently under development at the State University of New York at
3198 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
3199 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
3201 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
3202 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
3203 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
3205 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
3206 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
3210 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
3211 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
3212 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
3213 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
3216 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
3218 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
3219 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
3220 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
3221 examining core files.
3225 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
3228 * New machines supported (host and target)
3230 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
3231 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
3232 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
3234 * New hosts supported (not targets)
3236 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
3238 * New targets supported (not hosts)
3240 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3241 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3242 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
3244 * New remote interfaces
3250 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
3254 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
3256 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
3257 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
3258 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
3259 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
3260 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
3261 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
3262 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
3263 stub on the target system.
3265 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
3267 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
3268 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
3269 object file types such as a.out and coff.
3271 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
3272 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
3275 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
3277 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
3278 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
3280 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
3281 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
3282 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
3284 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
3285 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
3286 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
3287 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
3289 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
3290 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
3291 it is already running. Default is ON.
3293 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
3294 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
3295 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
3296 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
3299 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
3300 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
3301 or the value of the environment variable
3304 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
3305 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
3308 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
3309 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
3310 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
3312 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
3313 history expansion will be performed on
3314 command line input. The default is OFF.
3316 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
3317 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
3318 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
3320 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
3321 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
3322 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3325 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
3326 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
3327 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3330 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
3331 ``set width'' instead.
3333 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
3334 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
3335 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
3336 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
3338 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
3341 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
3344 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
3347 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
3350 * Support for Epoch Environment.
3352 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
3353 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
3354 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
3358 * Support for Shared Libraries
3360 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
3361 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
3362 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
3363 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
3364 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
3365 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
3366 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
3367 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
3369 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
3370 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
3371 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
3373 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
3378 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
3379 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
3380 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
3381 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
3382 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
3383 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
3385 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
3387 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
3389 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3390 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3391 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3394 * C++ multiple inheritance
3396 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
3399 * C++ exception handling
3401 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
3402 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
3403 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
3406 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
3407 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
3408 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
3410 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
3411 current stack frame.
3414 * Minor command changes
3416 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
3417 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
3418 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
3420 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
3421 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
3422 frames without printing.
3424 * New directory command
3426 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
3427 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
3428 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
3429 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
3430 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
3432 * Configuring GDB for compilation
3434 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
3437 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
3438 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
3439 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
3440 where the program that you are debugging will run.
projects / deliverable / binutils-gdb.git / blob