2003-04-09 Andrew Cagney <cagney@redhat.com>
[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
4 *** Changes since GDB 5.3:
5
6 * d10v `regs' command deprecated
7
8 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
9 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
10
11 * Profiling support
12
13 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
14 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
15 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
16 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
17 data, for more informative profiling results.
18
19 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
20
21 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
22 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
23 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
24
25 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
26 removed.
27
28 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
29 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
30 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
31 in a subsequent -var-update.
32
33 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
34
35 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
36 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
37 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
38 permanently REMOVED.
39
40 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
41 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
42 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
43 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
44 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
45 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
46 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
47 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
48 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
49 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
50 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
51
52 * REMOVED configurations and files
53
54 V850EA ISA
55 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
56 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
57 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
58 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
59 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
60 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
61 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
62 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
63 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
64 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
65 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
66 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
67 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
68
69 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
70
71 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
72 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
73 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
74 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
75 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
76
77 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
78
79 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
80
81 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
82 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
83 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
84 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
85 shared libs like mad''.
86
87 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
88
89 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
90 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
91 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
92 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
93
94 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
95
96 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
97 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
98 they expand.
99
100 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
101 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
102
103 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
104 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
105
106 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
107 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
108 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
109 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
110
111 * Multi-arched targets.
112
113 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
114 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
115 NEC V850 v850-*-*
116 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
117 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
118 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
119
120 * New targets.
121
122 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
123
124
125 * New native configurations
126
127 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
128 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
129 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
130 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
131
132 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
133
134 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
135 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
136 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
137 permanently REMOVED.
138
139 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
140 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
141 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
142 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
143 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
144 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
145 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
146 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
147 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
148 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
149 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
150 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
151 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
152
153 * OBSOLETE languages
154
155 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
156
157 * REMOVED configurations and files
158
159 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
160 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
161 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
162 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
163 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
164
165 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
166
167 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
168
169 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
170 commands. The default is 1024.
171
172 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
173
174 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
175
176 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
177
178 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
179 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
180 from a file into memory (restore).
181
182 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
183
184 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
185 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
186 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
187
188 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
189
190 * New targets.
191
192 Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
193
194 * Bug fixes
195
196 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
197 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
198 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
199
200 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
201 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
202 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
203
204 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
205 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
206 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
207
208 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
209 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
210 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
211
212 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
213
214 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
215
216 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
217 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
218 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
219 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
220 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
221 (notably embedded) targets.
222
223 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
224
225 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
226 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
227 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
228 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
229
230 * New command line option
231
232 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
233
234 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
235
236 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
237 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
238 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
239 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
240 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
241 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
242 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
243 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
244 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
245 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
246
247 * Changes in ARM configurations.
248
249 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
250 configuration is fully multi-arch.
251
252 * New native configurations
253
254 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
255 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
256 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
257 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
258
259 * New targets
260
261 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
262
263 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
264
265 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
266 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
267 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
268 permanently REMOVED.
269
270 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
271 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
272 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
273 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
274 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
275
276 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
277
278 * REMOVED configurations and files
279
280 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
281 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
282 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
283 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
284 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
285 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
286 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
287 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
288 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
289 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
290 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
291 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
292 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
293
294 * Changes to command line processing
295
296 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
297 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
298
299 * Changes to key bindings
300
301 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
302
303 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
304
305 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
306
307 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
308 corrupted.
309
310 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
311
312 Numerous documentation fixes.
313
314 Numerous testsuite fixes.
315
316 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
317
318 * New native configurations
319
320 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
321 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
322 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
323 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
324 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
325 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
326
327 * New targets
328
329 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
330 CRIS cris-axis
331 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
332
333 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
334
335 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
336 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
337 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
338 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
339 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
340 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
341 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
342 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
343 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
344 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
345 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
346 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
347 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
348 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
349
350 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
351 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
352
353 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
354 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
355 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
356 permanently REMOVED.
357
358 * REMOVED configurations and files
359
360 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
361 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
362 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
363 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
364 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
365 ser-ocd.c *-*-*
366
367 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
368
369 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
370 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
371 present.
372
373 * Other news:
374
375 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
376
377 * The MI enabled by default.
378
379 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
380 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
381 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
382 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
383 which is now deprecated.
384
385 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
386
387 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
388 main features are supported:
389
390 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
391
392 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
393 extension;
394
395 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
396
397 - a Pascal expression parser.
398
399 However, some important features are not yet supported.
400
401 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
402
403 - there are some problems with boolean types;
404
405 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
406 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
407
408 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
409
410 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
411
412 * Changes in completion.
413
414 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
415 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
416 users expect at the shell prompt.
417
418 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
419 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
420 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
421 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
422 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
423 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
424 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
425
426 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
427
428 * New platform-independent commands:
429
430 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
431 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
432 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
433
434 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
435
436 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
437 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
438 many threads as your system allows you to have.
439
440 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
441
442 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
443 multi-threaded programs though.
444
445 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
446
447 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
448
449 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
450 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
451 supported.)
452
453 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
454
455 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
456 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
457 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
458 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
459 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
460 registers.
461
462 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
463 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
464 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
465
466 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
467
468 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
469 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
470
471 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
472 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
473 IDT.
474
475 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
476 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
477 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
478 a given linear address.
479
480 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
481 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
482 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
483
484 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
485
486 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
487
488 * Changes in documentation.
489
490 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
491 Documentation License.
492
493 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
494 manual.
495
496 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
497
498 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
499 manual.
500
501 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
502 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
503 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
504
505 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
506
507 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
508 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
509 contents of this file.
510
511 * gdba.el deleted
512
513 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
514
515 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
516
517 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
518
519 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
520 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
521 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
522 greater level of detail.
523
524 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
525
526 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
527 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
528 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
529 written.
530
531 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
532
533 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
534 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
535 machines ``out of the box''.
536
537 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
538 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
539 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
540 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
541 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
542
543 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
544 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
545 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
546 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
547 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
548
549 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
550 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
551 also works.
552
553 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
554 GDB.
555
556 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
557 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
558 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
559 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
560
561 * New native configurations
562
563 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
564 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
565
566 * New targets
567
568 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
569 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
570 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
571 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
572
573 * OBSOLETE configurations
574
575 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
576 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
577 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
578 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
579 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
580
581 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
582 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
583 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
584 be permanently REMOVED.
585
586 * Gould support removed
587
588 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
589
590 * New features for SVR4
591
592 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
593 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
594 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
595
596 * Many C++ enhancements
597
598 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
599 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
600
601 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
602
603 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
604 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
605 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
606 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
607
608 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
609 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
610
611 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
612
613 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
614 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
615 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
616
617 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
618 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
619
620 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
621
622 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
623 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
624 include ``set remote P-packet''.
625
626 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
627
628 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
629 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
630 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
631
632 * ``apropos'' command added.
633
634 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
635 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
636 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
637
638 * New MI interface
639
640 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
641 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
642 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
643 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
644 enabled by configuring with:
645
646 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
647
648 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
649
650 * New native configurations
651
652 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
653 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
654 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
655
656 * New targets
657
658 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
659 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
660 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
661
662 * OBSOLETE configurations
663
664 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
665
666 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
667 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
668 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
669 be permanently REMOVED.
670
671 * ANSI/ISO C
672
673 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
674 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
675 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
676 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
677 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
678 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
679 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
680 already.
681
682 * Readline 2.2
683
684 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
685
686 * set extension-language
687
688 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
689 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
690 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
691 set extension-language .c c++
692 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
693 and their associated languages.
694
695 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
696
697 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
698 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
699 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
700
701 set processor NAME
702
703 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
704 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
705
706 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
707 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
708 403 IBM PowerPC 403
709 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
710 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
711 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
712 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
713 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
714 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
715 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
716 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
717
718 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
719 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
720 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
721 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
722
723 * HP-UX support
724
725 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
726 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
727 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
728 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
729 for xdb and dbx commands.
730
731 * Catchpoints
732
733 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
734 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
735 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
736
737 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
738 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
739 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
740
741 * Debugging across forks
742
743 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
744 in the inferior.
745
746 * TUI
747
748 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
749 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
750 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
751
752 * GDB remote protocol additions
753
754 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
755 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
756 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
757 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
758
759 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
760 full 64-bit address. The command
761
762 set remoteaddresssize 32
763
764 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
765 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
766 will be discarded.
767
768 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
769 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
770
771 maint packet heythere
772
773 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
774 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
775 time.
776
777 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
778 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
779 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
780
781 * Tracing can collect general expressions
782
783 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
784 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
785 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
786
787 * mask-address variable for Mips
788
789 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
790 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
791 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
792
793 * Higher serial baud rates
794
795 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
796 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
797 to achieve all of these rates.)
798
799 * i960 simulator
800
801 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
802 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
803
804
805 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
806
807 * New native configurations
808
809 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
810 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
811 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
812 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
813 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
814 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
815 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
816
817 * New targets
818
819 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
820 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
821 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
822 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
823 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
824 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
825 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
826 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
827 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
828 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
829 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
830
831 * New debugging protocols
832
833 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
834 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
835 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
836 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
837 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
838 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
839
840 * DWARF 2
841
842 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
843 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
844 information.
845
846 * Java frontend
847
848 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
849 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
850
851 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
852
853 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
854 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
855 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
856
857 * Live range splitting
858
859 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
860 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
861 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
862
863 * Hurd support
864
865 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
866 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
867
868 * ARM Thumb support
869
870 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
871 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
872 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
873 accordingly.
874
875 * MIPS16 support
876
877 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
878 instruction set.
879
880 * Overlay support
881
882 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
883 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
884 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
885 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
886 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
887 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
888
889 * info symbol
890
891 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
892 the symbol at the specified address.
893
894 * Trace support
895
896 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
897 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
898 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
899 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
900 file tracepoint.c for more details.
901
902 * MIPS simulator
903
904 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
905 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
906 of most MIPS variants.
907
908 * Sparc simulator
909
910 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
911 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
912 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
913
914 * set architecture
915
916 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
917 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
918 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
919 the possible architectures.
920
921 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
922
923 * New native configurations
924
925 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
926 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
927 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
928 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
929 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
930 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
931
932 * New targets
933
934 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
935 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
936 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
937 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
938 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
939 Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
940 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
941
942 * PowerPC simulator
943
944 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
945 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
946 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
947 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
948 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
949
950 * Solaris 2.5
951
952 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
953
954 * Windows 95/NT native
955
956 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
957 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
958 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
959 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
960 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
961
962 * dont-repeat command
963
964 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
965 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
966 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
967 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
968
969 * Send break instead of ^C
970
971 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
972 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
973 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
974
975 * Remote protocol timeout
976
977 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
978 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
979 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
980
981 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
982
983 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
984 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
985 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
986 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
987 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
988
989 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
990 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
991 automatically on hpux10.
992
993 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
994
995 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
996
997 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
998
999 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
1000 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
1001 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
1002 every character. The default value is 1050.
1003
1004 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
1005
1006 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
1007 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
1008 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
1009 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
1010 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
1011 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
1012
1013 * Speedups for remote debugging
1014
1015 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
1016 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
1017 and more efficient S-record downloading.
1018
1019 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
1020
1021 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
1022 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
1023
1024 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
1025
1026 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
1027
1028 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
1029 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
1030
1031 * Remote targets use caching
1032
1033 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
1034 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
1035 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
1036 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
1037 off' turns the the data cache off.
1038
1039 * Remote targets may have threads
1040
1041 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
1042 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
1043 gdb/remote.c for details.
1044
1045 * NetROM support
1046
1047 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
1048 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
1049 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
1050 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
1051 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
1052 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
1053 sequence is something like
1054
1055 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
1056 load <prog>
1057 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
1058
1059 * Macintosh host
1060
1061 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
1062 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
1063 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
1064 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
1065 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
1066 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
1067 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
1068 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
1069
1070 * Autoconf
1071
1072 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
1073 but does simplify configuration and building.
1074
1075 * hpux10
1076
1077 GDB now supports hpux10.
1078
1079 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
1080
1081 * New native configurations
1082
1083 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
1084 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
1085 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
1086 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
1087
1088 * New targets
1089
1090 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1091 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
1092 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
1093 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
1094 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
1095
1096 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
1097
1098 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
1099 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
1100 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
1101 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
1102 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
1103
1104 * Arguments to user-defined commands
1105
1106 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
1107 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
1108 trivial example:
1109 define adder
1110 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
1111
1112 To execute the command use:
1113 adder 1 2 3
1114
1115 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
1116 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
1117 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
1118
1119 * New `if' and `while' commands
1120
1121 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
1122 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
1123 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
1124 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
1125 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
1126 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
1127 if the expression is zero.
1128
1129 * Fortran source language mode
1130
1131 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
1132 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
1133 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
1134 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
1135 Fortran compilers.
1136
1137 * Better HPUX support
1138
1139 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
1140 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
1141 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
1142 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
1143 that behavior do the following before running the program:
1144
1145 adb -w a.out
1146 __dld_flags?W 0x5
1147 control-d
1148
1149 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
1150 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
1151
1152 adb -w a.out
1153 __dld_flags?W 0x4
1154 control-d
1155
1156 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
1157 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
1158 external linkage.
1159
1160 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
1161 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
1162
1163 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
1164
1165 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
1166 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
1167 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
1168 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
1169 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
1170 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
1171
1172 * New DOS host serial code
1173
1174 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
1175 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
1176 a PC's serial port.
1177
1178 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
1179
1180 * New "complete" command
1181
1182 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
1183 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
1184
1185 * Trailing space optional in prompt
1186
1187 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
1188 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
1189
1190 * Breakpoint hit counts
1191
1192 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
1193 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
1194 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
1195 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
1196 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
1197 that breakpoint.
1198
1199 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
1200
1201 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
1202 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
1203 arrays actually contain only short strings.
1204
1205 * Shared library breakpoints
1206
1207 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
1208 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
1209
1210 * Hardware watchpoints
1211
1212 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
1213 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
1214
1215 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
1216
1217 * Annotations
1218
1219 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
1220 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
1221
1222 * Improved Irix 5 support
1223
1224 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
1225
1226 * Improved HPPA support
1227
1228 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
1229
1230 * New native configurations
1231
1232 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
1233 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1234 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
1235 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
1236
1237 * New targets
1238
1239 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1240 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
1241 Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
1242
1243 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
1244
1245 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
1246 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
1247
1248 * Fixes
1249
1250 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
1251 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
1252
1253 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
1254
1255 * Irix 5 is now supported
1256
1257 * HPPA support
1258
1259 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
1260 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
1261 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
1262 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
1263 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
1264
1265
1266 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
1267
1268 * User visible changes:
1269
1270 * Remote Debugging
1271
1272 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
1273 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
1274 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
1275 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
1276 debugging info for the mips target).
1277
1278 * DEC Alpha native support
1279
1280 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
1281 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
1282 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
1283 Alpha-specific notes.
1284
1285 * Preliminary thread implementation
1286
1287 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
1288
1289 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
1290
1291 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
1292 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
1293 for details).
1294
1295 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
1296
1297 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
1298 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
1299 call methods, ...etc.
1300
1301 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
1302
1303 * User visible changes:
1304
1305 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
1306 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
1307 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
1308 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
1309
1310 Filename completion now works.
1311
1312 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
1313 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
1314 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
1315
1316 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
1317 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
1318 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
1319 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
1320 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
1321
1322 * DEC alpha support
1323
1324 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
1325 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
1326
1327
1328 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
1329
1330 * Testsuite
1331
1332 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
1333 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
1334 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
1335
1336 * C++ demangling
1337
1338 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
1339 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
1340 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
1341 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
1342 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
1343
1344 * Simulators
1345
1346 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
1347 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
1348 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
1349
1350 * New targets supported
1351
1352 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1353 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1354 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
1355 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1356 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
1357
1358 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
1359 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
1360 GO32 memory extender.
1361
1362 * New remote protocols
1363
1364 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
1365
1366 * New source languages supported
1367
1368 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
1369 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
1370 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
1371
1372
1373 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
1374
1375 * HP Precision Architecture supported
1376
1377 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
1378 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
1379 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
1380 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
1381 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
1382 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
1383
1384 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
1385
1386 * Faster and better demangling
1387
1388 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
1389 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
1390 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
1391 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
1392 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
1393 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
1394 symbol lookups.
1395
1396 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
1397 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
1398 compiler does not actually implement.
1399
1400 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
1401
1402 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
1403 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
1404 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
1405 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
1406 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
1407 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
1408 fix.
1409
1410 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
1411 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
1412
1413 * Improved configure script
1414
1415 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
1416 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
1417 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
1418 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
1419
1420 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
1421 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
1422 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
1423 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
1424 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
1425 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
1426
1427 * Documentation improvements
1428
1429 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
1430 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
1431 before submitting changes.
1432
1433 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
1434 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
1435 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
1436 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
1437 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
1438
1439 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
1440 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
1441 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
1442 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
1443 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
1444 around this problem.
1445
1446 * New features
1447
1448 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
1449 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
1450 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
1451 the target program.
1452
1453 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
1454 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
1455
1456 * New native hosts supported
1457
1458 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
1459 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
1460
1461 * New targets supported
1462
1463 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
1464
1465 * New file formats supported
1466
1467 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
1468 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
1469
1470 * Major bug fixes
1471
1472 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
1473
1474 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
1475 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
1476
1477 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
1478 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
1479 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
1480
1481 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
1482 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
1483
1484 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
1485 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
1486 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
1487 libraries.
1488
1489 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
1490 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
1491 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
1492 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
1493 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
1494
1495 * Internal improvements
1496
1497 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
1498 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
1499
1500 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
1501 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
1502 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
1503 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
1504 shared code that handles any of them.
1505
1506 * New command line options
1507
1508 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
1509
1510 * Mmalloc licensing
1511
1512 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
1513 General Public License.
1514
1515 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
1516
1517 * Host/native/target split
1518
1519 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
1520 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
1521 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
1522 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
1523 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
1524
1525 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
1526 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
1527 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
1528 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
1529 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
1530 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
1531 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
1532
1533 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
1534 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
1535 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
1536
1537 * New hosts supported
1538
1539 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
1540 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1541 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
1542
1543 * New targets supported
1544
1545 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
1546 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
1547
1548 * New native hosts supported
1549
1550 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1551 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
1552 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
1553
1554 * New file formats supported
1555
1556 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
1557 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
1558 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
1559
1560 * New commands
1561
1562 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
1563 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
1564 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
1565
1566 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
1567
1568 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
1569 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
1570 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
1571 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
1572
1573 * C++ improvements
1574
1575 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
1576 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
1577 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
1578
1579 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
1580
1581 * Major bug fixes
1582
1583 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
1584 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
1585 by the compiler.
1586
1587 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
1588 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
1589
1590 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
1591 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
1592 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
1593 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
1594 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
1595 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
1596
1597 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
1598 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
1599 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
1600 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
1601
1602 * AMD 29k support
1603
1604 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
1605 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
1606 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
1607 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
1608 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
1609
1610 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
1611 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
1612 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
1613 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
1614
1615 * Remote interfaces
1616
1617 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
1618 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
1619 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
1620 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
1621 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
1622 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
1623 each instruction being stepped through.
1624
1625 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
1626 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
1627
1628 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
1629 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
1630 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
1631 processor with a serial port.
1632
1633 * Configuration
1634
1635 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
1636 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
1637 supported, and what files each one uses.
1638
1639 * Library changes
1640
1641 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
1642 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
1643 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
1644 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
1645
1646 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
1647 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
1648 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
1649 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
1650
1651 * Documentation
1652
1653 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
1654 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
1655 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
1656 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
1657 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
1658 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
1659
1660 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
1661
1662
1663 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
1664
1665 * Better support for C++ function names
1666
1667 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
1668 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
1669 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
1670 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
1671 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
1672
1673 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
1674 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
1675 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
1676 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
1677 for the list of formats.
1678
1679 * G++ symbol mangling problem
1680
1681 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
1682 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
1683 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
1684 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
1685 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
1686 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
1687 this problem.)
1688
1689 * New 'maintenance' command
1690
1691 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
1692 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
1693 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
1694
1695 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
1696 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
1697 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
1698 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
1699 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
1700 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
1701
1702 The following commands are new:
1703
1704 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
1705 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
1706 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
1707
1708 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
1709
1710 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
1711 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
1712 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
1713 read after argv processing.
1714
1715 * New hosts supported
1716
1717 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
1718
1719 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
1720
1721 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
1722 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
1723 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
1724 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
1725 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
1726 It costs extra.
1727
1728 * New targets supported
1729
1730 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1731
1732 * More smarts about finding #include files
1733
1734 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
1735 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
1736 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
1737 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
1738 the one that contains your sources.
1739
1740 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
1741 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
1742 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
1743
1744 * Interesting infernals change
1745
1746 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
1747 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
1748 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
1749 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
1750
1751 * Bug fixes (of course!)
1752
1753 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
1754 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
1755 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
1756
1757 See the ChangeLog for details.
1758
1759 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
1760
1761 * New machines supported (host and target)
1762
1763 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
1764
1765 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1766
1767 * New malloc package
1768
1769 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
1770 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
1771 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
1772 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
1773 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
1774 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
1775
1776 * info proc
1777
1778 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
1779 'help info proc' for details.
1780
1781 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
1782
1783 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
1784 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
1785 possible.
1786
1787 * File name changes for MS-DOS
1788
1789 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
1790 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
1791 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
1792 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
1793 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
1794 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
1795
1796 * Cross byte order fixes
1797
1798 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
1799 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
1800
1801 * New -mapped and -readnow options
1802
1803 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
1804 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
1805 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
1806 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
1807 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
1808 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
1809 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
1810 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
1811 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
1812 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
1813
1814 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
1815 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
1816 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
1817 slower, but makes future operations faster.
1818
1819 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
1820 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
1821 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
1822 use is:
1823
1824 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
1825
1826 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
1827 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
1828 shared across multiple host platforms.
1829
1830 * longjmp() handling
1831
1832 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
1833 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
1834 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
1835 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
1836
1837 * Solaris 2.0
1838
1839 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
1840 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
1841 reading symbols.
1842
1843 * Bug fixes
1844
1845 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
1846 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
1847 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
1848
1849 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
1850
1851 * New machines supported (host and target)
1852
1853 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
1854 (except core files)
1855 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
1856 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
1857
1858 * New machines supported (target)
1859
1860 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1861
1862 * C++ support
1863
1864 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
1865 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
1866 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
1867
1868 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
1869 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
1870 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
1871 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
1872 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
1873 released.
1874
1875 * New features for SVR4
1876
1877 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
1878 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
1879 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
1880
1881 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
1882 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
1883 it prints the address mappings of the process.
1884
1885 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
1886 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
1887
1888 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
1889
1890 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
1891 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
1892 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
1893 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
1894 same code linked statically.
1895
1896 * New Getopt
1897
1898 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
1899 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
1900 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
1901 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
1902 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
1903 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
1904
1905 * Bugs fixed
1906
1907 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
1908 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
1909 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
1910
1911
1912 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
1913
1914 * New machines supported (host and target)
1915
1916 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
1917 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
1918 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1919
1920 * Almost SCO Unix support
1921
1922 We had hoped to support:
1923 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
1924 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
1925 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
1926 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
1927
1928 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
1929
1930 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
1931 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
1932 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
1933 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
1934 reqired (if any).
1935
1936 * New Readline
1937
1938 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
1939 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
1940 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
1941
1942 * Bugs fixed
1943
1944 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
1945 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
1946 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
1947
1948 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
1949
1950 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
1951 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
1952 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
1953
1954 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
1955 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
1956 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
1957 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
1958 version 2.
1959
1960 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
1961 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
1962 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
1963 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
1964 situation somewhat.
1965
1966 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
1967 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
1968 methods.
1969
1970 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
1971 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
1972 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
1973
1974
1975 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
1976
1977 * Improved configuration
1978
1979 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
1980 Porting BFD is simpler.
1981
1982 * Stepping improved
1983
1984 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
1985 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
1986 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
1987 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
1988
1989 * Bug fixing
1990
1991 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
1992
1993 * New host supported (not target)
1994
1995 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
1996
1997
1998 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
1999
2000 * Multiple source language support
2001
2002 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
2003 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
2004 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
2005 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
2006 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
2007 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
2008
2009 * GDB and Modula-2
2010
2011 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
2012 currently under development at the State University of New York at
2013 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
2014 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
2015
2016 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
2017 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
2018 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
2019
2020 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
2021 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
2022
2023 * set write on/off
2024
2025 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
2026 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
2027 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
2028 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
2029 effect immediately.
2030
2031 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
2032
2033 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
2034 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
2035 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
2036 examining core files.
2037
2038 * set listsize
2039
2040 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
2041 The default is 10.
2042
2043 * New machines supported (host and target)
2044
2045 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2046 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
2047 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
2048
2049 * New hosts supported (not targets)
2050
2051 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
2052
2053 * New targets supported (not hosts)
2054
2055 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2056 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2057 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
2058
2059 * New remote interfaces
2060
2061 AMD 29000 Adapt
2062 AMD 29000 Minimon
2063
2064
2065 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
2066
2067 * New Facilities
2068
2069 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
2070
2071 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
2072 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
2073 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
2074 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
2075 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
2076 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
2077 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
2078 stub on the target system.
2079
2080 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
2081
2082 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
2083 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
2084 object file types such as a.out and coff.
2085
2086 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
2087 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
2088
2089
2090 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
2091
2092 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
2093 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
2094
2095 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
2096 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
2097 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
2098
2099 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
2100 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
2101 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
2102 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
2103
2104 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
2105 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
2106 it is already running. Default is ON.
2107
2108 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
2109 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
2110 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
2111 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
2112 Default is ON.
2113
2114 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
2115 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
2116 or the value of the environment variable
2117 GDBHISTFILE.
2118
2119 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
2120 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
2121 HISTSIZE.
2122
2123 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
2124 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
2125 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
2126
2127 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
2128 history expansion will be performed on
2129 command line input. The default is OFF.
2130
2131 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
2132 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
2133 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
2134
2135 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
2136 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
2137 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2138 variable TERM.
2139
2140 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
2141 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
2142 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2143 variable TERM.
2144
2145 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
2146 ``set width'' instead.
2147
2148 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
2149 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
2150 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
2151 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
2152
2153 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
2154 is OFF.
2155
2156 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
2157 "raw" form if off.
2158
2159 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
2160 like instructions.
2161
2162 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
2163
2164
2165 * Support for Epoch Environment.
2166
2167 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
2168 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
2169 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
2170 window.
2171
2172
2173 * Support for Shared Libraries
2174
2175 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
2176 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
2177 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
2178 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
2179 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
2180 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
2181 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
2182 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
2183
2184 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
2185 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
2186 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
2187
2188 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
2189
2190
2191 * Watchpoints
2192
2193 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
2194 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
2195 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
2196 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
2197 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
2198 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
2199
2200 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
2201
2202 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
2203
2204 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2205 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2206 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2207
2208
2209 * C++ multiple inheritance
2210
2211 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
2212 for C++ programs.
2213
2214 * C++ exception handling
2215
2216 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
2217 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
2218 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
2219 handler's context).
2220
2221 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
2222 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
2223 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
2224
2225 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
2226 current stack frame.
2227
2228
2229 * Minor command changes
2230
2231 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
2232 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
2233 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
2234
2235 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
2236 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
2237 frames without printing.
2238
2239 * New directory command
2240
2241 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
2242 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
2243 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
2244 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
2245 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
2246
2247 * Configuring GDB for compilation
2248
2249 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
2250 for more details.
2251
2252 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
2253 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
2254 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
2255 where the program that you are debugging will run.
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